Florian Mueller gives us the details of the patent war between Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC (the 4th largest in the world) and patent troll IPCom in Germany at HTC claims it has engineered around IPCom patent enforced in Germany.
As written by Nick Farrell at Fuldzilla.com:
"IPCom bought Bosch's mobile telephony patent portfolio, created between the mid-1980s and 2000, which includes about 160 patent families worldwide, including some of the key patents in the wireless industry, such as patent 100, which standardises a cellphone's first connection to a network."For those of you who speak German,
see also
the report at DIE ZEIT ONLINE in
Patentstreit um HTC-Smartphones eskaliert
and at Teltarif.de news in
Patentstreit: HTC droht baldiges Verkaufsverbot für Smartphones
as well as the detailed background of IPCOM
at Die Welt in Raubzug der Patenthaie.
The politicians, legislatures and legal community in the USA as well as in Germany have thus far proven incapable of dealing with the patent troll problem which has led to patent trolls creating great harm to domestic and international markets, relations, trade and finance without any comparable benefit to anyone except the patent trolls and their speculative investors.
Bosch had a lot of old patents involving the UMTS 3G standard for telecommuinications and most of these patents have been stupidly and erroneously granted for absolutely obvious state-of-the-art BANAL developments that anyone half-way skilled in the art could have developed.
Why such banalities -- fully obvious telecommunications features pre-dating smartphones -- should permit patent trolls to stop the machinery of international trade is a mystery to this writer, but until legislatures and courts begin to react correctly and put a stop to this nonsense, it will continue, bringing great profits to the extortionist patent speculators and their investors.
Am I wrong or does IPCom via its investor Fortress appear to be financed by some of the same people and/or institutional affiliations that brought us mortgage securities? i.e. the ill-conceived virtually fraudulent instruments which played a significant part in causing the US housing bubble and economic recession and thus helped to lead to the present world financial crisis?
Here is an abstract of the patent of the alleged "invention" on the basis of which a German court in Mannheim previously issued an injunction against HTC:
EP 1186189 (A1) - METHOD OF ALLOCATING ACCESS RIGHTS TO A TELECOMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL TO SUBSCRIBER STATIONS OF A TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK AND SUBSCRIBER STATION
...Abstract not available for EP 1186189 (A1)
...
Abstract of corresponding document: DE 19910239 (A1)
"Method and subscriber station for allocating access rights to a telecommunications channel of a telecommunications network to at least one subscriber station (5, 10, 15, 20) of said telecommunications network. According to the method information signals are transmitted to the at least one subscriber station (5, 10, 15, 20) and access authorization data (45, 50, 55) is transmitted to the at least one subscriber station (5, 10, 15, 20) via said information signals. An evaluation unit (60) of the at least one subscriber station (5, 10, 15, 20) receives the access authorization data (45, 50, 55) and verifies whether said access authorization data (45, 50, 55) contains an access threshold value (S).; This access threshold value (S) is compared with a random number or pseudo-random number (R) and the access right to a telecommunications channel allocated to the at least one subscriber station (5, 10, 15, 20) in accordance with the comparison result."
____________________
The drawing of "the alleged invention" above shows 4 subscriber stations -- one would have been sufficient but then it would have looked patently obvious even to the stupidest patent inspector - to and from which signals can be transmitted (a signal is sent to and received from only one in the drawing above) and a transmitter station sending and receiving signals.
Our conclusion:
NOTHING AT ALL HAS BEEN INVENTED.
Authorization signals and related data are sent and compared between transmitter and receiving station.
That is all.
That patents are granted for this kind of nonsense is an abomination,
a travesty of law and the legal system.
No wonder that world and EU finances are in a shambles. Billions are being awarded to patent and financial speculators for nonsense, absolute nonsense.
WHAT, we ask, are legislators worldwide and especially in the USA and Germany, who should be cleaning up this patent law mess, doing except collecting their over-inflated salary checks and cashing in on their over-generous expense accounts?
