Microsoft has applied to patent a brain control interface, so you’ll be able to “think” your way around a computer device, hands free.Last year, Facebook claimed to have 60 engineers engaged in BCI [brain computer interface] but Microsoft isn’t going to take this sitting down. It’s erm, sitting down and thinking really hard.The application Changing […]

If you’ve read our coverage of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Stupid Patent of the Month” series, you know America has a patent quality problem. People apply for patents on ideas that are obvious, vague, or were invented years earlier. Too often, applications get approved and low-quality patents fall into the hands of patent trolls, creating […]

Two founders of The Pirate Bay have been ordered by a court in Finland to pay record labels more than $477,000 in compensation. Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm were found liable for ongoing copyright breaches on the site. Neither appeared to mount a defense so both were found guilty in their absence. In November 2011, […]

When a patent owner sells a product the sale exhausted patent rights regardless of any restrictions the patentee attempts to impose on location of the sale. Source: Supreme Court rules Lexmark sales exhausted patent rights domestically and internationally – IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law Earlier this morning the United States Supreme Court issued an […]

A question mark over whether the GNU GPL – the widely used free-software license – is enforceable as a contract may have been resolved by a US federal judge. In a California district court, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley refused [PDF] to accept what has been an uncomfortable legal precedent for the past decade. She ruled […]

Rather than a corporation that hires outside lawyers to pursue infringement claims, Blackbird is a small law firm strapped to a war chest of patents. It is an all-in-one form-filling, claim-filing robot. It has no extra baggage and no expensive legal bills to pay, making it a rather lean and mean machine. “In the past, […]

Pear Technology, which produces digital mapping software and services, applied for the pear logo in 2014 and was almost immediately challenged by Apple, which claimed it was confusingly similar to its own apple-with-a-bite-out-of-it silhouette logo. The Cupertino intellectual property lawyers claimed that despite one being a picture of a pear and one being a picture […]

Video game fans have been anticipating the latest franchise from CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077, for years. But only recently did it come to light that the makers of The Witcher franchise had trademarked the term “Cyberpunk” and this week some fans cried foul. Now, the developer is insisting that everything is ok and they’ll […]

Indeed, Costco might just be trying to beat Acushnet at a legal game that the ball maker has mastered—court sport. Acushnet has managed to muscle out other upstarts easily, simply by filing complaints. Tiny manufacturers who can’t afford to litigate have been forced to fold based on Acushet’s accusations alone, with no proof of infringement. […]

Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could allow companies to keep a dead hand of control over their products, even after you buy them. The case, Impression Products v. Lexmark International, is on appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who last year affirmed its own precedent allowing […]

In this case, Apple claimed that Samsung infringed patents for the slide-to-unlock feature, autocorrect and a way to detect phone numbers so they can be tapped to make phone calls. The bulk of the award, $98.7 million, was for the detection patent that the earlier panel said wasn’t infringed. The February decision also said the […]

A patent-holding company called Minero Digital seeks to exact royalty payments on a wide range of USB hubs, suing more than two dozen retailers and manufacturers last year. But the “non-practicing entity” dropped its East Texas lawsuit against Newegg subsidiary Rosewill within days of getting a call from the company’s lawyer. Newegg Chief Legal Officer […]

Graphical slider bars like this – used for setting audio volume, fill color, or the zoom scale of a document – have been around since the dawn of the mouse because it’s obviously the most efficient way of adjustment. But in 2007 Microsoft was granted design patent D554,140 [PDF], giving it rights to the concept. […]

But continues challenging validity of patents Source: Rounded corners on Android phones cost Samsung $548m: It will pay up to Apple after all So, Apple managed to patent the square and also the square with rounded corners. Seriously? We still have patents with this kind of crap?!

Namco patented this idea in 1995 and since then no one has been able to releive the boredom of the loading screen. I’m sure this demonstrates how patents lead to innovation. Not. Source: Loading Screen Jam – itch.io