April 15th, 2013

EFF To Challenge Six Innovation-Stifling 3D-Printing Patents

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As 3D printers become more ubiquitous, small manufacturers have two choices – build and hope for the best or cede to patent trolls who own a number of basic patents around extrusion and additive manufacturing. Sadly, more of those patents are being filed daily and many have plenty of prior art available that would make them unwelcome at the Patent Office. → Read More

April 27th, 2012

Facebook’s Patent Acquisitions? They’re More About Google Than Yahoo

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In the past few months, Facebook’s patent portfolio has grown exponentially as a result of acquisitions of patent portfolios from IBM and Microsoft. After acquiring 650 AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft, the company now has approximately 1,400 patent assets. Amazingly, only 46 of these assets (24 issued patents and 22 published applications) were originally filed by… → Read More

April 27th, 2012

Yahoo’s Five Counter-Counterclaims Against Facebook. #1: Throw Out Retaliatory Patents

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Today Yahoo hit Facebook with five big counter-counterclaims designed to invalidate the patents cited in the social network’s infringement countersuit. If the court concurs, Facebook could be left wide-open in settlement negotiations, and might have to pay Yahoo a hefty sum of cash and/or stock.

Specifically, the old web portal claims that after it sued for patent infringement, Facebook → Read More

August 10th, 2011

Fark.com Settles With Patent Troll … For Zero Dollars!

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Satirical, bizarre and amusing news website Fark has kicked the fark out of a patent troll called Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC. The original lawsuit was leveraged in January, claiming Fark infringed on a patent that covered a “method of inputing news releases into a web form, which would then compile the news release and email it to media outlets.”

The patent, for those who know Fark, has… → Read More

July 19th, 2010

Toyota Settles Longstanding Patent Dispute Over Hybrid Vehicle Tech

Toyota settled a longstanding patent dispute today with Paice LLC, a firm that first sued the Japanese auto juggernauts back in 2004.

The technology disputed had to do with supplying torque from both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine to a car’s wheels, according to earlier reports by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and confirmed by a Paice spokesperson today. → Read More