It is difficult to enter to old business as a new player. Incumbents will do what ever it takes to make entry barrier as high as possible. Google tried to solve the patent problem first with Nortel deal (6000 patents in line) but defense line of incumbent players hold.

“If there is will there is a way”. Google has demostrated that the saying is true. Google aquisition of Motorola Mobility does not only give access to engineering and sales power to go full speed with mobile phone business but also solves the patent problem.

Motorola mobility has about 17,000 patents.

What comes to valuation of the assets. In Nortel case rough numbers were

USD4.5B/6000 = USD 750k per patent

and now with Motorola case

USD12.5B/17000= USD 735k

the math is clear this is a patent deal.

Based on compliant following patents are in line:

1. US 7,620,565 “Customer-based product design module” filed in August 25 2006.

first claim:

1. A unit, comprising: a memory; a transmitter; and a processor, coupled to the memory and to the transmitter, configured to: monitor a product for an occurrence in the product of a trigger event of a predefined plurality of trigger events, increment a counter corresponding to the trigger event upon detection of the occurrence of the trigger event, cause the display of a user interface, configured to probe for information regarding a use of the product, if the counter exceeds a threshold, cause the memory to store an input received from the user interface, and cause the transmitter to transmit the input to a server.

2. US 7,222,078 “Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network” filed in December 10 2003.

1 st claim:

1. A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user’s perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location.

“WASHINGTON — Internet giant Google said Monday it is bidding $900 million to buy the patent portfolio of Canadian technology company Nortel at a bankruptcy auction.”

rationale was also stated in Google press: ”…obtaining the portfolio would “create a disincentive for others to sue Google” and also help open source software projects such as Android and Chrome.”

Well end result was different.. “A consortium of mobile technology firms including Apple, Microsof and Ericsson have outbid Google for a collection of strategically vital patents from Nortel, the bankrupt Canadian telecoms equipment maker. The group, which also includes EMC, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and Sony, paid $4.5bn in cash for more than 6,000 patents covering wireless, 4G, data networking, internet and semiconductor technologies.”

So what?

Incumbent are fighting back on new entrant. Google has distributive entry model to mobile with SW only. The entry will not be easy. We will see in future two camps one for “old” world of having own brand and terminal and “new” one with creating value with different tacktics.

From IPR point of view it will be interesting to see which of Nortel patents will be eventually used against Google if any…

One can always speculate on strategic value of the transaction. Numbers from patent point of view are however as follows. According to USPTO Nortel portfolio has (with assignee name as Nortel)

4173 issued patents and

1225 pending patent applications.

So 4.5B / (4174+1225) = 833 487 USD per patent/application in this auction.

Additionally when you look on global database there is about 12300 hits on Nortel assigned patents leading to other esitmate of

4.5B/12300 = 365 000 USD per patent/patent application.

Time will show what is the real bottom line impact.

Us issued cases:
PAT. NO. Title
1 7,899,946 Audio and USB multiplexing
2 7,899,443 Multi-access solid state memory devices and a telephone utilizing such
3 7,863,856 Bi-directional battery charging for coupled electronic devices
4 D626,928 Cell phone
5 7,812,640 Bridge design for SD and MMC data buses
6 7,795,842 Adjustable cut-off voltage for mobile device battery
7 D620,895 Electronic device connector
8 D619,537 Electronic device connector
9 7,693,548 Multi-access solid state memory devices and a telephone utilizing such
10 7,684,552 Phone batch calling task management system
11 7,616,948 User method for selective wireless communication with contact list memory
12 D597,983 Cell phone
13 7,574,549 Bridge design for SD and MMC multiplexing
14 7,552,245 Communication card with three operational states
15 D593,550 Keypad
16 7,509,094 Wireless telecommunication device and uses thereof
17 7,433,712 Multi-access solid state memory devices and a telephone utilizing such
18 7,398,081 Device and system for selective wireless communication with contact list memory

and US applications:

PUB. APP. NO. Title
1 20110103607 LUMINESCENT HEADPHONES WITHOUT BATTERY PACKS
2 20110102348 DUAL WIRELESS COMMUNICATOR AND HUMAN INTERFACE DEVICE
3 20110050171 BATTERY CHARGER WITH SENSOR-ACTIVATED LIGHT SOURCE
4 20110047247 SYNCHRONIZED PLAYBACK OF MEDIA PLAYERS
5 20110029868 USER INTERFACES FOR SMALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES
6 20110014951 SD SWITCHBOX IN A CELLULAR HANDSET
7 20100295747 ANTENNA WITH DIVIDED GROUND PLANE
8 20100248744 LOCATING MOBILE CONTACTS USING A GEO-CONTACT LIST
9 20100210308 WIRELESS COMMUNICATOR JACKET WITH MULTIPLE OPERATIONAL STAGES
10 20100171805 DIGITAL PHOTO FRAME WITH DIAL-A-TAG FUNCTIONALITY
11 20100136948 METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CIRCULATING MESSAGES
12 20100123643 HANDHELD DEVICE WITH SECONDARY SCREEN FOR SOFT KEY DESCRIPTORS
13 20100120468 FOLDABLE MOBILE PHONE
14 20100093401 MODULAR WIRELESS COMMUNICATOR
15 20100071003 CONTENT PERSONALIZATION
16 20100062805 NOTEBOOK COMPUTER AND CELL PHONE ASSEMBLY
17 20100057875 MOOD-BASED MESSAGING
18 20100056210 LOW RADIATION WIRELESS COMMUNICATOR
19 20100004025 MULTI-TAPPING NUMPAD
20 20090318197 PHONE LOCATOR
21 20090311903 PUSH-TO-INSERT, PUSH-TO-EJECT AND PULL-TO-EXTRACT CARD CONNECTOR
22 20090298520 MULTI-ACCESS SOLID STATE MEMORY DEVICES AND A TELEPHONE UTILIZING SUCH
23 20090295586 JACKET LOCATOR
24 20090289662 BRIDGE DESIGN FOR SD AND MMC DATA BUSES
25 20090267749 ULTRASONIC VIBRATOR
26 20090254897 UPDATING FIRMWARE ON MOBILE ELECTRONICE DEVICES
27 20090254690 COMMUNICATION CARD WITH STANDALONE AND MASTER OPERATIONAL STATES
28 20090252117 MODULAR CELL PHONE FOR FIXED MOBILE CONVERGENCE
29 20090239470 Modular cell phone for laptop computers
30 20090207097 APPLICATION DISPLAY SWITCH
31 20090199025 BI-DIRECTIONAL POWER CONTROL
32 20090185667 Content delivery during call idle time
33 20090182908 Audio and USB multiplexing
34 20090179668 BRIDGE DESIGN FOR SD AND MMC MULTIPLEXING
35 20090179612 Bi-directional battery charging for coupled electronic devices
36 20090176528 WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATION DEVICE
37 20090156188 CONVERGED CORDLESS AND CELLULAR PHONE SYSTEM
38 20090083060 AUTOMATED COMPUTER ELECTRONICS DEVICE REPORTING
39 20090083000 AUTOMATED APPLIANCE DIAGNOSTICS AND REPORTING
40 20090078760 AUTOMATED APPLIANCE REGISTRATION
41 20090046076 COUNTER-TACTILE KEYPAD
42 20090042612 MULTI-ACCESS SOLID STATE MEMORY DEVICES AND A TELEPHONE UTILIZING SUCH
43 20090041224 SPEED-DIAL AND SPEED-CONTACT WITH PREDICTIVE LOGIC
44 20090041221 CALL SHUFFLING
45 20080280627 DEVICE AND SYSTEM FOR SELECTIVE WIRELESS COMMUNICATION WITH CONTACT LIST MEMORY

The Council approved enhanced cooperation among 25 (out of 27) of the EU member states, in other words all states except Spain and Italy, in order to create a unitary patent.

The patent will be valid across the territory of the participating member states. The European Parliament gave its consent for this solution already on 15 February. The solution has been designed to get round the problems with the creation of a unitary patent, and above all the difficulties to agree on which languages such a patent would be granted. The language for the unitary patent will be the official languages of the European Patent Office (EPO) – English, French and German.

When a unitary patent has been granted , it will automatically be valid throughout the EU member states participating in the enhanced cooperation, in contrast to today’s European patent which requires validation and often translation in each and every EPO member state.

In practice this will lead to big savings on anyone trying to get a patent in EU. This is good news for all (except patent text translators…).

From Motorola press: “The Motorola patents directed to PC and Server software relate to Windows OS, digital video coding, email technology including Exchange, Messenger and Outlook, Windows Live instant messaging and object oriented software architecture. The Motorola patents directed to Windows mobile software relate to Windows Marketplace, Bing maps and object oriented software architecture. The Motorola patents directed to Xbox relate to digital video coding, WiFi technology, and graphical passwords. Motorola Mobility has requested that Microsoft cease using Motorola’s patented technology and provide compensation for Microsoft’s past infringement.”

And the list of the US patents collected by @Fosspatents:

• No. 6,272,333 “method and apparatus in a wireless communication system for controlling a delivery of data”
• No. 5,311,516 (on a “paging system using message fragmentation to redistribute traffic”)
  
• No. 5,502,839 (an “object-oriented software architecture supporting input/output device independence”)
  No. 5,319,712 (on a “method and apparatus for providing cryptographic protection of a data stream in a communication system”
• No. 5,764,899 (a “method and apparatus for communicating an optimized reply”)
• No. 5,784,001 (on a “method and apparatus for presenting graphic messages in a data communication receiver”)
• No. 6,408,176 (on a “method and apparatus for initiating a communication in a communication system”)
• No. 6,757,544 (on a “system and method for determining a location relevant to a communication device and/or its associated user”)
• No. 6,983,370 (on a “system for providing continuity between messaging clients and method therefor”)
• No. 7,310,374 (“Macroblock level adaptive frame/field coding for digital video content”)
• No. 7,310,375 (“Macroblock level adaptive frame/field coding for digital video content”)
• No. 7,310,376 (“Macroblock level adaptive frame/field coding for digital video content”)
• No. 5,357,571 (on a “method for point-to-point communications within secure communication systems”)
• No. 6,686,931 (on a “graphical password methodology for a microprocessor device accepting non-alphanumeric user input”)
• No. 6,980,596 (on a “macroblock level adaptive frame/field coding for digital video content”)
• No. 7,162,094 (on “frequency coefficient scanning paths for coding digital video content”)

Stay tuned.

7,812,828, Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces

Not invented by Apple patent. Assignment from Fingerworks Inc

7,663,607, Multipoint Touchscreen

Apple orginal

5,379,430, Object-Oriented System Locator System

Assignment from OBJECT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING CORP

7,497,949, Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics

This is definitely Apple one with one of the inventors as S. Jobs.

6,493,002, Method and Apparatus for Displaying and Accessing Control and Status Information in a Computer System

Apple original.

5,838,315, Support for Custom User-Interaction Elements in a Graphical, Event-Driven Computer System

Apple original patent.

• A portable computer arranged to rest comfortably in the hand has a small display screen (5). Accelerometers capable of detecting movement of the pen with respect to gravity provide input to a microcontroler which selects from a number of viewing modes a response. The pen may be held in either hand and output message to the screen will be oriented according to the location of the pen. Full personal digital assistant functionality may be incorporated in a relatively small plastics casing and functions, such as calendar, contacts and the like may be incorporate

• A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture.

• A multipoint touch surface controller is disclosed herein. The controller includes an integrated circuit including output circuitry for driving a capacitive multi-touch sensor and input circuitry for reading the sensor. Also disclosed herein are various noise rejection and dynamic range enhancement techniques that permit the controller to be used with various sensors in various conditions without reconfiguring hardware

• A touch sensor panel having co-planar single-layer touch sensors fabricated on a single side of a substrate is disclosed. The drive and sense lines can be fabricated as column-like patterns in a first orientation and patches in a second orientation, where each column-like pattern in the first orientation is connected to a separate metal trace in the border area of the touch sensor panel, and all patches in each of multiple rows in the second orientation are connected together using a separate metal trace in the border area of the touch sensor panel. The metal traces in the border areas can be formed on the same side of the substrate as the patches and columns, but separated from the patches and column-like patterns by a dielectric layer

• A computer-human interface provides a mechanism to manage the available space of a computer display (28) in a manner that facilitates navigation among multiple windows (42-50) that are overlaid upon one another. The interface includes a user-selectable mode (Figure 5) in which the windows are rearranged, and resized if necessary, so that all open windows can be simultaneously viewed within the area of the display, thereby enabling any one of the windows to be easily selected for access. In effect, the presentation of the windows is “flattened” so that all windows appear at the same virtual depth, rather than overlapping one another. With this approach, there is no need to minimize windows in order to access one that is overlaid by another, thereby enabling the user to keep the content of all windows visible and accessible.; Subsets of windows can be repositioned in the same manner (Figure 23b), or all windows can be removed from the display area for access to desktop object

EP 1805964  (B1)

Improved techniques for interaction between a host computer (e.g., personal computer) and a media player are disclosed. According to one embodiment, interaction between a host device (e.g., host (computer (102)) and a media player (108) can be performed over a wireless channel. The interaction over the wireless channel can be used to automatically synchronize media contents stored on the media player with media contents stored on the host device. According to another embodiment, interaction between a host device and a media player, such as automatic synchronization of media contents stored on a media player with media contents stored on a host device, can be restricted. In still another embodiment, synchronization can be automatically performed when the media player is placed in a docking station (110) that supports wireless communications. EP 1943772 System that wakes up a sleeping target system (110) on a target LAN from a remote system (102) located on a remote LAN (104) . Since the sleeping target system (110) is in a sleep state, it receives packets of a lower-layer protocol which cannot be used by the remote system (102) to directly send packets to the sleeping target system. During operation, the remote system creates a wake-up packet (304) . The remote system (102) then uses a second protocol to send the wake-up packet to a relay agent (112) located on the target LAN. Upon receiving the first wake-up packet, the relay agent uses the lower-layer protocol to send a second wake-up packet to the sleeping target system (312) , which wakes up (316) . EP1811525 Articles and associated methods and systems relate to disabling defective flash memory dies in a device containing multiple flash memory dies. Packages containing multiple flash memory dies may be labeled to indicate a flash memory data storage capacity based on the flash memory dies that are not disabled. Various disabling methods may be applied at the die level, package level, and/or board level. EP 2022058 Systems and methods, including computer software, for reading data from a flash memory cell involve detecting voltages from a group of memory cells. The group of memory cells have associated metadata for error detection, and each memory cell stores a voltage representing a data value selected from a plurality of possible data values. Each possible data value corresponds to one range of multiple non-overlapping ranges of analog voltages. Memory cells having uncertain data values are identified based on the detected voltages. Alternative data values for the memory cells having the uncertain data values are determined. A combination of alternative data values is selected, and an error detection test is performed using the metadata associated with the memory cells and the selected combination of alternative data values. EP2001198 File protocols for transaction based communication are described. In one embodiment, a method to provide a file transfer protocol includes receiving packets containing headers, the packets being received at a first network stack software through an interface, and extracting data from the packets and reconstructing a file from data in the packets. The extracting may be performed by a first network stack software, and the interface is not designed to use lntemet Protocol (IP) addresses, and the headers contain data for flow control and sequencing and are associated with a port for a file transfer application, and the headers allow multiple applications to maintain multiple concurrent sessions through the interface, which may be a USB compliant or BLUETOOTH compliant interface. Systems, computer readable media, software architectures and other methods are also described EP2001199 Multiplexed data stream protocols are described. In one embodiment, a method to provide a multiplexed data stream protocol includes packetizing a data stream to provide packets with headers and transmitting the packets through an interface which is not designed to use Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The headers contain data for flow control and sequencing and are associated with a port for an application, and the headers allow multiple applications to maintain an arbitrary and changeable number of multiple concurrent sessions through the interface. The headers may be Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) like headers and may not include IP like headers. Systems, computer readable media, software architectures and other methods are also described