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.

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules. The opening of proceedings means that the Commission will examine the case as a matter of priority. It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.

In 2011, Samsung sought injunctive relief in various Member States' courts against competing mobile device makers based on alleged infringements of certain of its patent rights which it has declared essential to implement European mobile telephony standards. The Commission will investigate, in particular, whether in doing so Samsung has failed to honour its irrevocable commitment given in 1998 to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to license any standard essential patents relating to European mobile telephony standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The Commission will examine whether such behaviour amounts to an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU).

RealNetworks, Inc. today announced that it has signed an agreement to sell a significant number of its patents and its next generation video codec software to Intel Corporation for a purchase price of $120 million. Under terms of the sale, RealNetworks retains certain rights to continue to use the patents in current and future products.

"Selling these patents to Intel unlocks some of the substantial and unrealized value of RealNetworks assets," said Thomas Nielsen, RealNetworks President and CEO. "It represents an extraordinary opportunity for us to generate additional capital to boost investments in new businesses and markets while still protecting our existing business.

This is an official public statement from Lamptron regarding the unauthorized use of Lamptron intellectual property to reproduce substandard copies of Lamptron products. We appreciate the time invested by online media sources and consumers who have assisted in reporting on this matter. Here at Lamptron we strive for the best in product quality and customer service, and it is with this practice in mind that we are making this official statement regarding the unauthorized use of Lamptron property.

As of January 2012 we have been made aware of the presence of imitation products designed to mimic the look and function of official Lamptron brand products on the retail market. These reproductions have been made with unauthorized use of Lamptron production parts and designs, along with competing materials that may or may not be made of the same quality as used by official Lamptron production parts.

Some time in June 2010, Apple filed a patent application for a unique new facial-recognition technology that's light on the resources. It was discovered by AppleInsider. Entitled "Low Threshold Face Recognition," the application defines a method of recognizing a person using a front-facing camera of a device (could be anything from an iPhone, iPad, to even a Mac or Macbook), that consumes very little system resources, and is hence light on the device's power source.

It could very well be an evolution of the "Slide to Unlock" mechanism found on iOS devices, and conventional password entry to wake Macs up. If granted, this technology comes to being at a particularly important time, when a similar technology evolving out of Android Face Unlock, and when facial-recognition will be a key feature of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system, to log into systems and wake devices up from their e-slumbers. Apple's proposed technology relies on analyzing a "high information portion" portion of the human face, rather than using the conventional resource-heavy method of recognition. Apple claims its technology will be just as reliable.

If you're Rambus then this is the season to be… making money through settlements. That's right, the XDR creator has scored a new out-of-court victory as Broadcom has agreed to sign a patent license agreement that spans five years.

"We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Broadcom, a global leader in the semiconductor industry," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president and general manager of the Semiconductor Business Group at Rambus. "We are committed to continuing the development of innovative technologies to help our licensees deliver great products to the market."

These holidays are being quite kind to Apple as after over a year and a half of investigating, the US ITC (International Trade Commission) has ruled that HTC has indeed violated two of its patents. According to the ITC ruling, HTC is infringing on patents No. 5,946,647 which covering a 'system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data' and No. 6,343, 263 relating to a 'real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data'.

As a result of this decision the ITC will be issuing an exclusion order (beginning April 19, 2012) that will prevent US imports of infringing HTC Android devices (the ITC didn't specify which products are affected by this).