Tag Archives: patent

While the Nintendo Switch has proven to be very successful for Nintendo, one of its perceived shortcomings when compared to the company’s last generation console, the Wii U, is its lack of an integrated stylus. For games such as Super Mario Maker, a stylus allows for a much greater level …

Over the last couple of years, Apple has been slowly phasing out the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the iPhone and replacing it with Face ID. Touch ID might not be gone forever though, as Apple has been awarded a patent for an under-display Touch ID sensor. Apple will continue …

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the leak of Sony's patent for what looked like a new game cartridge. Now, we have information to which system this new cartridge is for – Toio. This is a console designed for children and is currently available in Japan only. After the …

When Sony introduced the PlayStation 4, it announced the arrival of a feature called ‘Share Play’. The feature allowed users to ‘hand off’ their controller to another player through the internet, giving them access to whatever game was being played at the time. It appears that Sony may be eyeing …

Yesterday, a patent for the PlayStation 5 controller was published on the Japanese patent office website. The published document was created by Masaho Morita, a designer previously referenced in other controller patents, and contains images that show the controller's appearance and a brief description of its design. In early October, …

A new patent registered by Sony Interactive Entertainment was found in the INPI (Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial), a government institution from Brazil where the first patent for the PS5 was found. Back on the 26th of June, Sony filed a patent for a new game cartridge for an unknown game system. …

Back in August, GlobalFoundries filed a lawsuit against TSMC claiming patent infringement on chips sold in some of the world’s most popular devices. At the time, GlobalFoundries claimed that 25 patents were being infringed on, but it didn’t take long for TSMC to fire back with a number of patent …

Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, have been openly enamoured with augmented reality for a few years now. The company began dipping its toes into AR with the iPhone 8, which touted a new wave of augmented reality apps for iOS. However, the company’s big goal is to release dedicated …

A couple of decades ago, Nintendo attempted to one-up the entire gaming industry by breaking in to virtual reality far before the technology was truly ready. The Virtual Boy swiftly died but in the last few years, VR has regained ground and is now viable for consumer gaming devices. Nintendo …

Development on next-gen consoles is well underway at this point, with Sony confirming several key specs for the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft announcing Project Scarlet. Developers already have their hands on early versions of this next-gen hardware and while devkits are normally kept heavily under wraps, one particular industry veteran …

Over the last few years, a company known as ‘Xperi Corporation’ has been throwing patent infringement lawsuits at some of the biggest companies in tech. In 2017, Xperi won a settlement and license agreement with Broadcom and managed to achieve the same result against Samsung in December 2018. Now, Xperi …

Rumours of a Pixel Watch came to a head at the start of the year, as Google acquired Fossil’s smartwatch technology for $40 million. Although the company has yet to make anything official with its Pixel branding, a new patent pertaining to quick changing wristbands shows that Google does intend …

Qualcomm’s second lawsuit against Apple might have been dismissed in Germany, but that hasn’t slowed the chipmaker’s offensive against the company as their patent battles rage on. This time, Qualcomm has stipulated that the iPhone maker owes the company $31 million for its alleged violations. When Apple replaced Qualcomm modems …

In the VR world, there are several companies that license patents from a few big players. The HTC VIVE is built using Valve's developed technology, meanwhile the Samsung GearVR is built in partnership with Oculus. Now, it looks like Sony is opening up to licensing out its own virtual reality …

Back in 2016, Blackberry transformed itself from a smartphone maker into a software and licensing company. Since then, the former giant has launched lawsuits at the likes of Facebook and Snap. Things on that front have been quiet since, but this week Facebook launched its counter-attack, claiming that Blackberry infringed …

Back in early 2017, we learned that AMD had filed a lawsuit against TV makers, LG and Vizio, in addition to chip suppliers MediaTek and Sigma Designs. In the complaint, AMD said that these companies were infringing on two patents from the ATI days and requested an investigation from the …

We've seen Samsung defending its smartphones in the court room plenty of times over the years, but there is always another lawsuit around the corner. This week, a lesser-known US data security firm filed a case against Samsung, claiming that the Galaxy series infringes on biometric authentication patents. PACid is …

Apple has lost in court to VirnetX once again. The two companies have been battling it out in court over various patent cases for 8 years, the most recent case pertains to Apple's iMessenger and FaceTime technology. Originally, a court ordered Apple to pay out $625 million for misusing patents …

Activision isn't the only publisher patenting worrying new matchmaking systems designed to raise spending on microtransactions. This week, it came to light that EA has filed for two patents that could impact fair competition in multiplayer games, with one pertaining to Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment and another detailing an ‘Engagement Optimized …

It looks like Apple has another legal matter to add to its ever growing pile of lawsuits. This time around, an Israeli company is suing Apple, claiming that the dual-cameras featured on the iPhone 7 Plus and the iPhone 8 Plus infringe on four patents in total. Corephotonics is the …

Over the last five years, Apple and Samsung have been embroiled in a huge patent lawsuit, with Samsung often ending up on the losing end. At first, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple as much as $1 billion but throughout many appeals, Samsung’s lawyers managed to cut that number down …

Publishers have been putting a lot of time and effort into finding new ways to sell microtransactions to gamers. Some games have managed to get it right, while others have fallen flat and drawn criticism for it. Activision has become the latest example of this, as the publisher recently patented …

After five long years going through the court system, this week a judge ruled that Apple must pay $439.7 million to patent-hoarding firm, VirnetX. The company holds four patents that were apparently infringed on by Apple’s FaceTime software amongst other iOS apps. VirnetX first filed a lawsuit against Apple in …

The Apple Watch has just entered its third generation, bringing better health tracking and LTE capabilities to the table. However, it is already time to look to the future, which could involve self-adjusting watch bands to automatically find the perfect fit for your wrist. Last week, Apple was granted US …

There are a lot of problems associated with drone delivery, from safe landings and take offs, to the family dog attacking it. But a new patent filed by Amazon suggests that dropping parcels by parachute could be a way to alleviate most of the issues and maybe even ditch the …

British Telecom (BT) has announced that it's taking Valve to court, over what it claims are patent infringements by the longtime game developer and publisher. While there does seem to be some merit to the suit, all of the patents are rather generic, so there will likely be some wiggle …

Last year, Apple revealed its new Force Touch technology, which in its current form allows the company to build completely flat, stiff trackpads that don't actually press in for a click. Instead, a little engine under the trackpad uses vibrations to simulate the feeling of clicking a trackpad. However, this …

Late last year, we got wind of a couple of patent filings from Nintendo, showing sketches of a new controller, presumably for the upcoming Nintendo NX console. Now, a leaked image appears to show off what the controller looks like in the flesh and much like the sketch, it looks …

Apple is in and out of the court room with lawsuits constantly and while most of the time the company can work its way out of tough situations, this week Apple lost in a video streaming patent case in Germany to OpenTV. Back in 2014, OpenTV filed a lawsuit against …

Microsoft appears to be experimenting with how we build and upgrade computers as the company has patented a new modular PC design, which would be upgraded by ‘stackable' components. Microsoft is describing this as a “modular computing device” and the patent actually dates quite far back, with it being applied …