reports that Apple filed a letter with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, asking for governing rules on the FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) licensing of patents essential to manufacture a mobile phone.
. Many of these patents have, over time, become a part of industry-wide standards which most mobile devices support. Standard bodies require these patents to be licensed on FRAND terms, but Apple , in the letter, (more…)

Yesterday, we were quite surprised when
.
that prevented the sale of 3G iOS devices that infringed on Motorola’s patent.
1. How much royalty is Motorola demanding from Apple for the standard-essential wireless patents?
Apple had tried to use the “FRAND” defense, claiming that the patent was essential to the 3G standard and needed “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” terms for licensing it, but had failed to convince the judge last time (more…)

The ITC has given a preliminary ruling that Motorola does not infringe on several of Apple ‘s patents, among them key multi-touch patents.
The plot thickens in the Apple vs Motorola war. To recap, Motorola sued Apple late in 2010, claiming that Apple infringed on 18 of its
. Among those were some essential patents which won a
over in Germany last month. In October of 2010,
, claiming that they violated numerous software patents, including several (more…)

Recently disclosed patent applications by Apple detail the use of Thunderbolt I/O technology, which was introduced in MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini in 2011.
The patents reveal the possibility of Thunderbolt I/O technology coming to iOS devices.
PatentlyApple has found three new patent applications that were recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Apple describes the need for new, more reliable high-speed data cables (more…)

Apple has been hit with four new patents by Samsung in the Mannheim Regional Court, while it has decided to back off a complaint regarding baseband chips used in 
 for now.
continues. FOSSPatents reports:
With the help of two additional law firms, Samsung is now suing Apple over four more patents in Mannheim, in addition to three that were already asserted in April. Apple , for its part, is suing Samsung over six patents in Mannheim.
I’ll (more…)

Apple has now sued Samsung for infringing on iPad and iPhone case design patents in Australia.
Apple Inc…, which on Dec. 9 lost a bid to keep Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet out of Australia, claims the case for the device and cases for Samsung phones infringe its patents and registered design.
Apple issued the notice of infringement to Samsung in Australia over the cases, and will file a statement of claim, Apple ’s lawyer (more…)

alleging that the Taiwan based handset manufacturer has infringed on nearly 20 of Apple ‘s proprietary inventions relating to the iPhone ‘s UI, architecture and hardware.
Apple had also filed a second lawsuit in July, claiming infringement of 5 more patents.
Back in July, a US International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled that
Patent No. 5,946,647:
Patent No. 6,343,263:
At that time, HTC had appealed against the ruling. However, FOSS (more…)

Danish professor Gert Frølund Pedersen who originally predicted the controversy surrounding the iPhone 4′s antenna issues has come forward once again.
 reports that the expert now says that Apple may be infringing on Samsung’s patents.
As we’ve reported before, iPhone 4S includes 
. The ability to switch between two antennas dynamically for both sending and receiving means that the dead grip issues observed with iPhone 4′s antenna system (more…)

Just a few days ago, Samsung execs anonymously revealed that the company planned to get the
. Today, in an interview with the
a Samsung exec has come on record and spoken about their newly adopted approach to tackle Apple ‘s lawsuits by, well, filing more lawsuits. Samsung claims that they have a number of essential
in the field of wireless communications on which Apple has been “free riding”.
 has enjoyed an upper hand in the ongoing patent (more…)

The Intellectual Property battle amongst smartphone giants just got even more complex, with HTC suing Apple claiming infringement of four of its nine patents, which it bought from Google just last week. The suit was filed in Delaware, where the Taiwanese company had
 in an entirely different filing last month.
didn’t originally belong to Google, they bought these patents a year ago from Motorola, Openwave and Palm. Although Google declined (more…)