Android Tablet Update

Through a filing with the California Federal Court, Apple claims that Samsung is knowingly infringing on Apple’s patents since they met with Samsung back in 2010 to discuss the matter. The documents show that Apple met with Samsung on four separate occasions and was shown a presentation named “Samsung’s Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones” which detailed Samsung’s infringements of patents ’002 and ’381 along with several others.

On or about August 4, 2010, Apple representatives met with Samsung in Korea and showed a presentation titled 'Samsung's Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones.' This presentation emphasized Samsung's copying of the iPhone and identified two of the patents-in-suit (the '002 and '381 patents), giving Samsung actual notice of at least these patents, and many more.

On or about August 26, 2010, Apple sent Samsung an electronic archive file containing claim charts further illustrating Samsung's infringement of Apple patents. A presentation document that accompanied these claim charts identified the '002 and '381 patents as two patents that Samsung products infringed, and it substantiated these allegations with text from the patents and photographs of Samsung devices illustrating infringing functionality. Apple later presented these slides to Samsung at a meeting in Cupertino, California on or about September 9, 2010.Apple

Apple is hoping that this new information will persuade the courts to rule in Apple’s favor in their attacks against Samsung, but we have a feeling that it won’t be that simple. Since Samsung didn’t negotiate a deal with Apple and produced new phones based on the same technology, we assume Samsung was not convinced that their devices actually infringed on Apple’s patents.

The good news is that back in 2010 Apple was willing to negotiate with Samsung about possible patent infringements. This suggests that there is still hope that some of the patent battles between Apple and other Android OEMs may be settled out of court without the need for the courts to issue import bans on the devices we love.

Does this new information change your opinion about Apple and its approach to protecting its intellectual property?

Android has long been the target of many lawsuits from large patent holding companies, especially Apple. As a Google owned patent for the notification bar as we know it, filed for in 2009, nears a possible approval, the tables may finally be turned.

When it comes to features, Google’s Android is ahead of, or on par with, every mobile operating system available today. But there’s one area where Android’s severely lacking: patents. Google released an operating system without owning any patents on a lot of the key technologies used to make it function. If Android would have never taken off, this probably wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, as Android has become a success, it’s become the target for what is arguably the most powerful company in the technology industry, Apple.

Lawsuit after lawsuit from Apple has left Android and the manufacturers using the platform trying their best to fight back. If a patent on Android’s notification bar is approved any time soon, Apple may be the one fighting back next.

In 2009, Google filed a patent for Android’s notification bar. If you’ve used iOS 5 or know anything about Apple’s “Notification Center,” you know that it’s a direct, blatant rip off of Android’s notification bar. According to the filing, Google would own the patent for “a computer-implemented user notification method includes displaying, in a status area near a perimeter of a graphical interface, a notification of a recent alert event for a mobile device, receiving a user selection in the status area, and in response to the receipt of the user selection, displaying, in a central zone of the graphical interface, detail regarding a plurality of recent messaging events for the mobile device.”

Since Google doesn’t own the patent to the notification bar yet, they can’t do anything but sit back and watch Apple use it in all of their most popular devices. Even the latest version of the Mac’s operating system, OS X 10.8, uses Notification Center. If Google’s patent application for Android’s notification bar is approved, there’s little to reason to believe it wouldn’t be an easy victory for Google, should they decide to take Apple to court over it.

It will be interesting to see what Google does with the patent should they manage to secure it. Will they immediately take Apple to court, or would using it as leverage in other patent negotiations make more sense? This will definitely be worth keeping an eye on.

Back in July and September of 2011, Google acquired 1,000 patents from IBM, bumping the total number of  patents acquired from IBM to 2,000. But they weren’t done for the year. On December 30, Google made their final patent purchase of the year, buying 200 more IBM patents for a grand total of 2,200.

Representatives from Google wouldn’t comment on why the patents were acquired, but after examining what the patents cover it’s not hard to figure out. The latest round of patents added to Google’s portfolio cover a wide range of technology, including “email management, server backup, tuning and recovery, e-commerce, advertising, mobile Web page display, instant messaging, online calendaring and database tuning.” Clearly, Google is still working on improving their arsenal for legal battles and protecting their products.

Last year was the year of the patent troll, with lawsuits and licencing deals involving nearly every Android manufacturer on the planet taking place. There’s no reason to believe 2012 will be much different, but the hubbub surrounding legal problems is likely to be muted compared to the past. Regardless of how much attention Android-related lawsuits garner, Google is still in need of the weapons to protect their intellectual property.

With the acquisitions made from IBM and Motorola combined, Google is finally reaching a position where it will be able to defend itself when the time comes. Hopefully that won’t be necessary, but it’s nice to see Google taking the proper precautions.

On Tuesday, December 27, Apple was granted yet another key patent, this time related to how the iPhone’s multitouch display functions. The patent covers the method in which an “oscillator signal interacts with a signal,” or how touch is interpreted by the operating system. While it would seem that this is a massive win for Apple, it isn’t being covered as such. There’s several good reasons for that, including the fact that the world is finally desensitized to patent warfare.

2011 has been a busy year for patent lawyers. As the dust surrounding the initial smartphone market share sprint began to settle, it was clear that not everyone would be happy relying on the quality of their products to win the entire race. Apple has been the poster child for this line of reasoning. The Cupertino based company has started lawsuits with nearly every top Android device manufacturer, using technical patents and design infringements to challenge the competition.

So far, any victories for Apple have yet to really show any major impact on Android. Sure, Samsung has had to retool their Galaxy Tab 10.1 in some parts of the globe, and some older (not even sold anymore) HTC handsets have been banned. But Samsung’s modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N isn’t likely to be banned even if Apple fights for it, and HTC is already developing a workaround to prevent any future problems for their handsets. Both of these stories were highly publicized, and both had a rather lackluster outcome.

When it comes to Apple’s newest multitouch patent, we may be looking at the same situation. Back in mid-December, HTC was already looking into alternative touch panel suppliers, because their current Atmel maXTouch displays may infringe on Apple’s patents. You can bet that HTC isn’t the only manufacturer accessing their options. And by the time Apple is able to take their latest patent to court, it would probably only apply to, you guessed it, old handsets not even being sold anymore.

Right now, the mobile industry is engaged in a vicious cycle of legal battles where even the victors aren’t awarded much. Apple is going to keep landing patents. They’ll continue to sue rival manufacturers, who’ll continue to rework their hardware and software to avoid any missed sales. And eventually, even technology enthusiasts won’t know it’s still going on. Because if nothing monumental happens when some huge company does win in a patent case, no one’s going to care.

It’s like that story, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Every patent suit against Android is touted as the one that will end the platform. But that’s not what happens. So the townspeople don’t even listen anymore. They just don’t care. I think we’ve finally reached that point.

Who knew we’d cover so many lawsuits and patents today? This evening’s lawsuit actually makes a bit of sense, though it leaves us asking what the heck took so long. Toy maker Hasbro is suing ASUS, claiming that naming ASUS’s latest tablet the Transformer Prime is in violation of Hasbro’s brand copyright. Hasbro is seeking damages and a temporary halt of sales of the quad-core Tegra 3 Transformer Prime tablet in the U.S.

In an email statement made to paidContent, Hasbro states:

Hasbro continues to aggressively protect its brands and products and the specific actions we are taking today against Asus underscores yet again Hasbro’s willingness to pursue companies who misappropriate our intellectual property for their own financial gain.Hasbro

We have a hard time believing this lawsuit is going to amount to anything. Though the Transformer Prime magically transforms into a full-featured tablet with the optional keyboard dock accessory, it is difficult to believe that someone would actually associate the Transformer Prime with Hasbro’s Transformer line of products and well-known lead transformer Optimus Prime.

That said, we may see the Transformer Prime forced to change its name in the U.S. Electronista suggests that because of the recent popularity of the movie franchise, Hasbro could argue that ASUS was banking on the popularity of the Transformer franchise to sell a few more tablets. If Hasbro manages to prove this to be the case, which they’ll have an extremely hard time doing, Hasbro will likely win the case against ASUS. Companies in different industries are allowed to use similar named products without violating copyright law if the industries are essentially mutually exclusive, meaning company A is not benefiting financially from the name trademarked by company B.

As the Transformer Prime is easily our favorite Android tablet of 2011, we certainly hope we don’t have to call the Prime some lame name in a few months as legal proceedings move on. We’ll let you know how this one turns out. For now, here’s hoping this is the last lawsuit we have to write about in 2011 today.

Apple scored a key patent victory yesterday, with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granting Apple a patent on using applications during a phone call. You probably remember seeing iPhone commercials lauding the fact that they can look up information on the internet, make an appointment, as well as numerous other tasks while on a phone call. Now, Apple owns the patent for that service, which has already made its way to several Android devices.

The patent (number 8,082,523), is another broad patent that covers the following usage scenarios:

1. During a call on a mobile device with a touch screen, with the phone user interface showing, the users touches either a menu button or an icon.
2. The device replaces the phone interface with a menu of application icons, including the phone icon.
3. A user’s finger gesture chooses another app.
4. The app’s interface comes up, all the while not dropping the call. The interface includes a “switch application icon” only when a phone call is occurring.
5. The user performs a finger gesture on the switch application icon, taking the user back to the phone interface.

As CBS notes in their analysis, Android handset makers could provide workarounds to this patent that would make it so they are not infringing upon Apple’s newly-minted patent, but any solution would likely be either ugly (list of application names instead of icons) or difficult for the user to accomplish.

Though using an application while on a phone call is something many of us don’t use all that often, being able to quickly switch to the browser to look something up, or to a service such as OpenTable to make reservations while making plans over the phone with someone has come in quite handy on several occasions for me. Not being able to do this will certainly be frustrating, though likely not a major inconvenience.

The burden is now on handset makers to come up with a solution that’s both simple and doesn’t infringe upon Apple’s patented service. Hopefully we’ll like what they come up with. For now, we can be sure that more lawsuits are afoot, and that most Android handset makers (and perhaps some carriers) will be in Apple’s crosshairs in the next few months.

At this point, it’s been pretty well established that Samsung is going to have to make some changes to their devices if they want to avoid any more legal trouble from Apple. But just what kind of changes can they make? They’ve already altered the appearance of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, but it wasn’t enough to avoid the wrath of Apple’s legal team. Thankfully, Apple has been ever-so-kind as to offer a list of what Samsung can do to make their devices more unique.

When it comes to phones, Samsung could make the following changes:

• Front surface that isn’t black.
• Overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners.
• Display screens that aren’t centered on the front face and have substantial lateral borders.
• Non-horizontal speaker slots.
• Front surfaces with substantial adornment.
• No front bezel at all.

And as for tablets:

• Overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners.
• Thick frames rather than a thin rim around the front surface.
• Front surface that isn’t entirely flat.
• Profiles that aren’t thin.
• Cluttered appearance.

At this point, you may be thinking, “Hey, this covers just about every other smartphone and tablet released in the last four years!” And you’d be right. According to this list, Samsung would have to make their tablets thicker, clutter their UI, do away with rectangles and lose flat surfaces. Smartphones should no longer be black (will Apple try to call dibs on white phones too?), Samsung has to do away with any bezels (so they can be picked on for copying the iPhone 4?), horizontal speaker grills are not allowed and, again, rectangles are no-nos.

Apple doesn’t necessarily expect Samsung to comply to every option listed, but we already know by their actions to block sales of the modified Tab 10.1N that just one change isn’t going to be enough. Hopefully, the legal system will step in here and lay down the law on what is an acceptable level of change. If even half of either list provided is expected of any manufacturer, you can kiss Android as we know it goodbye.