Patent gurus weigh in: Is the market for deals cooling off?

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Patents are one of the central topics at the spring meeting of the Licensing Executives Society of the U.S.A. and Canada, taking place in downtown Seattle this week. Many of the executives are heavily involved in patent licensing, acquisitions and sales. When you get them together, they talk about the patent market in much the… Read More…

Smokin’ hot avatars: Microsoft patents system for ‘attractive cartoon faces’

avatars

Lots of people labor over their avatars for video games and other online services, using manual tools to make their digital likenesses as flattering as possible. Why not just leave that to a computer algorithm to figure out? That’s the promise of a newly approved Microsoft patent. The title is “Cartoon face generation,” but the… Read More…

Microsoft publishes list of its entire patent portfolio, makes case for transparency

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Microsoft this morning published a searchable online list of its patent holdings — more than 40,000 patents held by the company and its subsidiaries in the U.S. and internationally — as part of its push for more transparency in the patent system. (Update, 1 p.m.: The site was initially down, but should be accessible now.)… Read More…

Pendrell buys dozens of patents from Nokia covering SD cards and flash storage

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Pendrell Corp. has made another big patent purchase. The Kirkland company led by former Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff announced today that it has acquired 125 patents and patent applications from Nokia, most of which cover technologies around SD cards and flash memory. Pendrell said that the combined market for the flash memory business is expected… Read More…

Air foils vs air bags: Amazon and Apple want to make sure you never bust your phone again

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Apple and Amazon.com are on a collision course in all sorts of businesses — from digital music to e-readers. Now, the two tech titans are trying to make sure that your phone avoids collisions, eliminating cracked smartphone screens for good. Patent filings revealed today indicate that Apple is trying to develop a new system that… Read More…

Amazon patents ‘gravity’ links for web and devices

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Amazon has been granted a patent on a “gravity-based link assist” system — a method of pulling a user’s on-screen pointer toward a link or clickable object when it travels within a “gravitational field” on the page. The idea is to make pages easier to navigate, but as Wired News points out, the technique also makes… Read More…

Bigger and better bamboo? Pendrell buys 68% stake in bamboo science firm Provitro

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It must be agricultural science day here at GeekWire. I just wrote about Phytelligence, a WSU spinout that’s developing more robust apple and cherry trees, scoring new funding. Now, here comes another deal involving patent holding firm Pendrell Corp. and Provitro Biosciences. Formerly known as Booshoot, Provitro is a 15-year-old Mount Vernon-based company that —… Read More…

Nikon to pay Microsoft royalties for Android cameras under patent deal

coolpix

What does Microsoft have to do with the Nikon camera pictured here? Nope, it isn’t running a form of Windows. Microsoft has reached a patent licensing agreement with Nikon to receive royalties on cameras that use Google’s Android operating system. It’s the latest in a series of licensing deals between Microsoft and Android device makers,… Read More…

Trulia to Zillow: Your patent is ‘invalid on its face’

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Zillow and Trulia have been at each other’s throats for years now. The two online real estate companies just don’t really like one another. Now, we’re getting a front row seat to the action — in part because of a patent lawsuit that Zillow filed against Trulia last September, a suit that came just a… Read More…

Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures settles with Microsemi, turns them into a customer

Nathan Myhrvold

Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures has entered into a settlement agreement with Microsemi, resolving the patent suit that it filed against the company in December 2010. Settlement terms were not revealed. But Microsemi, a maker of semiconductor systems for the communications, defense and aerospace industries, has agreed to license portions of Intellectual Ventures’ patent portfolio going forward. Intellectual… Read More…