Post 3- Apple wins once again

Apple is in the center of the world in terms of patents. It looks like they are actually doing well in suing others and defending themselves. Good job, Apple!

Apple won the dismissal of a 2.2 billion lawsuit in Germany over technology used to decide priority for calls on mobile networks. According to the news, the court in Mannheim ruled that Apple didn't infringe on two patents brought up by IPCom GmbH & Co Kg. It's interesting that HTC also won this dismissal of related suit by IPCom over other patents.

It's interesting because IPCom has been suing mother mobile device makers ever since it required patents from Robert Bosch GimbH in 2007. The article states that their crucial patent involves methods helping customers to place emergency calls.

As we talked about in class, IPCom is one of the patent trolls that does not make any products, but makes money by suing other companies. As we talked about in class, larger companies such as Apple and Google go into litigation even though it could be costly. It was also interesting to see that Apple, along with 19 other companies, petitioned the European Union to weaken the ability of non manufacturers to win injunctions in IP cases.

I like seeing Apple winning against patent trolls because it clearly puts stop to patent trolls. I understand the whole concept of starting the patents to protect ideas and products. But the ways that patent trolls are utilizing patents does not seem ethical, especially in case against smaller companies. 
It's interesting article indeed because larger it looks like larger corporations like Google and Apple would rather go into litigation to crush patent trolls even though the cost could be larger than the settlement itself, as we talked in class. It's also great to see Apple winning cases and defending well against patent trolls. 

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-28/apple-wins-dismissal-of-2-2-billion-patent-suit-in-germany.html

Post 2- Anti Patent Troll Bill

How do we prevent patent trolls from suing companies just to obtain money? We actually can't without proper reform act taking place. Technology companies, especially, smaller companies have long been struggling against patent trolls because they don't have resources to defend themselves. Even if they did have enough resources, it sometimes might not be worth as it median patent suits cost around 2 million dollars. 

Without the government actually doing something about it, it's difficult to see any changes to the current action. US House Representatives voted 325-91 last December to approve the bill sponsored by Robert Goodlatte. It encourages judges to hear patent cases to award fees to the winner of an patent lawsuit. It will be more affordable for defendants to respond to patent trolls in courts rather than settling since it would make it less costly for them to fight now.

It's interesting because Innovation Act also raises harsher penalties when case is filed and lost by plantiff. So it means that not everyone can just sue out of nowhere in order to gain settlement costs. Goodlatte commented that, "The tens of billions of dollars spent on settlements and litigation expenses associated with abusive patent suits represent truly wasted capital. The patent system was never intended to be a playground for litigation extortion and frivolous claims.”

I also agree with his statement. Innovation Act could actually solve the problems of patent trolls. At least, it could minimize the suits by patent trolls.
- It will cause patent trolls to re-think about suing smaller companies in order to gain settlement costs.
- Smaller companies will no longer be afraid of patent trolls as it will cost them less when they actually go to court.

It's also interesting to see that large companies support this measures including Cisco, Apple, Google, and other technology companies. Although there could be some downfalls, the bill looks promising.

Source:
http://www.insidecounsel.com/2014/01/30/president-obama-pushes-congress-to-pass-anti-paten

Post for this week-1 Startup and Trolls

Last week in class, we talked about patent trolls suing startups out of no where. This week, I want to see how extensive it is. Based on the article, I was able to see that this is a serious problem. Based on a number of non random survey of 223 technology company startups, 79 of them received a demand. That's more than 30%.

In this article, it states that companies with less than $100M annual revenue constitute about 66% of defendants to troll suits. 55% of defendants make $10M per year or less. It seems that smaller the company, the more likely it will be easy for trolls to manipulate with smaller companies. In the article, it also states that 40% of them felt that they were targeted because of their use of another's widely available technology.

I thought this was also interesting. 35% fought this demand, while 18% settled. 22% tried to resolve the demand. So more 40%, one way or another, tried to settle or resolve the demand. This could be the reason why trolls are targeting smaller companies.

It's sad that there's possibility of being sued just because a company is small. I understand that White House is bringing out reforms to prevent patent trolls, however, I feel that many are still being targeted today due to lack of money and resources. We talked about in class how a suit will cost them much more than settling or resolving the suit. Therefore, many smaller companies with only limited resources end up going that route. 

In order to promote better environment for startup companies to succeed, it's clear that something has to be done. I hope patent reform brings hope for new startups.

Article: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146251

Third post of this week- Samsung v Apple

I am going to talk about recent findings by US court on patent cases of Apple v Samsung.
Judge Lucy Koh decided that Samsung's Android-based devices infringed on Apple patent's word recommendation, also known as autocomplete and also decided that Samsung patent on multimedia synchronization invalid. This is significant because it increases the likelihood of Apple winning the upcoming multi patent trial scheduled to start on March 31, 2014.

They both started with 5 patents each back in 2012, but as Lucy Koh declared, Samsung is now down to 4 patents while Apple is still asserting 5 patents. Just as previous outcome, this is clearly good news for Apple because they don't have to defend the validity of the autocomplete patent at the spring trial, most likely. Lucy Koh stated that it was clear that Samsung infringed on Apple's autocomplete patent that Jury didn't need to even evaluate whether or not there was infringement.

This is a big news for all the smartphone manufacturers as well as Google because they may also be liable for this autocomplete patent. Also, Samsung's multimedia synchronization method and device patent was dismissed on the basis that they bought this patent back in September of 2011 to counterclaim Apple's litigation.

This seems like a good news for Apple, while it's not such a good news for Samsung or other Android phone makers including Google. It seems that they have came a long way to date, and we may see another big decision in upcoming March. It seems though that Apple has advantage as of now as they have 5 patent assertions while Samsung has only 4.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/01/us-court-finds-samsung-to-infringe-one.html

Second post of this week

Google announced a ten year global patent license agreement with Samsung.
They already have a long cooperative relationship in place, so this is not surprising move at all. They both claim that this should be a model for many tech firms, an alternative to patent litigation. As they are involved with many other companies in litigation, I feel that they are referring to them when making this statement.

Samsung and Google own a lot of patents, but they weren't able to gain much leverage from those patents to fight against Apple and Microsoft. They, however, lost many patent wars with them. So this could mean like a decoy for them to show to other companies of FRAND demands. It's however stated that this deal wouldn't affect other companies because they already know that they are allies.

As long as Samsung makes Android phones, they wouldn't need to worry about Google. But if they start to make devices on different OS, Google may start to start litigation with them.

Also I found this statement interesting. They stated that "It's not just about making the enforcers look bad but also about giving the impression of being willing licensees"(FossPatents). It seems evident that what they mean by this is that they are willing to go in as ally if other companies are willing.
Another claim that was backed up was through this statement, "Prior to this announcement, the last Google patent license agreement with another major industry player that was announced was a deal with Yahoo that cleared the path for Google's IPO about a decade ago"(FossPatents).

http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/01/samsungs-patent-deal-with-google.html

First post for this week - Patent Reform

White House announced that they are proceeding with the patent reform. They intend to stop the patent troll by improving the design and methods of the system. It's stated that they intend to help creators and inventors to focus more on the product itself than the patent litigation that they might be involved in. It will be interesting if anything changes at all due to this action by the White House.

So here are the current process listed below.
Help for patent troll victims- They created websites to help consumers and businesses to make them understand the letter they get from the people who sue them. This is currently launched.
More Transparency - They implemented draft rules that will help enhance competition, facilitate faster technology transfer. And they also want to hide abusive actions and tactics by many. They want patent owners to accurately update record before they are involved in proceedings before the USPTO.
Higher Quality Patents- Implemented training programs to helps its examiners examine functional claims to check claims are valid and consistently enforced.
Outreach and Research- Engaging stakeholders to provide input on high tech patent issues and polices.
Exclusion Order Enforcement- Review of process and standard utilized during exclusion order enforcement activities.

And lastly, these are the additional things that White House announced yesterday(2/20).

Crowd sourcing prior art- To create new ways for people to help share the technical information needed to determine if an invention is truly original or not.
Training for patent examiners- A program to help patent examiners keep up with fast changing tech fields.
Pro bono legal help- provide resource for inventors and small business who lack legal representation.

Copying directly from pantentlyo, this is what was stated.
"In his State of the Union address, President Obama set an ambitious agenda to make 2014 a year of   action. As part of that commitment, and recognizing that innovation is the lifeblood of our economy, the Administration today is announcing major progress on a series of initiatives designed to combat patent trolls and further strengthen our patent system and foster innovation; issuing new executive actions to build on these efforts; and renewing its call on Congress to finish the job by passing common-sense patent reform legislation."

http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/02/white-patent-reform.html






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My third post - Importance of Eastern District of Texas Courts for Patent Litigation

There are 94 districts in US federal courts. When there is a argument over patents, the plaintiff have the leeway to file lawsuits at which district to file them to. Recently, East District of Texas received a lot of patent lawsuits handed to them, particularly by foreign companies.

So what's the reason? It turns out defendants are unlikely to win a case on summary judgement since judges usually let juries rule on patent conflicts. In a way, it raises risks and costs for defendants.
Also, the advantage of Eastern District of Texas is that trials tend to be short. Since it's really difficult to put up with effective defense with multiple defendants, it is estimated that trials are over in a week.

For instance, Eolas went into trial with University of California claiming that they have the ownership of interactive web. It's stated that they demanded hundred millions from Google, Yahoo, and Amazon. However, the trial was over when jury invalidated the patent after 4 days of trial.

Furthermore, it's stated that jurors are likely to be more inclined towards large lawsuits. Also East Texas population has less experience with technology due to the high population of older generation. It is also stated that jurors are generally pro-plaintiff. Apparently, they have other qualities that prove why they are popular.They have plaintiff-friendly local rules as well as speedy dispositions.


Used these to write up my blog post. Visit them if you'd like!
Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/

Source: http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2010/03/east-texas-jurors-and-patent-litigation/

Why did Google sell Motorola?

Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion and sold it off for $3 billion. Now an ordinary person may think
Google just lost ~$10 billion of worth in just two years. But is this true?

But when looking at the sources, it looks like Google didn't lose too much. Maybe, they just got what they wanted. At the time of acquisition, it turns out Motorola had no debt and had about $3 billion of cash. Also Google sold off Motorola's cable set top box business for around ~$2 billion. They just sold off Motorola to Lenovo, so when doing all the math, it's approximately $4-4.5 billion.

Now, one needs to know that Google had clear intentions for buying Motorola. They originally wanted Motorola to protect themselves from its competitors like Apple and Microsoft. Google's Android, which is still the top OS, was vulnerable at the time. But due to the acquisition of patents from Motorola, they were able to get what they wanted. When Google bought Motorola, it was skeptical to some because they paid so much. $12.5 billion was twice the profits that they had in 2010. However, it turns out that they just got what they wanted, just the patents. After doing all the math, the patents are worth about 4 billion, which is reasonable to Google because they didn't have a lot of options. Google was struggling with Motorola, and eventually sold it off to Lenovo. So what's next for Google, Motorola, and Lenovo?

It will be interesting to see what comes next.

Why did Google buy Motorola?

This is my first post of this week.
So last week, I wrote briefly about Motorola selling Lenovo.
This week, I want to talk about why Google bought Motorola in the first place.

It was general consensus that Google bought Motorola for patents. At that time, smartphone war was heating up all over the world. Google paid $12.5 for 25,000 patents. Now, that's a lot of money.
But, why not just buy just the patents? Motorola knew that Google needed those patents in order to protect
themselves(Android) from outsiders. But they could have licensed the patents, but they didn't. Back then, a lot of people thought that Google had bigger plans than just buying the patents. But it turns out they bought it for the patents only because it is revealed that they sold Motorola to Lenovo.
Also, the fact that Motorola pushed Google to buy them at a premium price had a big role in this acquisition.

The main focus is that they bought Motorola because they needed to protect Android from Apple, Microsoft, and other competitors. The amount of time that Google paid to buy Motorola at the time was twice the profits of 2010 alone. Apple and Microsoft were using patents to slow down Android, and it's evident that they had no other option but to protect themselves.

This article I found explains the concepts that I described above with evidence.
http://bgr.com/2011/08/16/is-googles-motorola-buy-the-only-way-to-save-android/

My fourth post

This is my fourth post(2nd of this week).

I saw an article just now Samsung has made 10 year mutual license agreement with Cisco. And also, I believe they also made 10 year license with Google a while back. They all are related in some way, and so I feel that they are making unions to share these licenses. I always thought it was about Google v Apple not Apple v any other company. So as we can see from this event, we can see that a lot of these companies are joining unions to share licenses(right to use patent) in order to minimize the risk of being sued by each other.

It's interesting because they are somewhat related to one another, and yet they are different. The competitors are all signing cross-license pact in order to prevent litigation from occurring. It's crucial for Samsung because they owe $930 million in damages for violating Apple's patent. So in all, we can say that they are doing damage control trying to prevent further litigation like this from occurring.

The best solution is to not infringe on others' patents, although it's very difficult to do so now days.

If you guys want to check out the article. I've attached a link below.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579365220297306100?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304680904579365220297306100.html

Motorola

Hey guys,

This is my 3rd post. So in class,  the professor asked this question "Which companies failed in smartphone war?" I answered by saying Motorola. I still believe in terms of smartphone war, Motorola failed. I remember about 5-10 years ago, Motorola used to be a huge player in cell phone industry along with Nokia and the likes. It's around the time when smartphone was developed, that Motorola began to decline. So I still stand by my argument that it was a failure by Motorola in terms of smartphone development. And ultimately, it was around that time that they began to decline.

I brought up Motorola because recently, Google sold Motorola handset division(except the patents) to Lenovo. I saw this news <http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/29/us-google-lenovo-idUSBREA0S1YN20140129> when it was first announced. I already knew Google bought Motorola and Motorola was in decline in terms of smartphone development, but I was in shock as another American company was sold to China, once again. Maybe, other notable tech firms in United States might follow...?

When Google first bought Motorola, I thought they were going to use Motorola to build smartphones(to counter Apple), despite everyone claiming they bought it for patents. All in one, Google decided to sell Motorola's mobile division and keep the patents. I remember that Google was having a hard time with investors explaining why they bought Motorola for 12 billion. In any event, Google may have acquired patents, but by selling Motorola(even the name), it really is another big story for Americans. China is becoming a new giant and is taking over the world one at a time. Clearly, this will also lure Lenovo into the smartphone market.

We will see how important patents play for Google. They still hold rights to Motorola's mobile patents. It will be interesting to see if these patents will be worth ~10 billion in the long run. They probably will be in the long run as Google is one of the key players in the patent war, but let's see how it goes.

Why IEOR 190G

I am taking this course because this course looks practical and exciting at the same time. I feel that this course revolves mostly around discussion and activities which lead to students to actually learn about the subject matter. Also, the subject matter that's taught in the course is really useful in life. As a software engineer, I hope to gain insights about patents and apply it in the future. When I entered college as a freshman, I remember thinking about going to law school to become a patent lawyer after obtaining my B.S. in engineering discipline. Over the course of past decade, a lot have changed. New technologies, that directly impact people, have started to emerge. And I feel that patents play a great role in the emergence of technologies. I hope to learn a lot and have fun! No YouTube video was required for this post

Introduction

Hello everyone,

I am graduating senior at UCB. To describe a bit about myself, I have done several software work over the last 4 years. I've interned in two different large companies over the last 4 years. My biggest interests relating to software would be big data and mobile computing. In my spare time, I like to play soccer and watch sports. I've lived in several places, mostly in Southern California. I like reading books, hiking, and spending time with friends.  I hope to have fun semester with you guys!