Google faces anti-trust probe by European Commission
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The anti-trust probe started by European Commission to find out the dominance of Google in the search market will receive co-operation from Google, as per the search giant.
Price comparison site Foundem, French online legal services guide ejustice.fr, and Microsoft-backed German portal Ciao complained against Google alleging that it is using its market power to limit competition their ability to compete and the EC in turn launched an investigation against the company.
According to the one of the complainant, Google’s own price comparison service comes top of the list of results when a user searches for a specific item they want to buy. The same goes for searches for video content.
Google, on the other hand has acknowledged the complaints on its corporate blog.
Apple/Nokia patent dispute to be investigated by ITC
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: An investigation has been launched by the U.S. International Trade Commission into Apple complaints that Nokia has infringed 13 of its patents. The imports of Nokia phones into the USA could be blocked by ITC if the investigation comes down in Apple’s favour.
Apple has claimed in its lawsuit that Nokia chose to “copy the iPhone,” especially its user interface, to make up for its declining share of the high-end phone market. Earlier, Nokia had filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming that Apple infringes on 10 of its patents.
Six administrative law judges (ALJ) will be assigned the case which will make an initial determination as to whether there is a violation of section 337; that initial determination is subject to review by the Commission.
Broadcom wins a round in war against Qualcomm
A judge has fine tuned one of the many disputes between Broadcom and Qualcomm, holding that Qualcomm has in fact violated one of Broadcom’s patents.
The decision passed down by International Trade Commission judge Charles Bullock wasn’t exactly a win-win for Broadcom. He tossed out Broadcom’s complaints around two disputed patents, saying Qualcomm did not violate the patents for technology found in cell phones and other wireless gear. Still, Bullock did find that Qualcomm violated parts of another patent around saving battery life in cell phones patent number 6,714,983.
The two companies have no less than 10 lawsuits and countersuits against each other scattered around worldwide courts. A judge in San Diego last week spanked the founders of both firms and told them to find a way to get along. Not surprisingly, no deal between the rivals has been reached.
The recent decision around Qualcomm’s patent violation – a fact the company disputes – must still go before a full ITC panel before action is taken. Broadcom expects things to go its way.
“The commission is expected to issue a permanent exclusion order barring the importation into the United States of infringing Qualcomm chips, as well as a cease and desist order barring further sales of infringing products that have already been imported into the United States by Qualcomm,” Broadcom said.
Qualcomm has already started to explore designs that will bypass the need for Broadcom’s technology.
According to Qualcomm, judge Bullock recommended that third parties which have already built the technology in question into their products should not face “downstream remedies.” Lucky for them. ®
Source- http://www.theregister.co.uk
