Microsoft's legal battle with Motorola has taken another large step towards a console ban, but the company could still narrowly avoid that fate. Judge David Shaw recommended to the International Trade Commission (ITC) that Microsoft be given a cease-and-desist order on sales of the Xbox 360 slim model in the US. He also recommended ceasing Chinese imports of the systems, and a payment of 7% of the value of unsold systems in stores. Courthouse News Service (via Develop) reports that the ITC can now choose to let that determination stand, in which case it becomes the official stance of the ITC. Alternately, the commission could amend some terms, or send it back for a rewrite. If it does adopt Shaw's recommendation, President Barack Obama will have 60 days to review the decision, after which it would have to be appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This follows a one-two punch against Microsoft in this case, after Motorola won its patent ruling, and was subsequently hit with a German sales injunction -- which won't go into effect until the US case is settled. Motorola claims a technology used across several Microsoft devices, but Microsoft alleges that Motorola demanded an unreasonable licensing fee for the patents.

Microsoft has argued that banning consoles would not serve the public interest, but Shaw claimed that enforcing property rights takes precedence. Though Microsoft could still potentially appeal, the threat of a ban is more real now. Either way, this likely isn't something Microsoft wants hanging over its head as we approach E3.

NVIDIA and Intellectual Ventures today announced that they have jointly acquired a set of patents developed and owned by IPWireless. The portfolio comprises approximately 500 patents granted and pending in the wireless communications area, including essential concepts in LTE, LTE-Advanced and 3G/4G technologies.

Terms of the acquisition, which closed on April 30, 2012, were not disclosed. Ownership of the patents was split between NVIDIA and IV, with NVIDIA licensing the rights to those patents that it did not acquire. As part of the acquisition, IPWireless retains perpetual, royalty-free access to these patents.

Since Nintendo pushed the envelope, hardware manufacturers seem intent on making new controller types. Now that each of the big gaming companies have at least dabbled with motion controls, biometric feedback seems to be the next big thing. Sony is looking into biometric controllers to measure factors like sweat and heart rate. Not to be outdone, Microsoft is apparently considering a pressure-sensitive controller. The company has registered a US Patent (8,172,675) for a controller with a "pressure-sensitive exterior surface." The patent suggests that device memory could store the output signatures to identify users simply by how they grip the controller. And confirming that these plans relate to gaming, the patent also mentions the device as "a game controller that interacts with a game console service."

The patent makes repeated mention of the controller being used for identification, but doesn't go much deeper than that. Microsoft could potentially find gaming utilities, but doesn't seem to be going in that direction with the initial patent application. As always, a patent doesn't mean a product will ever come to market.

Alliacense today announced that Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has purchased a license for its CORE Flash Portfolio Licensing Program. The agreement resolves the ITC Investigation and District Court lawsuit recently filed against the Korean electronics giant. Samsung joins a rapidly growing list of CORE Flash Portfolio licensees, including Lexmark, ASUStek, Philips and Lenovo.

In order to protect the investments of the CORE Flash licensee community, the successful CORE Flash Licensing Program has been dramatically enhanced with aggressive enforcement activities -- including the filing of two separate waves of patent infringement complaints with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and US District Court against nearly 40 companies in the past 9 months.

Earlier this morning, Mannheim Regional Court in Germany granted Motorola a sales injunction against Microsoft's Xbox 360, Windows 7, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player. It's no more a question of "if", but "when" the judgement will be enforced. When that happens, Motorola can insist on pulling those products off the German market. Motorola holds two technology patents this case is built around: EP0538667 and EP0615384, which are key to getting the H.264 video compression format to work. Motorola is obliged to license these patents to other under "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms, however, it demanded royalties from Microsoft that would amount to an excess of US $4 billion annually. Microsoft did not accept Motorola's terms, and knocked the doors of regulators claiming Motorola was being unfair and unreasonable with its patents. A case of patent infringement by Motorola is pending against Microsoft, but it is held up as authorities in the US are yet to ascertain Microsoft's allegations (of Motorola being anti-competitive).

Microsoft Corp. and Pegatron Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for a broad array of Pegatron products including eReaders, smartphones and tablets running the Android or Chrome platforms. Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicate that Microsoft will receive royalties from Pegatron under the agreement.

"We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Pegatron and proud of the continued success of our Android licensing program in resolving IP issues surrounding Android and Chrome devices in the marketplace," said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, Intellectual Property Group at Microsoft. "With this agreement, Microsoft has now licensed four of the top five Taiwanese ODMs."

Microsoft Corp. and Facebook announced today a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will assign to Facebook the right to purchase a portion of the patent portfolio it recently agreed to acquire from AOL Inc. Facebook has agreed to purchase this portion for $550 million in cash.

In the initial AOL auction, Microsoft secured the ability to own or assign approximately 925 U.S. patents and patent applications plus a license to AOL's remaining patent portfolio, which contains approximately 300 additional patents that were not for sale. As a result of today's agreement, Facebook will obtain ownership of approximately 650 AOL patents and patent applications, plus a license to the AOL patents and applications that Microsoft will purchase and own.

Leading international graphics card maker MSI today officially announced the new GTX 680 Twin Frozr /OC graphics card equipped with the latest NVIDIA 28nm GeForce GTX 680 GPU, 2GB video memory and PCI Express Gen3 support. The new GTX 680 Twin Frozr /OC sports the popular Twin Frozr III thermal design, featuring dual 80mm Propeller Blade fans, a nickel-plated copper base heat sink and SuperPipe technology. MSI's GTX 680 Twin Frozr /OC has 22°C lower temperatures and runs 10.2dB quieter than the reference design, providing the perfect balance of low-noise and great cooling capabilities.

In addition the GTX 680 Twin Frozr /OC also supports MSI's Afterburner overclocking utility, which enables you to tweak power and clock settings to get even more performance out of your graphics card. Both NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround and 4 display out from a single card are supported ensuring that gamers can enjoy the best entertainment and multitasking experience possible.

AOL Inc. today announced that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement to sell over 800 of its patents and their related patent applications to Microsoft Corporation and to grant Microsoft a non-exclusive license to its retained patent portfolio for aggregate proceeds of $1.056 billion in cash.

Following the sale, AOL will continue to hold a significant patent portfolio of over 300 patents and patent applications spanning core and strategic technologies, including advertising, search, content generation/management, social networking, mapping, multimedia/streaming, and security among others. AOL also received a license to the patents being sold to Microsoft.

NEXUS announced the NXTEK SM-5000 series silent wireless mice. The SM-5000 is an advanced 2.4G wireless silent optical mouse which connects to your PC or laptop with it's super small nano receiver, double scroll wheel, DPI switch and superb comfortable design it's a must have mouse.

The Nexus Silent Mouse has a comfortable size and is an excellent mouse for desktop use. But also for laptop users it is very suitable. Especially because of the small nano receive which you plug in a USB port and leave it there. It is so small that you do not need to take it out...you just forget its there. Furthermore the mouse is made from quality surface treatments so it feels good in your hand.

The European Commission has opened two formal antitrust investigations against Motorola Mobility Inc. The Commission will assess whether Motorola has abusively, and in contravention of commitments it gave to standard setting organisations, used certain of its standard essential patents to distort competition in the Internal Market in breach of EU antitrust rules. The opening of proceedings means that the Commission will examine the cases as a matter of priority. It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigations.

Following complaints by Apple and Microsoft, the Commission will investigate, in particular, whether by seeking and enforcing injunctions against Apple's and Microsoft's flagship products such as iPhone, iPad, Windows and Xbox on the basis of patents it had declared essential to produce standard-compliant products, Motorola has failed to honour its irrevocable commitments made to standard setting organisations. In these commitments, Motorola engaged to license those standard-essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The Commission will examine whether Motorola's behaviour amounts to an abuse of a dominant market position prohibited by Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU).

The inventor of technology used in data vending systems such as the iTunes and Playstation Network systems has sued Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Inc. and Foster City, Calif.-based Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC for patent infringement.

Inventor Benjamin Grobler is represented by intellectual property attorneys Christopher Banys and Richard C. Lin from the Palo Alto, Calif., office of The Lanier Law Firm. The lawsuits filed on March 27, 2012, allege that Apple and Sony are infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,799,084.

It looks like Mozilla has given in to the pressure of incorporating H.264 CODEC into its Firefox web-browser, and could incorporate it in future versions of the browser. The CODEC allows online videos utilizing H.264 format to run. Mozilla has been avoiding H.264 support since it is proprietary, riddled with patents, and requires Mozilla to purchase a license for millions of Dollars from MPEG-LA.

Mozilla has been trying to push for standards alternative to H.264, such as WebM, and the VP8 format. It had originally planned its push for an H.264-free web at a time when it was a much stronger player in the web-browser market, which now sees a strong presence of Google Chrome, which already features H.264. H.264 is superior to its alternatives, in being lighter on the system's resources (hence, lighter on the battery).

With US cable-TV operators' fees to cable channels crossing the US $40 billion/year mark, Intel is eying a share of the market. According to a WSJ report, Intel is working on a "virtual cable operator" service that would distribute cable-TV channels nationwide over the internet. The paid service wouldn't cover costs of internet service and bandwidth utilized by it, leaving customers to pay them on their end. This could mean that Intel's service is more affordable than those of conventional cable-operators that supply their own wired/satellite infrastructure to customers. Intel has recently made some notable IP acquisitions, which could contribute to this effort. For one, we know that Intel recently bought video encoding/streaming technology patents from RealNetworks (the people behind RealPlayer). Intel's TV service could go live by the end of 2012.

ZTE Corporation ("ZTE") (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ), a publicly-listed global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, today announced it had attained the No. 1 global ranking for PCT patent filings in 2011.

According to global findings released by the World Intellectual Property Organization on its official website, ZTE ranked No. 1 among global companies in terms of PCT patent filings in 2011 with 2,826 total applications. The company moved up from the No. 2 spot, which it held in 2010. The statistics also show consistent growth in ZTE's international patent filings over the past five years, which increased by more than 50 per cent year-on-year in 2011.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with MediaTek Inc. This agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of integrated circuit (IC) products offered by MediaTek Inc. In addition, the two companies have settled all outstanding claims, including resolution of past use of Rambus' patented innovations. The term of this patent license agreement is five years. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

"Consumer demand for increasing flexibility in electronic products is at the forefront of disruptive change. We are pleased to sign this agreement with MediaTek, one of the global leaders in SoC systems solutions, to enable greater mobility and accessibility for consumer devices," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "We are committed to the development of innovative new technologies that help our licensees bring superior products to market."

For the third consecutive time this year, Nintendo has prevailed in a patent litigation in the U.S. A Maryland U.S. District Court judge has summarily dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nintendo brought by IA Labs CA, LLC. IA Labs had alleged that the Wii Balance Board accessory and Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus software infringed on one of its patents (U.S. Patent No. 7,121,982).

"Nintendo has a passionate tradition of developing innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. We vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent. We refuse to succumb to patent trolls," said Rick Flamm, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of Legal & General Counsel.

Rambus Inc. (Nasdaq:RMBS), one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, today announced it received notice that the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for its U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) action against LSI Logic, MediaTek, ST Microelectronics and other Respondents has issued an Initial Determination. According to the notice, ALJ Theodore R. Essex found there to be no violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 for the patents in question. The action is Investigation Number 337-TA-753.

Rambus may request a full Commission review of the ALJ's Initial Determination. If the Commission grants a petition for review, it may affirm, modify, reverse, set aside, or remand all or part of the ALJ's decision in developing the ITC's final determination.

The lawyer armies of both Google and Apple have yet another battle on their hands as last week one PanoMap Technologies, LLC, a virtually unknown company based in Florida, sued both of them for patent infringement.

Filed in Orlando federal court, PanoMap's complaint claims that the Street View feature of the Google Maps iOS app violates US Patent No. 6,563,529. This patent is entitled "Interactive system for displaying detailed view and direction in panoramic images" and it describes "A method and system for indicating the camera position, direction, and field of view in a map or panoramic image comprises a map image window which displays a map or panoramic image of the site to be studied (house, apartment, city, etc.)."

The 6,563,529 patent was given to scientist Jerry Jongerius back in 2003 and was transferred to Empire IP in 2011. PanoMap got a hold of it (through another transfer, gotta love this) only this month (on February 14th to be exact).

PanoMap says Google and Apple were aware of their infringement and wants triple damages.

Taiwan-based Proview Electronics Company, Ltd., ("Proview Taiwan"), a leading producer of high-quality monitors for computers and media devices, announced today that it has filed an amended complaint in California Superior Court in Santa Clara, accusing Apple Inc. of fraud and unfair competition.

Separately, in another action, Shenzhen-based Proview Technology Shenzhen Co, Ltd. continues to pursue litigation against Apple in China. In the Chinese lawsuit, Proview Technology Shenzhen Co, Ltd. has demonstrated that the IPAD trademark for Mainland China was never assigned to Apple or its affiliates. The legal questions and remedies in the China and U.S. lawsuits are separate and distinct and have no bearing on one another.

Even as Apple is going on a childish suing spree over every touchscreen device manufacturer that uses a "slide to unlock" mechanism to wake sleeping devices up, it has emerged that Apple wasn't the first to patent such as technology to begin with, it was Neonode, which envisaged the concept 3 years earlier, and patented it. Neonode is a Swedish mobile phone manufacturer. Neonode had this patent filed under US Pat. No. 8,095,879, its claim that details the technology leaving no room for ambiguity:

12. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the user interface is characterised in, that an active application, function, service or setting is advanced one step by gliding the object along the touch sensitive area from left to right, and that the active application, function, service or setting is closed or backed one step by gliding the object along the touch sensitive area from right to left.

Cisco expressed concerns with the EU over Microsoft's takeover of Skype. In 2011, Microsoft clinched a deal which saw it takeover Skype for a staggering US $8.5 billion. Perhaps we're now getting to see just how valuable the acquisition was, as Microsoft is now sitting on some key telecommunication over IP intellectual property that has Cisco concerned that Microsoft could restrict video-conferencing technologies to other companies and impede competition. Interestingly, the European Commission gave a go-ahead to Microsoft during its acquisition, judging that the takeover wouldn't impede competition.

In a blog post by video conferencing head Martin De Beer, Cisco stated that it "does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability." Cisco called for making Microsoft's freshly-acquired IP "open-standards", stating that otherwise, Microsoft could control "the future of video communications". "Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialling a phone number," De Beer argued. It's "intellectual-property" when convenient, "open-standard" when not, in the funny world of tech-patents.

Today Fox Business is reporting U.S. and European regulators approved Google Inc's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility on Monday and said they would keep a sharp eye on the web search giant to ensure patents critical to the telecom industry would be licensed at fair prices. The U.S. Justice Department also approved an Apple Inc -led consortium's purchase of a trove of patents from bankrupt Canadian company Nortel Networks.Both the Justice Department and European antitrust authorities said that they would monitor how patents are used to ensure they comply with antitrust rules. Antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic are concerned that patents essential to ensuring communications devices sold by different companies work together are licensed for a reasonable fee.

Apple seems to have a revolving door for legal actions as of late. Today the Chicago Tribune is reporting Apple has asked a federal court in California to block Samsung from selling its new Galaxy Nexus smartphones, which use Google's newest version of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich, alleging four patent violations including new features such as a voice-command search function.

Galaxy Nexus, the official debut of which was delayed by Samsung in October to pay respect to Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs, is the first phone running on the newest Android version before the platform is widely adopted by hardware manufacturers such as HTC Corp and Motorola Mobility. HTC and Motorola are also in separate patent disputes with Apple. In a lawsuit filed last week in San Jose, Apple said the Galaxy Nexus infringes on patents underlying features customers expect from Apple products. Those include the ability to unlock phones by sliding an image and to search for information by voice.

Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies, announced today it has signed a patent license agreement with NVIDIA.

The agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of integrated circuit (IC) products offered by NVIDIA. In addition, the two companies have settled all outstanding claims, including resolution of past use of Rambus' patented innovations. The term of this agreement is five years; other details are confidential.