ST Microelectronics, a company that provides hardware components, has recently been found to have supplied HTC with microphone components for their upcoming flagship, the HTC One, that were supposed to be exclusively for Nokia.

A district court in Amsterdam has agreed that The One might be using Nokia-exclusive microphone technology, and has granted Nokia a preliminary injunction. Apparently, the dual membrane microphone setup seen in the One was manufactured using technology solely meant for Nokia phones. This implies a direct breach of an NDA signed by ST  between Nokia and themselves.

This can only spell disaster for HTC. The already delayed One may face further sales problems if this is found to be true. A recent profits analysis shows …

It appears that Vodafail – Vodafone – sorry, I couldn’t help it – has been under scrutiny from the public (and the ombudsman) for a long time now. They’ve been unfortunate enough to have many upon many customer complaints, have had to give out many free phones in compensation and cancelled many subscriptions. But, that’s not the worst of it – Vodafone has faced horrible publicity, lost many customers and tarnished their good global name.

Was it their fault? Perhaps – but only to the extent that Voda didn’t plan correctly for the onslaught of data usage we’ve seen in the last couple of years. Are they bad people who sit there stealing our money and laughing their heads …

I may just be unreasonably hungry right now, but gobbling up all of Kodak’s patents in one fell swoop does sound mighty scrumptious. Being one of the biggest players in the photography game and having picked up a nice patent portfolio, Kodak hold a large number (1,100) of the patents for digital imaging.

Anyway, these patents supposedly hold a whole lot of substance and whoever is able to add them to their own portfolio at the end of the day. It had earlier looked like the tech giants of the world would start bidding against one another for these patents, but it looks like Apple and Google may be teaming up to purchase them for a lump sum for $500 …

In the latest  instalment of the Samsung-Apple court case saga, Judge Lucy Koh has granted Samsung’s lawyers permission to view an unredacted version of the recent HTC-Apple cross-licensing agreement.

The reasoning used by Samsung’s lawyers to get Judge Koh on-side was to argue that the HTC-Apple agreement is relevant to its arguments against Apple’s permanent injunction motion, as well as to determine what a reasonable fee would be should Apple prevail.

Even more interesting is that The Guardian reports that FOSS Patent blogger Florian Mueller was able to get his hands on a redacted version of the cross-licensing agreement with a few interesting details:

• any change of ownership of either company, unless otherwise agreed, results in the …

Update: ciwrl, the member of the CM team that posted the PSA earlier has stated that the situation has been resolved. Cyanogenmod.org will remain the primary domain, which I agree, is more appropriate. Here is the updated post.

CyanogenMod, the popular custom rom, fell victim to some internal betrayal over the past week.

Steve a.k.a Cyanogen, the founder of CyanogenMod was impersonated by the original donator of the CM domain. He made referral deals with community sites under Steve’s name, having control of all of CM’s properties.

When confronted and asked to hand over control of the domain amicably, he decided he wanted 10K USD for it, which we won’t (and can’t) pay.

The original domain cyanogenmod.com is down, but …

Big news: according to The Verge, HTC and Apple have agreed to end all outstanding patent litigation against each other worldwide, and have signed a ten-year license agreement covering existing and future patents. A short joint press release from HTC and Apple has announced the “global settlement”, of which the specific terms of the settlement are confidential. HTC’s CEO, Peter Chou, said that the company “was pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation”.

While the details of the agreement are confidential, an HTC representative told The Verge that they did not expect the agreement to “have any adverse material impact on the financials of the company”.

While we’re glad …

Well well, what do you know – there’s another lawsuit on our hands. Well, this is more of a continuation of a lawsuit that didn’t end too well for Samsung last time. To refresh your memory – last time in August Samsung was told that they would have to pay Apple a whopping $1.05 billion US for damages in  ’copying’ Apple’s design cues. This was largely due to creating a rectangular device with rounded corners – <s> that’s some true innovation! </s>

Well, it appears as though there have been a few changes to this case as of late. Samsung has approached Judge Grewal to include the iPhone 5 in the counter-suit against Apple. But, we already knew that was …

Less than 48 hours ago we reported that Apple was ordered to remove their “untrue” and “incorrect” notice and replace them with a notice that complied with the original ruling.

Well it turns out that within 48 hours on, despite Apple’s (rejected) request for 14 days to comply with the order, Apple has issued a new complying notice.

Apple’s UK website now contains a new statement regarding the inaccuracy and non-compliance of the original order:

 On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to Samsung’s Galaxy tablet computers.That statement was inaccurate and did not comply with the order of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.

The statement then contains a  link…

Remember that story we ran about a week ago when the UK court said that Apple still must post a public apology on their website for 6 months about the Apple vs Samsung case? Well, it appears as though apology has gone live and – well – it’s more of a joke than we’d expected.

The statement starts off with a declaration of Samsung’s innocence, which quickly turns the other way -

On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic(UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do notinfringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001.

The page goes on to quote some lines from the …

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd has received more ammunition in its ongoing US patent defence case against Apple Inc. in the form of a US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruling. According to TNW, the US Patent and Trademark Office has filed an initial ruling invalidating Apple’s Patent Number 7,469,381.

This ruling, if made final, will invalidate all of the claims made in the patent including the rubber-banding patent that was used against Samsung in the recent patent trial where Apple was awarded damages of US$1.05b.

The rubber-banding patent relates to the bouncing animation (like a rubber band) that occurs on iOS devices when you reach the end of a page or list.  Samsung had originally had a …

Remember when we reported a while back that Samsung was about to have some incredibly exciting and hilarious positive media? This was when Apple was forced to print ads on their own website and leading publications in the UK for a 6 month period. But, these ads wouldn’t be promoting their own product, but rather, promoting their direct competitor – Samsung.

The acknowledgment must come from the horse’s mouth … Nothing short of that will be sure to do the job completely.

As such, Apple will be forced to publish ads on their homepage for a 1-month period. The ads won’t take up the whole page, but there’ll be a clear link to the Apple/Samsung courtcase that will display the …

Remember that slide-to-unlock patent that Apple has had for a while? It’s the one that forced Android OEMs & Google to change the way they their devices are unlocked. Instead of sliding along a predefined line (which Apple had patented), OEMs were forced to innovate and change the way their devices were locked – otherwise, in some circumstances, they’d be banned.

In the end, things changed and devices went for more of a circle-style unlock than along a line. However, with Apple’s new patent there have been a few major changes. The new claims says that Apple owns the rights to a path of “continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the detected …