But as USPTO documents published today show, the appeals judges found that two existing patents cited by Nvidia qualify as prior art, and moreover, that the teachings demonstrated by those older patents would be inspiration enough for a skilled artisan to apply the teachings to improving synchronous memory the way Nvidia appears to have done.

The Examiner agrees that Hayes discloses a memory device and anticipates claim 1, but maintains that including all the RAM control logic into each Hayes DRAM chip would not have been obvious... But dependent claim 2 recites sampling data synchronously and does not require all the RAM control logic to be integrated into each chip. NVIDIA points out that the term "memory device" in these claims is not limited to a single chip, but even if they are, NVIDIA persuasively shows the obviousness of creating a single chip... The claim 2 memory device, whether as a chip or a broader device, requires strobe functionality which Hayes teaches and synchronization which Bennett teaches according to this record. As NVIDIA persuasively explains, Hayes describes time-multiplexed clock data transfers between a master and slave during different clock cycles, and Bennett teaches benefits to providing a synchronized interface in a memory device using an external clock. The Examiner does not appear to disagree with these findings... NVIDIA also relies on Mr. Parris [an expert witness] who testifies that ordinarily skilled artisans were shifting from asynchronous to synchronous operations to increase speed... Based on this record, NVIDIA shows that it would have been obvious in view of Bennett to implement certain control logic, including a synchronous logic interface, into the memory device of Hayes.

This week's loss is the latest in a string of bad luck for Rambus, that comes on the heels of what had been an upward trend for a company whose reputation was pretty much created in the courtroom. The uptick began four years ago, when a Federal Trade Commission ruling was overturned. That ruling had found Rambus was withholding critical implementation plans for its memory standards from the JEDEC standards agency, and had sent a signal to the industry that Rambus was unfairly trying to manipulate standards to its own advantage. The overturning of that ruling was the beginning of what had been a glorious resurrection of Rambus' respect.

But perhaps buoyed too much by the outcome, Rambus then tried to hold the same manufacturers that first accused it of unfair standards manipulation - Hynix Semiconductor and Micron technologies - responsible for essentially the same conduct. The court didn't buy that argument either, ruling in favor of Hynix and Micron two months ago.

Suddenly, Rambus had resumed its former public image of pursuing greater revenues through litigation. With only three of six patents remaining valid in its case against Nvidia and five others, Rambus may not be able to hold on to even that. Today, Rambus' stock price hit what memory engineers would call a "low state," losing another 13% in NASDAQ trading today after already having lost over half its value last November in the wake of the Hynix/Micron decision.

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In collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont and Pfizer, IBM is providing a database of more than 2.4 million chemical compounds extracted from about 4.7 million patents and 11 million biomedical journal abstracts from 1976 to 2000. IBM Research developed it in collaboration with these private companies over the past six years. It includes patents from a variety of sources outside of the US. The data will be incorporated into the PubChem archive at the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the National Institutes of Health.

Before the Web, patent searches were long, tedious, and expensive, and province of a select group of private entities. Finding "prior art" (as it is called) was a very specialized field. This started changing, when back in January 1994 Carl Malamud began a project to put patents and other government data online. Malamud has been a tireless advocate for posting more data online by various private and public entities and has been rewarded for his efforts by various awards and funding from Google and numerous foundations started by early Internet pioneers. By 1995 his system was serving up a million files via FTP, Gopher and Web access. (Remember, back then graphical browsers were still somewhat new, and many websites were predominately text-based.)

Sadly, the PTO turned off this access for several years. Malamud lobbied PTO but to no avail, and IBM posted the patent data online until PTO could offer their own service in 1998. Since then, they and others including Google, FreePatentsOnline. Cambia's PatentLens and LegalZoom (the latter for a fee) offer patent searches.

Malamud told me that "The patent database is pretty much liberated at this point. Jon Orwant at Google did all the heavy lifting, deserves the credit for making this a reality." You can read a copy of his letter to Al Gore back in 1998 here to get some additional perspective.

(Above you can see Doug Engelbart's diagram in his 1970 patent for a computer mouse.)

What about non-US patent access? In addition to some of the free sites mentioned above, the European patent office can be searched here using its Espacenet service, which was started in 1998 with bare-bones features. Search was enhanced earlier this year, and you can now export results to Excel, setup RSS feeds, and keep a query history as part of its free service. You can search in English, French and German.

And the World IP Organization maintains its patent search here with its PatentScope service, which also has been expanded and improved.

Patent applications have been growing steadily for the most part, and IBM is the most prolific: each day it is granted about 20 patent applications. Samsung and Microsoft get about half that. That is each calendar day. Apple gets about 500 patents a year, and Google and Motorola less than that. We're glad to see that more information is entering the public domain, and hope that this trend continues.

Drummond's post is in reference to last week's sale of Nortel's patent portfolio to a consortium of Google's competitors. The purchase of these patents threatens Android's dominant share of the smartphone OS market by making the operating system more expensive for phone manufacturers to license.

Pending the outcome of antitrust investigations, it's clear that this deal puts Google and Android on the defensive. Google's position to license its mobile OS across a wide range of platforms is both a blessing and a curse. The range of options for consumers has helped Android net nearly 50% of the smartphone market, but if the cost of licensing becomes prohibitive to cash-strapped hardware manufacturers, that market will dry up quickly, and the profits for Android software developers will go right along with it. Apple doesn't have to worry about such margins, and other phone manufacturers might have to start building side businesses on WebOS or Windows Phone 7 to remain profitable, which is just what HP and Microsoft have been waiting for.

Meanwhile, Google and Apple are said to be squaring off to duel over another large patent portfolio owned by InterDigital. Patents were intended to protect innovation, but they're certainly proving costly and distracting to the software industry's leading innovators.

So what did Lodsys do next? It went after an Android developer, it appears.

According to this Google groups discussion thread (spotted by MacRumors), one developer writes that he has received a letter from the same patent firm several weeks after implementing an in-app purchases mechanism within his app:

We recently implemented in-app purchases for our Android application and several weeks later we received a letter from Lodsys, claiming that we infringed on their patents.

Have any other Android developers out there been sent a letter? Has Google taken any action on this issue yet? Has Google given direction to any developers that have been hit by this? We are obviously a small shop and are not financially capable of defending ourselves over a litigation.

We would appreciate any helpful responses (especially from the Android team).

We reached out to the developer, who asked to remain anonymous because he was unsure of the consequences from Lodsys for making the issue public. However, he did confirm that it is Google's official in-app billing system he used in his app that is the target of the patents, and not some third-party mechanism.

Are There Others?

While the appearance of such a letter is making headlines, it seems to be a singular incidence for now. No other Android developers have publicly announced they received the same letter, and no developers have responded in the original message thread saying "me too," either.

However, that doesn't mean that this smoke won't lead us to fire. According to Florian Mueller, whose FOSS Patents blog provides detailed analysis of this and other litigation occurring in the tech industry, the claim seems "logical" because Lodsys' FAQ uses the same terminology for both Google's and Microsoft's license as it does for Apple's license. Mueller notes, however, he has not seen any other corroboration of this particular claim in the wider developer community.

But we did find one example of a developer saying that the questions surrounding the threat of patent lawsuits have stopped their company from moving forward with implementing in-app billing as a third-party service provider of a similar system for developers.

Explains George (@SlideMe) on another Google Group thread:

Similarly, the same question should be asked to any other 3rd party 'in-app' billing service provider that a developer is implementing.  This has put us at a 'stand-still' at SlideME implementing 'in-app' billing for developers to implement with SlideLock. This is a very important case and all developers must key [sic] an eye out how it all unfolds.

It is an important case, because threats to developers' bottom lines can stifle innovation and stall their business plans.

We have reached out to Google for comment, but have not yet heard back. We will update if and when the company responds.

Update #1 (2:45 PM EST): The developer says the company has decided to go public with their name: Clapfoot Inc. The game that is being targeted is called Tank Hero. Google has not responded.

Lee calls the current patent trolling, where firms such as Lodsys and others are threatening to sue developers who don't license patents for technology developments like in-app purchasing buttons and the use of forms, an "untenable situation" for developers. "There is no move we can make that will result in our ultimate survival. Either we pay Lodsys and usher in a new era of extortion, or we refuse to pay and are sued out of business."

But there's a third option, he offers. Developers can put pressure on Apple by boycotting the use of any API that comes under fire from these patent holders.

An API, or application programming interface, is a tool used by application developers to facilitate interactions between different software programs. For example, the case of the Lodsys patent claims, developers who have implemented Apple's in-app purchase API, which allows an app's users to pay for goods or services within the app itself, have been targeted for including an in-app "upgrade" button within their applications.

Although Apple has licensed Lodsys' patents, the firm claims that the license does not extend to the wider community of third-party application developers.

Also this week, a second patent-holding firm called MacroSolve has been outed as suing nearly a dozen developers on both Apple's and Google's Android mobile platforms for using forms within their apps.

For indie developers, the situation leaves them feeling helpless. As Lee explains, "if we pay, we are collaborators in our own demise, as the precedent this sets will open a floodgate of parasites extorting licensing fees for their alleged patents, knowing we are too weak and too scared to do anything but pay. If we don’t pay, we’ll still be out of business, just quicker, as we are sued out of existence."

Although Lee is not currently developing iOS applications, he now works for a company called Sofa, a maker of Mac apps. Sofa is not affected by this issue directly, but it is affected by the precedent being set, as are all developers, says Lee.

What Can Be Done?

Lee is suggesting a boycott of Apple's in-app API, as well as any other API "that is infected by parasites," as he describes it. He does not say this because he has no faith in Apple, but because Apple has "infinite time" to address the situation and are "typically conservative in their response." Lee thinks developers need to light a fire under Apple, to urge them to move quickly.

In a blog post, Lee details precisely how developers can participate in such a boycott. Within an application, a developer can add an alert which would appear anytime a user attempted to make an in-app purchase. The alert would read something like this:

We are unable to support in-app purchase at this time due to the threat of lawsuit.

more information

In addition, Lee says developers can file a bug that duplicates bug #9459079, which reads:

Summary:

Use of the system-provided In-App Purchase API opens developers to patent infringement lawsuits from patent troll Lodsys, who are demanding licensing fees above and beyond Apple’s 30% cut.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Ship an app that uses the In-App Purchase API

2. Wait to be contacted by Lodsys

3a. Pay Lodsys, and every patent troll that inevitably follows them

3b. Be sued out of existence

Expected Results:

Apple steps in using their nearly infinite financial and legal resources to protect their developer ecosystem, removing the threat of Lodsys, and ultimately pushing for reform of our broken patent system.

Actual Results:

Apple remains quiet, while their developer community privately and publicly freaks out.

Regression:

Dozens of developers, including James Thomson and Apple Design Award winner Iconfactory, have already been targeted by Lodsys.

Notes:

Some reassurance from Apple would be nice.

Developer Response So Far

Such a radical and aggressive action may be feared by many iOS developers, who have typically been careful to not anger Apple in any way, and have tried to always follow the company's strict rules regarding application development practices.

Lee admits that, while overall, the response to his suggestion has been "overwhelming positive," there has also been some negative reactions, too.

"People are terrified," he explains. "Some people want to lawyer up, without thinking about how expensive that is. Others want to pretend it doesn't exist, or that it's not an issue. You can expect all the standard Kübler-Ross reactions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance."

But Lee believes a boycott may be the only way for developers to really have an impact. Feature adoption and bug reports are metrics which Apple is known to value, he says.

A small handful of developers have agreed to participate in the boycott so far, and are tweeting their support using the new #unlodsys hashtag on Twitter. Lee suspects that many more will simply pull the API quietly or file bug reports.

For its part, Google has long tried to take the moral higher ground, if you will, criticizing patent trolls (those who buy patents in order to file suits and profit without actually developing the technology themselves). Google has argued that the current patent system stifles innovation. Indeed, the company has found itself on the receiving end of plenty of lawsuits, most notably in recent months, by Oracle, which is accusing Google of infringing on the company's Java patents in the development of Android.

That history makes Google's announcement today a little surprising, perhaps. Google says it is spending almost a billion dollars in a bid to acquire patent rights from Nortel, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Google has called for reform of the patent process, but in announcing the agreement today, Google seems to recognize that while reform is the long-term solution, that stance will do little good in the short-term. "As things stand today," writes Kent Walker, Google Senior VP and General Counsel, "one of a company's best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services."

Describing itself as a "relatively young company" without a sizable patent portfolio, Walker says that Google hopes that the acquisition of Nortel's patent will "create a disincentive for others to sue Google." Hopefully, Walker adds that it will help those involved in projects like Android and Chrome to continue to innovate. Of course, that argument runs counter to what Google has long maintained about the patent process. But if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

As one of the sketches supporting the patent suggests, you can also use this to put a cap on the number of hats you receive or to automatically convert VHS to DVDs.

And in case you think this violates etiquette rules about simply smiling and accepting gifts graciously, the patent does include a system for generating a thank-you note for the gift - even if you've automatically exchanged it for something else.

The description of the patent doesn't mention sexting, although that may be the main thing many parents would want to forbid. Rather, it gives the example of parents requiring a set number of words per day be included in emails for a child learning Spanish. And parental control applications to encourage language acquisition are, indeed, innovative.

Systems, devices, and methods are provided for enabling a user to control the content of text-based messages sent to or received from an administered device. In some embodiments, a message will be blocked (incoming or outgoing) if the message includes forbidden content. In other embodiments, the objectionable content is removed from the message prior to transmission or as part of the receiving process. The content of such a message is controlled by filtering the message based on defined criteria. The criteria may be defined according to a parental control application. These techniques also may be used, in accordance with instructional embodiments, to require the administered devices to include certain text in messages. These embodiments might, for example, require that a certain number of Spanish words per day be included in e-mails for a child learning Spanish.

Having these sorts of controls may be one more step in keeping Apple devices safe from porn. And arguably, they may help make the iPhone more workplace and school-friendly. Or it may be another step towards Apple authoritarian control over our mobile devices.

I asked my seventeen-year-old if having these sorts of parental controls over the content of text messages would change teen behavior. He declined to comment - mortified, I'm sure, that I had the audacity to even raise the subject of sexting. But then, I swear, I saw him look down at his Android and smile.

Google's motion refutes Oracle's allegations, claiming it has not infringed on any Oracle IP. contains a "Factual Background" section, detailing the history of Java, its development, Sun's decision to open source part of it, and Oracle's voice among others encouraging the full open-sourcing of Java - right up to the point when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems.

The motion also details the procedures by which new Java implementations can be developed under a free-of-charge license. "The license," says the motion, "allows developers to create 'clean room' implementations of Sun's Java specifications. If those implementations demonstrate compatibility with the Java specification, then Sun would provide a license for any of its intellectual property needed to practice the specification, including patent rights and copyrights. One example of a 'clean room' implementation of Sun's Java is Apache Harmony, developed by the Apache Software Foundation. The only way to demonstrate compatibility with the Java specification is by meeting all of the requirements of Sun's Technology Compatibility Kit ('TCK') for a particular edition of Sun's Java. Importantly, however, TCKs were only available from Sun, initially not available as open source, were provided solely at Sun's discretion, and included several restrictions, such as additional licensing terms and fees. In essence, although developers were free to develop a competing Java virtual machine, they could not openly obtain an important component needed to freely benefit from Sun's purported open-sourcing of Java."

In other words, despite the gesture of open source, restrictions have been placed on Java's licensing, particularly in the mobile environment. As Google notes, many organizations, including Oracle, have long voiced concerns about these licensing restrictions, urging Sun to fully open-source Java.

The Rise of Mobile, The Rise of Mobile Lawsuits

Of course, Oracle v Google is far from being the only lawsuit in the mobile industry right now. As the graphic from the Guardian below demonstrates, the battle for control of the growing mobile market isn't just a matter of building the best product. In some cases, the strategy seems to include building a strong team of patent attorneys.

Patently Apple offers a detailed examination of the patent, but we'll just take a look at some of the most exciting parts.

Patently Apple summarizes the patent as be able to monitor "speed, distance, time, altitude, elevation, incline, decline, heart rate, power, derailleur setting, cadence, wind speed, path completed, expected future path, heart rate, power, and pace". It calls the patent "extraordinarily detailed and packed with interesting twists that the sporting cyclist will really appreciate".

The system Apple proposes offers a number of advantages over typical systems, such as being able to share real-time information and statistics with other bicycles operating the same system. Apple's system could provide real-time information to servers to be processed and viewed remotely. Patently Apple even points to a hands-free system for inputting commands via voice commands and the ability "to automatically or in response to a user instruction, record video, audio, or take photographs reflecting the course, and geo-tag the generated media for publishing".

While the patent application identifies the iPod and iPhone as potential devices, it does not restrict the system to that, acknowledging the possibilities for other types of display, including "a liquid crystal display (LCD), light emitting diode (LED) display, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), carbon nanotubes, nanocrystal displays, or any other suitable type of display that could be incorporated in or coupled to the bike."

The system sounds like a dream for cyclists, especially those trying to ride in large groups. If you've ever been on a bike trek with a large group of people, then you know it can be like herding cats, and a GPS-enabled communication system could be a dream. Beyond that, the integration with all the other apps and remote servers could provide limitless services. How about an app that monitors weather conditions and wind directions and alters your route to deal with headwinds? Or an app that monitors speed, gear settings, incline or decline and pedal speed to guide you as to the best gear ratios? How about an OnStar system for cyclists, that makes calls or sends out alerts if the cyclist crashes?

We don't know about you, but we can't wait to get our hands on one of these.

Turning Ad Hoc Networks into Permanent Social Networks

As Apple notes in the patent ("Group Formation Using Anonymous Broadcast Information "), technologies like Bluetooth personal area networks allow modern cell phones to easily create ad hoc networks, but it is virtually impossible to recreate this network at a later time for users to continue their discussions or exchange additional content.

In a very detailed example, Apple's patent describes how iGroups could automatically detect that a group of users is in or around a specific location (in the example, this event is Apple WWDC 2008). The iGroups service could then invite all the attendees to join this group and create a permanent social network for everybody who was in attendance and opts in to the group.

Will Apple Actually Do Anything With This Patent?

This, of course, isn't Apple's first patent for a location-based service. As with all of Apple's patents, it remains to be seen if the company will actually release any product based on this filing. Given Apple's position in the mobile market, however, it wouldn't come as a surprise if the company decided to turn some of these patents into actual product.

Microsoft announced that it is already taking steps to remove the "little-used" infringing software feature from Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007.

The removal would make these versions of Word unable to open XML files for editing. An additional workaround may already be planned. In early August ZDNet UK's Rupert Goodwins covered Microsoft's patent for an SML Schema Document - a way of creating rich XML files so that word-processing applications recognize the file as a native document. Microsoft is also taking this opportunity to direct users to the beta versions of Word and Office 2010.

It'll be interesting to see if this patent resurfaces to block additional consumer products or if the Word trial will be an isolated incident.

According to AppleInsider, which recently detailed the proposed features, the iPhone's home screen would be populated by location-aware applications that automatically update based on the current location of the mobile device. The phone's location could be determined by GPS, cell tower triangulation, or even Wi-Fi.

In the drawing accompanying the patent application, the phone's home screen displays apps for local weather, local time, local maps, local contacts, and settings. The icons themselves could even be updated to reflect the new location. For example, the patent filing describes an icon that displays the Golden Gate Bridge when the phone is in San Francisco, but that icon could change to display the skyline of New York City when the phone is located there.

Not only would the location-aware home screen automatically update the apps' icons, the technology could actually permit the phone's owner to save what are being called "transitional data sets." Like it sounds, these represent data that is displayed based on the device's physical location. For example, the proposed location-based contacts application would display just the contacts local to the city you're visiting at the time, as opposed to your entire contacts database. A local mapping application could let you bookmark your favorite restaurants for that particular city. The local time application would know that it's now on the west coast and not the east.

These transitional data sets would initially have to be configured by the end user before they became automatic. This means that the first time you visit a city, you may have to set the weather application yourself. To do so, the patent proposes a "here" button that you would tap to pull up the local forecast. However, after doing so, the location-aware device could automatically populate the weather application to display the weather for that location whenever you traveled to that city.

Apple's Own Apps Need to be Made More Location-Aware

It's interesting that with so many location-aware applications already available in the iPhone App Store, Apple's own default apps (contacts, weather, time, etc.) seem to be the ones in need of a location-aware update. We almost take it for granted that on our iPhone, our favorite movie showtime app knows what theater is nearby. Or when we launch Yelp, we have an entire section that helps us locate nearby businesses. Why shouldn't Apple's own home screen apps operate the same way? Why should we have to manually configure the weather app to know where we are? Why should we have to add new clocks as we travel the country?

Even if the technology described in this patent is never integrated into the phone itself, we think it's only a matter of time before Apple introduces some way for its own apps to become more location-aware. Now that we think about it, isn't it odd that they haven't already?

PatentSim was presented as a game in which the goal is to make as much money as possible. In each environment, subjects combined objects in a "Creation Box" to simulate an invention. Whenever a subject created an invention and clicked on the "Make" button, money would appear in their virtual bank. In the pure patent and mixed patent environments, subjects could also click on a "Patent" button to increase their profit. Each patent was priced at $20 and each use of a lawyer also cost $20. At the end of the study, students had produced significantly more inventions and profit in the commons environment when they were not being penalized for patent infringement or were busy enforcing their patents.

The study suggests that innovation not only thrives in a competitive environment, but that more profit can be generated by inventors in a commons system. Because PatentSim is just a simulation, readers need to take findings with a grain of salt. While the rate of inventions would likely increase without patents, it's tough to tell if inventors would really see unlimited profit potential in an environment free of patents. After all, how many different zipper pulls does the market demand?

Nevertheless, in some cases, the demand for a product or process is all too evident. Imagine the competitive market for hearing aids and prosthetics, or the success rate of farmers who are free to use the best possible processes. And honestly, does HIV really care if it's being treated by Glaxo, Pfizer or a tested generic knockoff?

This study is important in that it might spur policy makers to question how we look at innovation. Are inventions just disparate exclusively-owned products, or should we be sharing them out of necessity to solve our bigger-picture problems?

As the worlds second most popular browser, and with their recent milestone of reaching 20 percent worldwide market share, the folks over at Mozilla certainly have some celebrating to do.

Well done Firefox, you've come a long way; a 329 percent market share increase over four years. So, theoretically, if Firefox continues at the same growth rate, in another four years it will hit 85.67 percent market share.

Interesting.

Isn't this pretty much where IE was when Firefox came onto the scene?

Browser market share December 2004

Browser market share December 2005

Browser market share December 2006

Browser market share December 2007

Browser market share October 2008