Ideally, we’d never have to look at a loading screen at all. They’re pretty boring. Especially on consoles, though, they’re sometimes necessary. It would be nice if we had something to do during these moments of downtime, right? Now, if a developer wants to add a mini-game into its loading screens, it can! For the past 20 years, though, that’s been impossible. Back in 1995, Namco...
G.E. is doing something that's unthinkable for other companies: It's opening up a windfall of its patents so other inventors can take those ideas and run with them. Well, okay — not exactly run. But close. The corporation is joining forces with Quirky, the hub for indie inventors seeking crowd-sourced support and development resources, to put thousands of G.E. patents on the table. If...
Google's commitment to open-source got a boost today, thanks to the company's newly posted Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) pledge. The OPN pledge outlines Google's passion and commitment to open-source, and promises not to instigate a lawsuit against any parties that use open-source software based on certain patents owned by the company. For now, that only covers 10 patents, though the...
The patent system is busted. Litigious companies suing over vaguely worded claims, tying up courts and throwing obstacles at each other, preventing consumers like you and me from getting our tech goodies, make that perfectly clear. That fact isn’t lost on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office either. That’s why the USPTO is planning to hold an open forum of sorts in New York and Silicon...
Samsung sucks. The TouchWiz-ard steals other companies’ concepts and designs, and puts out inferior products with them. Apple is a thwarter of openness, a hypocritical dictatorship built on hipster iTwits and claims of greatness, while putting out — you guessed it — inferior products. If you follow the patent war between these companies, then chances are, you probably believe fervently...
Another day, another docket of hired expert witnesses in the Apple v. Samsung (who copied what). First up was Apple's hired-expert Kent Van Liere testifying that many consumers aren't able to tell the difference between Samsung phones and the iPhone or between iPad and Samsung tablets. This evidence is based on polling consumers to see if they could differentiate between the two Apple...
Mobile app maker Vringo announced on Thursday that it will acquire a portfolio of more than 500 worldwide patents and patent applications from Nokia, including 109 issued U.S. patents. "Thirty one of the 124 patent families acquired have been declared essential by Nokia to wireless communications standards," the company said in its press release. Vringo will license the patents and use...
Microsoft announced, on Tuesday, that it is licensing its Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) technology to Sharp for use with its Android handsets. exFAT is a successor of Microsoft's FAT32 file system and is commonly used across multiple consumer electronics and software platforms such as cameras, TVs, media centers, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and others. Unlike its predecessor,...
Philip Schiller, Apple’s SVP of worldwide marketing, took the stand in court Friday in the Samsung vs. Apple trial. While giving his testimony he described his first time seeing the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. “I was pretty shocked at the appearance of the Galaxy S phone and the extent to which it appeared to copy Apple’s products. We went from having something easy to market because...
An import ban against 18 of Motorola Mobility's Android devices is scheduled to take effect tomorrow. The ban follows an International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling in May that found Motorola Mobility guilty of infringing on a Microsoft patent. The patent in question is related to Exchange and Active Sync meeting requests and scheduling for mobile devices. Unmoved by this ruling,...