Apple asks US court to order Samsung to remove infringing features

Following up on a jury verdict, Apple has asked a court in California to order Samsung Electronics to stop using features that were found to infringe three of its patents.

The company has also asked the court to review damages awarded by the jury or to order a retrial.

The injunction sought by Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division would cover features such as 'slide-to-unlock' on phone home screens for unlocking a device, auto-correct for prompts on the spelling of words, and the so-called 'quick links' feature for scanning text to identify certain types of structures such as phone numbers, dates and email addresses.

A jury in the California court ruled earlier this month that Samsung should pay Apple about US$119 million for infringing the three patents. The patent on auto-complete while typing had already been found to infringe, and the jury was only to calculate a damages award for that one. Some Apple products were also found to infringe a Samsung patent.

In a filing Saturday, Apple said it was not asking the court to bar entire product lines from the marketplace, but for an injunction that proposes to stop Samsung from further use of the specific features that the jury found to infringe Apple's three patents, and those features not more than "colorably different."

Apple has proposed a one-month "sunset period" for delay in enforcement. During this period, Samsung can "swap-in the non-infringing alternatives that it claims are already available and easy to implement," according to the redacted public version of the filing. Having represented that it can design around Apple's patents completely and quickly, Samsung cannot complain that Apple's narrowly-tailored injunction will deprive the public of a single Samsung product, it added.

"After the jury rejected Apple's grossly exaggerated damages claim, Apple is once again leaning on the court to push other smartphones out of the market. If granted, this would stifle fair competition and limit choice for American consumers," Samsung said in an emailed comment on Apple's request for an injunction.

Apple had requested the court for $2.2 billion in damages for what it alleged was massive infringement of five of its patents. In the wake of the far smaller damages awarded to it by the jury, the company is now also asking in a separate motion for higher damages for the patents Samsung was found to have infringed and a judgment that Samsung infringed the two other patents in the case.

The company has as an alternative asked for a new trial on infringement of the two patents that the jury found Samsung's products had not infringed and a new trial on damages for all five of Apple's asserted patents. Samsung did not comment on Apple's second motion.

Credit:itnews.

Read More

Google promises to patch Chrome OS for 5 years

Extends patch-bug fix-update support to five years after sales launch of each Chromebook notebook

Google has extended its guaranteed support for Chrome OS on vendors' Chromebooks to five years, adding a year of support to nearly every device.

It's like Microsoft's better-known 10-year support life cycle for Windows, only half as long. Under the new plan, Google promises to provide security patches, bug fixes and feature changes to owners of Chromebooks, the usually-inexpensive laptops powered by the browser-based Chrome OS.

Google calls it the Chrome OS End of Life Policy.

The company's earlier policy generally promised to support a specific Chromebook for four years from its sales debut. Last week, Google added the extra year.

"EOL dates may be pushed later than the initial date published, but will never be sooner than listed, which will be at least a minimum of 5 years from launch of the hardware," Google said on its policy page.

Before the change, Dell's Chromebook 11 was to be supported until January 2018; the revised policy guarantees support until January 2019. Dell's Chromebook 11 began shipping in January 2014.

After a device reaches its end of life, Google will not guarantee to automatically deliver software updates to Chrome OS on that system. That's a subtle difference from Microsoft's policy, which states that after a product, say Windows XP, reaches its end of life, no more patches will be provided. Period.

Google's policy is somewhat more flexible, in that the company might still continue pushing updates to obsolete Chromebooks.

The new policy was necessary because Chromebook sales have been strongest to enterprises and educational organizations. Those entities needed some kind of guarantee that their investments would be protected, and that Google would not suddenly pull the support rug out from under them.

The policy applies to all Chromebooks, including those purchased by individual consumers.

First on the retirement list: Google's own Cr-48, a bulky reference design that Google built to show OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that a Chrome OS, cloud-based personal computer was possible. The Cr-48 will exit support in December 2015, five years after its 2010 launch.

Google's high-end Chromebook Pixel, which sells for $1,299 to $1,449, will reach its declared end of life in April 2018.

One of the few Chromebooks that did not get an extension was the Samsung Series 5 XE500C21; Google stuck with its January 2016 EOL for that device. In a note on its policy page, Google said that that date had been announced previously as the official end of support.

The Chromebook end of support list can be found on Google's website. It will be updated if Google decides to again extend support for select models, and when new devices hit the market.

Credit:computerworld

Read More