TiVo has announced that it has settled a patent dispute with AT&T, as both companies have entered into a licensing agreement. AT&T is said to have agreed to pay TiVo a total of $215 million, split between an initial payment of $51 million and recurring quarterly payments through 2018 totaling $164 million.
Making the case that Apple should abandon its proxy fight against Google and lawsuits against Android smartphone and tablet makers, a managing partner from a leading intellectual-property firm has told Bloomberg that the company could collect up to $10 per device royalties by negotiating licensing fees rather than use up resources in lawyers' fees and court costs to force opponents to work around Apple's patents.
Up and coming Chinese mobile phone maker Huawei has found itself in the sights of Microsoft. Huawei’s chief marketing officer Victor Xu has told a group of UK journalists that discussions with Microsoft are “in progress” over licensing fees related to purported patent infringements over the company’s use of Android in its products. If it enters into a licensing arrangement, as seems likely, it will join Samsung and HTC as high profile companies paying royalties to the Redmond-based software giant.
Extensis today launched an update to its font management server software, Universal Type Server 3. The software controls compliance with font licensing and workflow for end users. Version 3 adds real-time font usage and availability, while offering compliance policing with over-usage reports. The update adds seamless server failover, new client creativity tools and Adobe InCopy and Photoshop support.
Excel software has announced two new applications geared toward software protection, LicenseSupport 1.0 and AppProtect 1.0. LicenseSupport provides tools for managing customer licenses for protected applications or documents. Users can securely provide an activation code, reset a license or block an activated license. Additional capabilities enable refund distribution or changes to the number of allowed activations for each serial number.
Apple has allegedly established a system to minimize licensing costs for 3G components patented by Qualcomm, according to Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi. While most 3G OEMs are paying Qualcomm roughly 4 percent on the wholesale price of their phones, Apple reportedly dodges most of the fees and pays an estimated 1.6 percent of its iPhone revenue to the chip maker.
Apple and AT&T have reached a settlement with Klausner Technology over patent disputes, and have agreed to license the technology from the firm. AppleInsider reveals that the suit, originally filed in December, was brought against the companies in response to the iPhone's "email inbox"-style voicemail presentation, one of the original device's highly touted features. Klausner says the two companies were in violation of US Patents 5,572,576, and 5,283,818.
Apple may be looking to license haptic technology from another company, as the industry looks to develop and incorporate more touch feedback technology into devices. Immersion Corporation, a patent-driven digital technology company, has reportedly hired a former Apple executive and has had talks this week to license the haptic technology for in Apple's iPhone. On Thursday, Immersion Corporation announced that it had appointed former Apple executive Clent Richardson to the position of President and CEO and a new report claims that Apple this week began talking to Immersion about a potential licensing agreement for its technology. [corrected]
