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Apple iPhone found to infringe on three MobileMedia patents in US court
Bloomberg News is reporting this morning that Apple's iPhone has been found to infringe on three MobileMedia patents in a US court. For those unaware, MobileMedia is an outfit that's owned by Sony, MPEG-LA and Nokia, being formed in early 2010 mostly as a means to enforce patents owned by the trio. Earlier this year, a court ruled that a screen rotation patent suit couldn't go to trial, with the primary issue being a question of whether the iPhone's rotation and call rejection features violated patents held by Sony and Nokia. We're learning that jurors in Wilmington, Delaware deliberated for around four hours after a weeklong trial before concluding that the trifecta of patents at hand weren't invalid. MobileMedia Chief Executive Officer Larry Horn said in a post-trial courtroom interview: "We're very pleased. We think it's justified." Of course, many would file MobileMedia into the "patent troll" category, as the firm sued Apple in 2010 contending that it infringed 14 patents in total. The case ended up going to trial after the number was carved down to three. The US patents in question are 6,070,068, 6,253,075, 6,427,078, with one of them noted for revolving around the camera's phone and the others covering "call handling and call rejection." All told, MobileMedia has a binder of around 300 patents, with an MMI spokesperson confirming to us that there are also ongoing trials with RIM (regarding 12 patents) and HTC (regarding 11 patents). Said person wouldn't comment on our questions involving the potential of future licensing agreements, and also said that there's no information to disclose just yet related to damages. We asked if the outcome here could eventually impact other Apple products, but they seemed to suggest that items like the iPod and iPad would not be directly impacted. When asked if MMI was the enforcement wing of the three owners, we were told instead that "it's a subsidiary."
Nokia acquires Twango, gets deeper into media sharing
Nokia is once again shouting that it wants to be a major player in the mobile media sharing arena by acquiring Twango. If you're big into sharing pictures, video and other digital garb, you may know Twango (founded by former Microsoft employees). And since Nokia sold over 140 million connected digicams (almost all cellphone-based) in 2006, it makes sense for the company to ensure customers are, you know, using all that mobile multimedia goodness as much as possible. Nokia's Multimedia division head puts it great: "the Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks - at anytime, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose."
Nvidia intros Windows Mobile multimedia platform
Nvidia has taken the wraps of its MobileMedia platform for Windows Mobile 5.0-based devices at Taiwan's big Computex trade show, promising to bring high-quality digital TV and video, 3D graphics, and high fidelity audio to PDAs and smartphones. At the heart of the MobileMedia platform is Nvidia's GeForce 5500 chip, which supposedly delivers "console-class 3D gaming," although they convienently don't specify which console -- we're guessing it falls somewhere below an Xbox 360 but above a Sega Genesis. As it turns out, we've actually already seen a couple of the smartphones based on the Nvidia platform, although no one was spilling deets at the time. Modeo's DVB-H smartphone (seen here) is just one of the devices already announced that has Nvidia tech on the inside, as is Samsung's i310 smartphone, as well as an unnamed device from ReignCom. Nvidia also announced that they've hooked up with Intel and Freescale to develop reference designs for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices currently in development that should be unveiled later this year.
