Posts Tagged: "license"

On Monday, September 10th, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final decision in an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding petitioned by telecommunications conglomerate Comcast Corporation to challenge a patent held by electronic program guide developer Rovi Guides, a subsidiary of TiVo. The panel of administrative patent judges (APJs) in the case issued a mixed claim finding which nixed 20 of 24 challenged claims but upheld claims covering a buffering feature which Rovi is seeking to license with Comcast.

iPEL announced its Initial License Offering, available only through the end of 2018, which provides all companies an opportunity to secure a license to iPEL’s entire worldwide patent portfolio, through one of two licensing programs: (1) free licenses for small businesses and startups, and (2) paid licenses for larger businesses.

One of the critical moments in the life of a start-up tech company is landing its first big contract with a giant tech company. That first tech deal is also a daunting process. Take a deep breath. You can negotiate these agreements, as long as you negotiate smartly. Here are five common-sense tips for going forward… Play the long game. Nothing begets more business opportunities than a satisfied customer. Earn their trust. Show them you can deliver what they want. If you can start that process as early as the negotiations on the first contract, you are already ahead of the game.

The somewhat jarring Olympics tradition of juxtaposing athleticism and grace with instrumental versions of popular songs you might hear in the grocery store came to an end in Pyeongchang. After the Sochi games in 2014, the International Skating Union (ISU) decided to shake things up (or shake it off, Taylor Swift?) and began allowing skating to music with lyrics. This is not at all surprising given the demographics of the skaters, who are much more likely to enjoy “Single Ladies” than “Clair de Lune.” Pleasing Generation Z and millennial skaters, however, was not the main goal of the rule change; rather, the ISU wanted to appeal to younger audiences who tune in to watch the Olympics and other major figure skating events.

TiVo files patent lawsuits, the latest steps TiVo has taken in the hopes of resolving the renewal of a long-term licensing agreement that TiVo has already has already finalized with other major pay-television providers in the United States… TiVo’s recent litigation campaign against Comcast stems back to an unresolved licensing agreement that expired in April 2016 and which TiVo has attempted to renew with the major American pay-TV provider. Rovi first signed licensing agreements with the top pay-TV providers in the U.S., including Comcast, Dish Network, DirecTV and Time Warner, back in 2003 and 2004 with each deal lasting for a period of 12 years. In 2015 and 2016, around the same time that Rovi acquired TiVo for about $1.1 billion, the company began proactively engaging in licensing talks, again striking long-term deals like 10-year agreements with both AT&T and Dish. Of the top 10 pay-TV providers in the United States, Comcast is the last holdout who has not signed a licensing deal with TiVo.

Concerns about the ability of academic institutions to keep contributing to the U.S. innovation economy go well beyond federal funding stagnation according to the recent AUTM survey. In an executive summary section entitled The Perils of Eroding Patent Rights, AUTM notes that a slight decrease in options and exclusive license agreements compared to the number of non-exclusive license agreements could be due to fears that licensing companies have over protecting the intellectual property under the current iteration of the U.S. patent system. In 2016, option agreements were down year-over-year by 7 percent while exclusive licenses dropped 2.1 percent. Non-exclusive license totals, however, rose by 2.1 percent to 4,201 such license agreements in 2016. A sharp increase in startups ceasing business activity, up 37.4 percent to a total of 331 such startups, is another “ominous trend” which AUTM notes is likely attributable to eroding patent rights.

On November 20th, both Peter Gene Hernandez, the American singer-songwriter-producer who goes by the professional name Bruno Mars, and New York City-based Warner Music Inc. were named as defendants in a copyright case filed in the Southern District of New York by Burbank, CA-based photographer Catherine McGann. The lawsuit targets Mars’ social media use of a photograph of himself taken by McGann when Mars was performing as an Elvis impersonator as a child.

The Uniloc patent invalidated by the PTAB in this case is U.S. Patent No. 5490216, titled System for Software Registration and issued in February 1996. It claims a registration system for licensing execution of digital data in a use mode, the system including both local and remote licensee unique ID generating means, and a mode switching means operable on a platform which permits the use of digital data only if the locally-generated licensee unique ID matches the remotely-generated licensee unique ID. The innovation solved issues in prior art systems for software registration for software transferable by physical media which used shell programs or did not utilize information unique to the intended licensee which is distinguishable from the identification of the platform. According to data collected from Lex Machina, Uniloc’s ‘216 patent has been asserted in 65 cases filed in U.S. district court going back to September 2003.

In late September, an official blog post published by Menlo Park, CA-based social media giant Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and penned by Adam Wolff, the company’s engineering director, announced that the company would be adopting a software license agreement known as the MIT License for many of the company’s open source projects. This includes Facebook’s React platform, a Javascript library for building front-end user interfaces on hardware products. The use of the MIT License moves Facebook away from a prior software license known as the BSD + Patents License that included language which put patent owners using the React platform at a serious disadvantage.

On Monday, October 9th, San Diego, CA-based fabless semiconductor developer Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) announced that it had entered into a licensing agreement with Istanbul, Turkey-based General Mobile, a regional smartphone brand and a partner of the Android One smartphone project developed by Google. The royalty-bearing patent license grants General Mobile the right to develop, manufacture and sell 3G and 4G complete devices which incorporate technologies that are covered by patents in Qualcomm’s portfolio.

An exclusive right is more than a mere right of remuneration – it is the right to control the use and disposition of one’s property, and to deny others access to it. Without the fundamental attribute of exclusivity, we lurch toward a system of compulsory licensing, or a private right of individuals to take another’s property on the promise of mere monetary compensation. Under our Constitution, and particularly the Fifth Amendment, or the Takings Clause, even the government does not possess that right except that it be for some demonstrable public – rather than private — use. Thus, to be true to the express language of our Constitution, and respectful of the limits imposed on the Fifth Amendment, the rights inherent in intellectual property necessarily must include a right to exclude others from the enjoyment of that property.

The key idea is to think strategically about the software, the value it can provide to the company, and whether the technology should be developed in-house. In some cases, software can provide more value to the company when it includes open source components. Here at Dropbox, for example, we use open source software in our products and we use it to help with development… Even here there are a few ground rules: We evaluate the code on the way in so we know what has been incorporated in our software later. And we prohibit code that is licensed under more restrictive terms that could require us to open source our product in turn.

“The key ingredient needed for the prisoner’s dilemma to work its destructive magic is a lack of transparency between the parties involved,” Siino writes. The article goes on to discuss how the lack of transparency in patent licensing transactions is disrupting the the patent marketplace, and threatens “to break licensing’s virtuous circle of innovation leading to commercialisation, which in turn funds more innovation.”

Brainstorming, whiteboards and a 3D printer constantly humming. The Invention Lab of Enhance Innovations is always a flurry of innovative activity. If you are an invention nerd a trip to Enhance Innovations is an opportunity to really geek-out… For me, the real interesting piece of what Enhance does is their work with concepts. Many times inventors will come to me with more than an idea but less than an invention, which can be a real valley of death for inventors to navigate. So many good ideas get trapped in the uncomfortable space between something more than an idea and something less than a full-blown tangible invention.