Google arms HTC for Apple patent war

Google's latest buy of Motorola brought with it some very interesting patents. Among those there is the patent for running software on mobile hardware and also a patent for hidden antennas on mobile phones.

HTC has brought up a bunch of patents and is currently suing Apple for multiple infringements. It's a total of 9 patents that HTC has bought from Google during the last two weeks that are being used to fend of Apple, which currently has been dominating the courtroom in many different countries, namely the world wide cases against Samsung's phones and tablets. But also in their attempts to bring the Android OS down.

Google has been criticized before for not taking action against Apples attacks on several Android phone manufacturers, but Google have not had a very threatening patent catalog in the past. In the last year Google has been working hard to get as many patents as possible by buying companies like Openwave Systems, Palm and as mentioned earlier, Motorola.

According to All Things Digital HTC has paid an unknown amount to Google for the patents that will help them in the battle against Apple.

Samsung strikes back!

The patent war between Apple and Samsung rages on!

Earlier this year Apple successfully blocked all sales of the Galaxy Tab by suing Samsung, claiming that their Tab was a direct copy of their iPad. The block was eventually revoked because Apple had included false documentation, read this. Apple was also discredited by their patent registration certificate because the design specification was a generic description of almost any tablet computer.

Now Samsung, which has stated that the specification of the iPad was too generic, claims that Apple stole the iPad design from he movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". It is a science fiction movie from 1968 and in their accusation Samsung has provided a picture of two engineers eating breakfast with the tablet besides them.

They presented this evidence to a city court and I quote:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor.

You can watch the video here.
Additional iPad look-alike here.

Apple on the offensive

Since Apple successfully banned all of Samsung's Galaxy Tab, by claiming it was a breach of their patented design of the iPad, their has been a lot of discussion about how the EU's laws about design-copyright.

This has all been a huge matter in Europe and I think it's about time to take a look at how Apple has been presenting their accusations and the validity of the information they have come up with.

First of all there is a law in EU that covers design-copyright which is used to protect against copying the looks of a product such as chairs, lamps, furniture and such. Then when Apple they submitted their design specification, you might expect them to send in a description of the iPad.
   Instead they just submitted a piece of paper with a drawing that could describe most tablets ever made and probably a lot more in the future. The specification is barely more than a square with screen and rounded corners. See this.

Then they misled the German court by manipulating evidence. In the about 70-pages-long document there is an image where the Galaxy Tab is compared to the iPad. And it's commonly known that the iPad has a screen dimension of 4:3 and the Tab 16:10, but in the document they have been presented to be exactly the same size, see this. This should be considered illegal and Apple should lose the case. But as a big and powerful corporation the ban was just reduced to just cover Germany.

Now Apple decided to just try again and do it in the Netherlands and now they require a ban of all the Galaxy products including the phones in all of Europe.

Should a company like Apple be allowed to manipulate and cheat respected courts? Or should they be reviewed for there behavior and another review for monopoly?