Patent aggression as seen in the news so far this week

Summary: The patents rat race and software patents which are shrewdly being disguised as pertaining to hardware in order to fool examiners and enable de facto patent trolling

DAYS ago we mentioned patents from Immersion (the translation into Spanish was published this morning) because the EPO had been granting software patents to them (how to trigger vibrations and when).

Coincidentally, the following report (from the British technology press) has just been brought to our attention. It says:

Haptic outfit Immersion, once rumoured to be in talks with Apple, has fired off a lawsuit against Cupertino, AT&T and AT&T Mobility over alleged patent infringements.

Immersion's sueballs have landed in the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US District Court in Delaware.

The 2008 talks between Apple and Immersion never amounted to anything, but later that year, the latter company settled a six-year-old lawsuit against Microsoft over its “rumble” technology and became a Microsoft Certified Partner.

Who's next? Android distributors? We saw Microsoft and Nokia doing that before.

"Microsoft too likes to patent software at the EPO (Microsoft is a VIP at the EPO)."Immersion is a 'licensing' company which the EPO feeds with a lot of software patents. We didn't know that it was a Microsoft Certified Partner. Microsoft too likes to patent software at the EPO (Microsoft is a VIP at the EPO). It makes one wonder what the EPO is doing here, never mind the ITC.

In other news about patents, Microsoft is now patenting system upgrades. As the British technology press put it: "The upshot of all this, basically, is a Lego-style snap-together PC, taking the existing concepts of computers that can be upgraded by a user but doing away with the need to open anything up.

"Such a move isn't new, to say the least. Intel has worked on a similar line with its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) mini-PC range for several years. The NUC is not stackable with single, enclosed units like Microsoft's concept, but features small, laptop-style components that simply snap onto the main board with minimal use of screwdrivers or transferable skills."

"If I had developed software like Vista 10 (as an indie developer), the media would call it malware and I’d risk arrest. Not Microsoft…"Who is granting these patents anyway? Haptic in mind, also see this news report titled "Why did Microsoft buy SwiftKey? Hint: It's not about keyboards" (it's about patents and spying). Microsoft wants to increasingly spy on keyboards' use in real-time, not just in Vista 10, which is effectively a keylogger cleverly masked as an operating system that people cannot avoid (it is silently being installed, just like malware). If I had developed software like Vista 10 (as an indie developer), the media would call it malware and I'd risk arrest. Not Microsoft...

Well, Microsoft is 'special'... too government-connected and NSA-connected. ⬆