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From Engadget: Samsung spending $4 billion to renovate Austin chip factory

Samsung spending $4 billion to renovate Austin semiconductor factory

Premiership footballers will be weeping in envy at the way Samsung’s been spending its cash this month. After splashing $822 million on a Korean R&D center, it’s now chucking $4 billion to renovate its semiconductor factory in Austin, Texas. The cash will be used to increase production on system-on-chip products used in a wide variety of smartphones and tablets, presumably to cope with future demand. It’s not clear if this investment is in addition to the $1 billion it was raising in January to add a new SOC and OLED line to the same facility, but it’s certainly a good time to be living in Texas, right now.

 

from Engadget

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From Ars Technica: Motorola brings its first patent suit against Apple as a Google subsidiary

On Friday evening, Motorola Mobility, a Google subsidiary since May of this year, filed a patent infringement suit against Apple with the International Trade Commission. It said Apple had infringed on 7 of its patents in creating the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPod Touch, and Motorola is seeking an import ban on those products to the US.

While the paperwork filed by Motorola with the ITC was not immediately available, WSJ is reporting that none of the patents Motorola is asserting are currently considered standards-essential, meaning Motorola may have a fair chance at getting its requested import ban if the ITC decides Apple has in fact infringed. Patents that are not standards-essential may be licensed or not licensed at the holding company’s will, whereas patents that qualify as standards-essential require holding companies to license them at fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) prices. While judicial authorities have been called upon to decide what constitutes a FRAND patent, there is no legal precedent that defines what fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory means in every case.

“We would like to settle these patent matters, but Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers’ innovations,” Motorola Mobility said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg. The publication also noted that in a previous patent battle with Apple, the Cupertino company said that Motorola’s demands for licensing fees are unreasonable.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Technology Review RSS Feeds: A Startup Asks: Why Can’t You Resell Old Digital Songs?

ReDigi has technology that helps transfer ownership of digital media—but it’s already being sued by the record industry.

In the iTunes store, the hit song “Someone Like You” by Adele sells for $1.29. Head over to ReDigi, an online marketplace where people can resell the music files they’ve purchased, and there’s the track for only 59 cents.




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From Engadget: Samsung’s defense against Apple patents begins with DiamondTouch table, LiveTile UI prior art

Samsung's defense against Apple patents begins with DiamondTouch table, LiveTile UI prior art

Samsung may have convinced Judge Koh to toss a few international handsets out of Apple’s lawsuit, but the Korean firm still has Cupertino’s patent licensing accusations to contend with. Their tactic? Convince the court that Apple’s claim to the inventions are invalid, and that the technology was developed prior to the disputed patent’s filing. It’s called showing “prior art,” and Sammy’s done it before — famously showing a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey in an attempt to put Apple’s iPad design claims to rest. Today’s examples were more grounded in reality, focusing on debunking Cupertino’s claim to the “bounce back” effect that happens when a user reaches the end of a page and common multitouch zoom / navigation gestures.

Samsung pitted the famous “bounce back” feature against an old PocketPC interface called LaunchTile, which allowed users to navigate through 36 applications by zooming in and out and a panning across a grid-like “world view” of said apps. Movement between grids snap to each zone, marking the end of a page. Apple shot back, noting that LiveTile’s snapping navigation didn’t work on diagonals, and cited other differences as well. Samsung wasn’t deterred, however, and brought out DiamondTouch, a projector based multitouch table that utilized both one touch scrolling and pinch-based zoom gestures. The table even takes aim at the aforementioned bounce-back patent with a technology called TableCloth, which bounces back images that are pulled off screen. DiamondTouch’s creator, Adam Bogue, told the court that he had demoed the technology to Apple privately back in 2003, noting that it was also available to anyone who visited the Mitsubishi Electronic Research Laboratories’ lobby.

If the jury takes to Samsung’s claims of prior art, it could severely cut Apple’s claims against it. Even so, Cupertino’s lawyers aren’t going down without a fight, and still have a number of navigation and design claims that Samsung hasn’t addressed. The two parties are expected to keep up the fight for about a week, we’ll keep you posted on the inevitable revelations as they come.

 

 

from Engadget