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Judge invalidates 13 Motorola patent claims against Microsoft
Google's Motorola branch isn't having much success lately in getting patent claims to stick against Microsoft. A few months after the company dropped some ITC claims, the judge in a Seattle contract lawsuit has granted Microsoft's motion to invalidate 13 of Motorola's claims across three standards-based patents, all of them linked to H.264 video coding. The individual claims aren't well-defined enough to hold, Judge James Robart says. The ruling takes most of the thunder out of components in the lawsuit that aren't directly related to the contract, and could lead to lighter penalties against Microsoft should Google and Motorola win -- not that Google has much sway when it's prevented from seeking bans over standards-based patents.
Invalid Keynote document? Calm down and try this fix
Let's set the scene: It's Monday morning, and you've been working tirelessly all weekend, tweaking and putting finishing touches on a big Keynote presentation that you'll be using at today's board meeting. Now that it's finished, you decide to run through it one last time, just to be safe. So you fire up Keynote, and your heart sinks as you stare unbelieving at the message above. "WHAT?! I just opened it this morning! What do you mean it's not valid?" You're practically screaming at your computer now, and repeatedly trying to open the file to no avail. After taking a few moments to calm down and avoid tossing your Mac out the window, you suddenly remember the Versions feature in Lion & Mountain Lion that automatically saves versions of your file as you work. You jump into Finder, restore an older version, and... it doesn't work either. Keynote still tells you that the file is invalid. So you try another version, and another, but Keynote remains adamant that your attempts are futile, and now you begin to panic as the realization sets in that your presentation starts in 15 minutes and your work is gone. But before you give in to despair, here is something you can try that just might work. It's no secret that many "files" in OS X are, underneath the surface, actually folders or other archives that themselves contain many more files. You can easily see this in action by right-clicking (control-click or two-finger-click) on an application or an archive in Finder and choosing the Show Package Contents... option. A Keynote presentation file is really no different, and if you're working with a Keynote '08 file, you can easily see the contents of the package using that option. But starting with Keynote '09, the packages are zipped into archives to make them easier to share and upload to websites. This makes getting to their contents a little bit trickier, as Finder doesn't see the file as an archive, so it keeps trying to open the file with Keynote, rather than unzipping it for you. So, how do you get at these files, you might ask? It's actually deceptively simple -- but before we begin, I can not stress enough to you to make a backup copy of your file. Sure, it might be "invalid" and already broken, but you still should make sure you have an untouched copy somewhere should you need it. Once you've got a copy, continue on with the instructions below. Step 1: Rename the file to a .zip file. Now that you've made a copy, you need to locate your file in Finder, highlight it, and then press the Enter key to rename the file. If the file name ends with .key, change it to .zip. Otherwise, just add .zip to the end of the filename, and press Enter again. When Finder asks, tell it to Use .zip. Step 2. Open the zip archive. Your file should now be named something like Presentation.zip. Go ahead and double click on it, and Finder should decompress the .zip archive into a folder of the same name. If you open the folder, you should see a bunch of files there, including any images you've added to your presentation, similar to the screenshot below: Step 3. Rename the folder back to a .key file At this point, if everything has gone well, you should be feeling somewhat relieved, as you can at least see that your work is not completely lost, just hidden. So, how do you get this back into Keynote, you might ask? No, you won't have to redo everything. Simply highlight the name of the folder, press Enter to rename it again, and add the .key extension to the end: Step 4. Cross your fingers and open the file with Keynote Here's where you have to cross your fingers and hope for the best. If all went well, you should be able to just double click on the file and Keynote should fire up with your presentation, in all of its glory. If it doesn't work, go back and double check that you didn't miss anything above. If you've checked and it's still not working, then sadly, there's a good chance that something really is wrong with the presentation. If this is the case, hopefully you still might be able to salvage some of your work out of the file by digging through the folder you get in step 2 and extracting the graphic assets. If it did work, congratulations! Now you can relax... after you go give your presentation, of course. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
European Patent Office invalidates IPCom 3G patent, gives good news to Nokia and HTC
IPCom's had its way with many mobile manufacturers, including Nokia and HTC, by suing them for patent infringement in German courts. However, the Finnish and Taiwanese firms got good news today when the European Patent Office invalidated one of its 3G patents -- the very same one it used to obtain an injunction against HTC. IPCom's not going away quietly, however, as it plans to appeal the EPO's decision. That means that the folks in Espoo and Taoyuan City aren't out of the woods yet -- but it should at least give them a bit more bargaining power in negotiations to end their (seemingly endless) legal spats.
US government rules three Barth patents invalid, sends Rambus scrambling
Suing's easy. It's the "winning" that trips folks up. Such is the case with Rambus, who has been relying oh-so-heavily on the so-called trio of Barth patents to actively pursue just about every technology company on the planet. For those unaware, Rambus has christened itself as a "technology licensing company," but with the last of three patents used to win infringement suits against NVIDIA and HP being declared invalid, it's probably scrambling for new tactics. According to a Reuters report, an appeals board at the US Patent and Trademark Office declared the patent invalid a few days back, with the previous two being knocked back in September. A couple of months back, Rambus' stock lost 60 percent of its value after a court decision led to the loss of a $4 billion antitrust lawsuit against Micron and Hynix, and we're guessing things won't be any happier when the markets open back up on Monday. The company's next move? "We're evaluating our options," said spokeswoman Linda Ashmore.
USPTO rules against TiVo's "Time Warp" patent, but the fight vs. DISH rages on, again
The never ending TiVo / DISH Network patent saga continues, with the latest twist presented as U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled TiVo's "Time Warp" patent is invalid. Both sides have issued press release in response, with TiVo pointing out this is "just one of several steps" in the review process" while DISH's Facebook status was predictably "pleased." For now, the only thing to report is that, as usual, nothing has really changed, the Appeals court is still undertaking a review of its previous ruling, and it will probably finish that before this Patent Office decision is resolved , given the opportunity for appeals to its board, and even through the federal courts. Still, depending on how this goes, it could have the most affect on TiVo's lawsuits against Verizon and AT&T, but right now we're just going to go grab (another) Snickers, this one will be going on for a long while yet.
WoW launcher and downloader causing validation errors [Updated]
I and many tipsters have encountered some issues tonight when trying to launch the game. Here's what we know: The Launcher is downloading something small. It is taking much longer than the 2 minutes estimated. Sometimes the download fails. Once the "something" has been downloaded, some are getting "unable to validate game version". Constant attempts to log in appear to make the error go away. There is no indication of what has been downloaded. Here's what we don't know: What was downloaded. We will update you as soon as we know anything. Please note: There is no indication patch 3.3 is dropping. NONE. Update 8:55pm: Blizzard says that the downloading issues are due to "prime time" and gives some advice in this link, mostly suggesting to wait. Update 8:44pm: Blizzard is calling this a "Tools Patch" and saying that "Safe Mode with Networking" is solving some people's problems. Obviously the issues are not fixed. Update 8:30pm: Blizzard says they have fixed the issues. Anyone still having problems should take the steps outlined in this link.
