Chinese smartphone maker, Xiaomi, suffered a major setback in India toward the end of 2014, as the Delhi High Court asked it to temporarily discontinue the sale of its smartphones in India. Subsequently, the Court decided that Xiaomi could go on with the sale of models that use Qualcomm chips until February 5, when the next hearing for the patent case is scheduled.
Xiaomi is facing legal troubles in India since it was sued by Swedish technology company, Ericsson, some…
A while ago, Google closed its operations in Spain, in response to the new copyright law which has made it mandatory for Google, Yahoo and other news aggregators to pay licensing fee to all news publishers for using their stories or snippets in Google news.
The regulation, expected to come into effect in 2015, will deal with websites that share pirated content. As per the law, Spanish Government will have the authority to penalize websites up to $750,000 for directing…
Chinese security software developer, Kingsoft, together in the partnership with the mobile phone maker, Xiaomi, Beijing Zhigu Technology Consulting Services (an entity controlled by Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun) and a few others, has launched a USD 35 Mn fund to support Intellectual Property related investments. Kingsoft announced that the investment vehicle managed by Beijing Zhigu Technology Consulting Services will have a 10-year term, without disclosing other specific details.
It is widely speculated that the fund has been formed as an…
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Standards Association (IEEE-SA) has proposed a change to it’s IP (Intellectual Property) policy. The revised policy can be viewed here. The new policy comprises revisions to the provisions related to commitments from holders of Standards Essential Patents. The revised policy states that the patent holders have to make licenses for Standards Essential Patents available to other parties under Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms.
The biggest change with respect to the updated policy…
Following the recommendations given in independent report by Professor Ian Hargreaves in 2011, the UK Government had come up with several changes in the copyright law covering aspects of fair dealing for accessible formats for the disabled, research and education, public administration, parody and personal copies for private use. Of these, the regulations allowing personal copies of legally-bought music to be made for private use, under exceptions to the copyright law, are facing strong resistance from the UK music industry.…
In January, 2014, Louisiana State University (LSU), established LSU LIFT (Leveraging Innovation for Technology Transfer) Fund, which offers bi-annual funding to LSU faculty members on a competitive basis, to effectively transfer innovation out of the lab and into the market. The Board also agreed to continually support the LSU LIFT Fund by assigning 5 percent of the university’s future IP licensing income to the new fund.
In round one of the funding, the program attracted 47 applications out of which…
The market is rife with the reports of Korean phone-maker Samsung intending to acquire Blackberry for $7.5 billion, in spite of both the companies labelling the reports “groundless”. The speculation sent the Canadian smart-phone maker’s stock soaring 30% before it fell down by 17%. The possibility of the acquisition has raised a very important question- What makes Blackberry so appealing to Samsung?
The acquisition would give Samsung the access to Blackberry’s robust patent portfolio that includes 44,000 patents worth over…
Chinese smartphone maker, Xiaomi, suffered a major setback in India towards the end of 2014 as the sale of their smartphones was temporarily discontinued, following a Delhi High Court order. Subsequently, the Court decided that Xiaomi could go on with the sale of models that use Qualcomm chips until February 5, 2015, for when the next hearing for the patent case that resulted in the temporary sale ban, is scheduled.
Xiaomi has been facing legal troubles in India ever since…
American patent risk management company, RPX Corp., entered into an agreement to acquire around 4,000 patents owned by Rockstar, a consortium led by Apple Inc. and other firms for US$ 900M. Rockstar was created as a patent holding entity in 2011 by technology bigwigs like Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Sony and Ericsson, with the intent of purchasing the 6,000 patents from the Nortel Network Corp., for US$ 4.5B, following its bankruptcy. About 2,000 of the most valuable patents have already been distributed…
Last week, Google closed its operations in Spain, in response to the new Copyright Law which has made it mandatory for Google, Yahoo and other news aggregators to pay licensing fee to all news publishers for using their stories or snippets in Google News. The regulation, expected to come into effect in 2015, will deal with websites that share pirated content. As per the law, Spanish Government will have the authority to penalize websites up to US$ 750,000 for directing links…