A lone ranger has found a massive loophole in what was called the hottest legal battle of the past decade. Earlier this year, Uber received a massive setback, after they were obliged to fork out a hefty $245 million, in order to settle their year long legal battle with Alphabet’s subsidiary Waymo. The tussle began in February 2017, when Waymo sued Uber on grounds of using its trade secrets, related to LiDAR technology, which is implemented in most of the self driving cars we see today. Three former employees of another Alphabet subsidiary, Google, are held responsible for leaking valuable information to Uber when they went on to work for Otto, an Uber subsidiary that specializes in self-driving technology. 14000 confidential documents were stolen that are said to have influenced uber’ latest projects. Besides this, Waymo also listed four cases of patent infringement against Uber related to its LiDAR technology. LiDAR is a method used to measure the target’s distance by illuminating it with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor. The laser gets rebounded off a surface forming a 3D image, forming the fundamentals of how an autonomous car engages with its surroundings. It is imperative for a company that uses Lidar to safeguard their technology. The whole scenario may have put a damper on Uber, but then suddenly out of the blue came Eric Swildens - an engineer by profession but nothing short of a lifeguard. Eric Swildens had co-founded a content delivery network called Speedra networks back in 2002. Having lost the company to Akamai, after being sued for patent infringement and trade secrets violation, he knew how damaging intellectual property trials could be - especially when wrongly accused. He had been closely following the case like many others in silicon Valley and saw it reach a settlement four days into the trial favoring Waymo, in February 2018. He says that when he saw the Megacorp try and gulp down an inferior competitor, he immediately became curious about the patents involved. But even for an engineer, without any prior knowledge on self driven cars, it seemed like a heavy task taking on one of the most valuable companies in the world. However when he moved his feet a little deeper into the case, the whole thing started to make sense - and in a way, Waymo wouldn’t have liked. Waymo’s 936 patent, famously named after the last 3 digits of its serial number, seems to be lacking in its claims. It was a key patent related to LiDAR technology, and seemed questionable on grounds of its originality. According to Swilden, it was a well written patent, but granted for an invention which Waymo never really invented. The 936 patent, filed in 2013, describes a device meant to create pulses of light that the LiDAR system would use for its 3D images. To Swilden’ surprise this actually turned out to be a very simple circuit, and there was no chance of it not having existed before. “You’re talking about a capacitor, a laser diode, a transistor, an inductor, and some other diodes,” Swildens told Wired last year. (source) After further investigating the areas where a similar circuit could have been implemented, he happened to come across a patent that was cited in the 936 patent. It was called high definition lidar system that was filed in 2011 by David Hall, and turned out to be quite analogous to the 936 patent. Next he uncovered a book that depicted the circuits that were claimed to be novel in the 936 patent. In addition to this, he also found a similar firing circuit dated back to 1996 filed by an engineer working for Leica Geosystems, a Swiss mapping technology company. However, being 20 years old even back in 2016, it didn’t help the case much. Now with enough body of evidence, he compiled a 101 page presentation and marched towards the USPTO. He then filed an ex-parte reexamination, asking the USPTO to take a second look at the 936 patent’s validity. Whatever became the fate of the patent in question, Eric Swilden would be $6000 lighter when he comes out of the USPT - with no promise for compensation from either side. That didn’t seem to bother him much. He said, "When I do something, I like to do it properly.” (source) Well the tables did turn, with the USPTO rejecting 53 out of the 56 claims mentioned in the 936 patent. Theoretically, Velodyne could now accuse Waymo of infringing its own 558 patent. As for Eric Swilden, he says his voyage in the case is finished, and taking how busy he is currently, won’t be filing any patent challenges any time soon . #uber #judgments #google #tradesecrets

The recent update on the Apple-Qualcomm legal dispute comes with Qualcomm’s appeal for the import ban of some iPhones getting denied. Apple primarily is facing this lawsuit against those iPhones that contain chips made by Intel corp, which Qualcomm believes, infringes on its patents. What makes this decision so interesting is that even though it was declared that Apple did in fact infringe on one of three patents discussed in the case, Judge Pender took the high road here and decided to favour Apple instead. He highlighted that it was the “public interest factor” that outweighed Qualcomm’s request for a ban, and led him to make this decision. The Judge’s decision is yet to be reviewed by the full commission, however, taking the current situation into perspective, it seems that the ball is in Apple’s court. Qualcomm feels that it makes no sense to turn a blind eye, if it is evident that the infringement has occurred. Qualcomm general counsel Don rosenberg expressed the company’s take over the matter -“We are pleased the ALJ found infringement of our patented technology, but it makes no sense to then allow infringement to continue by denying an import ban." (source) If the other judges go along, this could mean the end of Qualcomm’s hope to extract what otherwise could have been a hefty revenue out of the iPhone maker. But even if a ban was to go into effect, it is still not clear what iPhone models would be affected. In a statement, Apple described how Qualcomm had repeatedly demanded unfair royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with - just to protect their monopoly. Apple stated, “We’re glad the ITC stopped Qualcomm’s attempt to damage competition and ultimately harm innovators and US consumers” (source) He also added, that if this decision goes through, it will violate the ITC mandate that protects American innovators by blocking the import of infringing products. He believes there are many ways Apple could stop infringing their technology without affecting the public interest, if they desired to. This whole altercation started in July 2017 when Qualcomm filed an ITC against Apple claiming that the iPhones that consisted of Intel chips, infringed on 6 Qualcomm patents. These patents described technology used to help smartphones improve their performance by elongating their battery life. When Qualcomm filed the lawsuit against Apple, they made it clear that they were primarily after the way the Intel chips had been enforced into their mobiles - and that it was not actually the chip that violated their patents. “Qualcomm’s inventions are at the heart of every iPhone and extend well beyond modem technologies or cellular standards,” Don Rosenberg said in a statement. “Apple continues to use Qualcomm’s technology while refusing to pay for it” (source) Steven Rodgers, Intel general counsel remarked that Qualcomm had “publicly disparaged Intel’s products” as inferior to Qualcomm during the case. In addition to this, Qualcomm has also accused apple of stealing valuable information, and disclosing it to Intel in order to supplement the performance of Intel chips used in the iPhone. “It is easy to say things, but Intel’s track record is clear,” Rodgers wrote in his post. “Every day, we push the boundaries of computing and communication technologies. And, the proof is in the pudding: last year, the U.S. Patent Office awarded more patents to Intel than to Qualcomm.” (source) #apple #itc #judgments #qualcomm #patents

With the latest news circling the explosion of the newfangled Samsung Galaxy Note9, it seems that the company hasn’t been learning from it’s past mistakes - case in point some similar incidents that took place a couple of years back, which involved the Galaxy Note7. The company was forced to withdraw it’s product from the market then, and there may be a possibility that the Note9 meets a similar fate. Samsung had introduced Water Carbon Cooling in their Note9 smartphones which claimed to increase it’s cooling surface area. Considering that the technology was actually brought in to improve the safety parameters concerning the phone’s battery, this incident sure came as a shock for everyone.What went wrong this time? According to the reports, Diane Chung, a real estate agent in New York, filed a lawsuit at the Supreme Court in Queens County, New York, claiming damages and an injunction against the sale of the Galaxy Note9 in connection with a fire involving the Galaxy Note9. According to Chung, while using the Galaxy Note9 in an elevator, the smartphone suddenly became hot so she put it into her bag. Then, Chung heard a whistle-like sound out of the bag and smoke came out of it. Chung tried to hold her smartphone with her hand but the heated-up smartphone burned her hand. It was reported that the fire was put out only after all things in her bag were thrown out of the bag and she put the smartphone into a bucket filled with water. Chung is demanding both damages and the halt of the device's sale, saying that she has been shocked by the accident and unable to contact her clients. (Source) Samsung launched its Galaxy Note9 series on August 24 in New York. The device claimed all day long battery capacity and had an increased cooling system. Previously, Samsung Electronics had reduced the capacity of the Galaxy Note8 battery to 3,300mAh as compared to 3,500mAh of the Galaxy Note7 - a phone that had been under a lot of controversy due to many of its models catching fire. But now Samsung expanded the battery capacity of the Galaxy Note9 to 4,000mAh, the highest battery capacity until now for any Galaxy Note device. The company seemed confident regarding the phone’s performance owing to its new jargon ‘Water Carbon Cooling System’. We looked upon the newly introduced cooling system in the Galaxy Note9 on the Samsung website. Samsung says, “When we launched the Galaxy S7, we introduced a new type of water-based cooling into our phones. It used a porous thermal spreader filled with water, which absorbed the heat and turned into steam and then carried the heat away through a pipe. Once the heat dissipated, the steam condensed into water again. This system was the blueprint for the Water Carbon Cooling system in the Galaxy Note9, but we wanted to make it bigger and more efficient. The most difficult part of improving the cooling system was to make it more efficient. The original system was thin and used two Thermal Interface Materials (TIM), one made of highly conductive carbon fiber, to transfer heat away from the processor. Our answer was to add a layer of copper between the two TIMs, making it possible to transfer more heat between the two materials for more efficient heat dissipation. We also engineered a wider thermal spreading pipe, coming in at 350mm3 compared to the Galaxy S9’s 95mm3, to dissipate heat over a wider surface area. Thanks to the improved Water Carbon Cooling system, the Galaxy Note9 can effectively manage heat generated from its powerful processor. With the wider thermal spreader and enhanced Carbon Fiber interface, the cooling system conducts and transmits heat efficiently to the surface of the device, allowing the Galaxy Note9 to operate at peak performance consistently. When compared to the Galaxy Note8, the upgraded cooling system’s heat absorption is three times greater and the thermal conductivity is 3.5 times higher.” (Source) Samsung’s decision to increase the battery capacity in the Note9 to such an enormous amount may be seen as an overkill side of things, keeping in mind the fact that the galaxy Note7 fires were actually a result of it’s battery and design flaws. Samsung had to make a comeback in it’s Galaxy Note series and the new Galaxy Note9 sure seemed promising. It had the biggest screen, the fastest processor, the biggest battery, and the largest storage. But it doesn’t make sense to give all these flashy features if the device’s safety is compromised. According to TOM’S GUIDE report of their Indoor tests: Note9 didn’t come out to be the coolest!! When they measured the final temperature of each phone (Note9, Note 8 and iPhone X ),the Note9 was actually the hottest, hitting 106 degrees; the Note8 topped out at 103 degrees, and the iPhone X hit 102 degrees. Note9's water carbon cooling system didn't seem to make any noticeable difference in their tests. The consistency was pretty surprising; given that the Note9 uses a water cooling system with carbon fiber (the Note8 also uses water cooling, but without carbon fiber). Today, all handheld devices require a good cooling system. Samsung’s motive to increase the area for Water Carbon Cooling might have been successful, had they settled with the same battery specifications as of the Galaxy Note8. The improved cooling system alone would have fetched them a good market, and on the side they could figure out a way to increase the battery capacity - devoid of it exploding into flames! Another way to tackle the issue would be devising a heat management system that renders the phone useless until it cools down - similar to what Apple is already implementing in their iphones. The company had claimed that the Note9 will have better performance, and a better cooling system (three times greater heat absorption) than the Note8, but failed miserably. With the crisis dawning upon the Korean electronics maker for the second time now, the Note series looks to be doomed somehow. It’s imperative that they get back to the drawing board to figure out what went wrong, and delve for a plausible solution. Samsung launched its Galaxy A7 and A9 models on October 11, 2018 in Malasia in what they called “A Galaxy Event”. The A7 will be showcasing a triple camera featuring ultra wide angles. The fingerprint scanner is moved to the side - now integrated in the power button. The invite for the event had boldly stated “4X Fun”, that referred to the A9’s quad camera- a feature that will probably take the company ahead of the curve. The four cameras are placed exactly in the order given below- An 8MP Ultra Wide Camera that has a 120 degree coverage (more than what our eyes provide). A 10MP Telephoto Camera that has 2 times optical zoom. A 24MP main camera. A 5MP depth camera that lets you decide what stands out in a frame, and blurs the background. Samsung says that the new device will bring "more ways to express yourself" and will allow you to "capture the fun". They claim that with their new phones, users will be able to capture the real world as they see it. #Samsung

An Apple event usually takes the cherry when it comes to showcasing what’s new in their line of products. The Cuppertino based company arrived with a bang at the launch of their new iPad pro and MacBook air devices, held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Although the iPhone remains to be their headline product, Apple put in a noticeable effort to bolster the sale of its other flagships. The show was more loved than what they had set up during the launch of the new iPhones and Apple watches back in September. They kept the duration 30 min shorter than their last event. A big credit for the show’s success goes to it’s presenters, who were not only super excited to be on stage, but also managed to sway the audience along. All the products unveiled in the event seemed quite captivating, however, the iPad Pro drew most of the attention - it being subject to maximum changes. Inspired by the new iPhones, this iPad pro features an almost edge to edge Liquid Retina Display. It comes in 11-inch (800$) or 12.9-inch (1000$) sizes and replaces the traditional home button with Touch ID. Adding to that, the company has eliminated the fingerprint reader; instead you’ll be unlocking the device with FaceID, Apple’s facial-recognition technology incorporated in the tablet that works in both portrait and landscape orientations. Now with the home button out of the picture, Apple had the flexibility to cut down on the tablet’s size, and they did! This new trimmed down version fits comfortably in your hands, while not compromising on the screen size. Furthermore, Apple offers a couple of useful accessories to go with your iPad, including a modernized smart keyboard ($200) and Apple pencil ($130). Both the add-ons get easily hooked on to the tablet with the help of some special magnets and connectors, and derive power from the tablet itself. The iPAD also gets a new USB-C style port which can be used for charging, as well as plugging it to an external monitor. However, whether this newly transformed iPad could prove to be a useful alternative to the traditional notebook, is still a question of doubt. With the equipment on, it does seem more convenient to work on, but without a mouse or a trackpad, the Pro still lags behind in tasks that demand precision. Well in Apple’s defense, they never designed the iPad to be used as a laptop, and to fill in for the gap, comes the new MacBook Air. Showcasing a phenomenal 13-inch retina quality screen, the new MacBook Air has 4 times the pixels than the previous model. It also packs a touch ID that could be used for unlocking the device, making payment and logging into apps. Along with that, there are two USB-C ports provided which can be used for charging and plugging in external devices. Despite the new retina display which consumes more power, the company stills claims a battery life of 12 hours for the Air. The next big highlight of the show was the new Mac mini - a long anticipated upgrade, with it’s last version dating back 4 years. It can be configured with upto six cores and upto 64 GB of RAM, and with the option of connecting countless Mac minis together, you can easily feed your computing needs. Besides these upgrades, there were a few things the fans were hoping for, but did not get announced at the Apple event. 1. iPad mini Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had speculated that Apple had been working on a new iPad mini, however, was unsure whether the product would be ready by the October event or not. Despite marking the mini 4 as a valuable member in it’s line of products at the event, the mini 5 was nowhere to be found. 2. Air Power & Wireless Charging AirPods Apple had first pre-announced the AirPower at the iPhone X event in 2017. The iPhone XS launched in September, but the event didn’t have a single mention of the much anticipated AirPower, which left the fans discouraged, who now eyed the October event. Much to their disappointment, it is still a pending update. 3. iMac updates The last meaningful update to the iMac was an year and a half back. Several reports suggested that the iMac would be on the list of Macs to be updated at the recent event. There were rumors that stated several display upgrades along with some new processors, and the presence of Apple’s T2 security chip. Apparently these rumors weren’t true, and it still needs to be seen when Apple is actually planning to bring new life into this aging mac. 4. ECG app for the Apple Watch During its launch, the Apple watch series 4 featured a cutting edge ECG app that allowed users to see an electrocardiogram of their heart activity on placing their finger on the digital crown. Surprisingly, this ECG app was not included in the watchOS 5 that came with the series 4. Even with the watchOS 5.1 releasing on the same day as the October event, this particular app was nowhere to be found. 5. 12-inch MacBook updates Like the iMac, it seems that the current 12-inch Macbook will be sticking around for a while. However, the recently launched Retina Macbook Air poses a significant threat to the longevity of the year old 12-inch notebook. With features like touch ID, 8th-gen Intel chips, and a T2 chip, the MacBook Air definitely seems like the better option of the two. #Apple

Around the year 1850, Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Kelvin) stated the First Law of Thermodynamics, that total energy is conserved -“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another” Energy conservation has to be among the most researched areas in today’s world. With the need for energy consumption increasing by the day, it is imperative that we figure out strategies, which not only help conserve energy, but also produce it. Automobiles, households and most importantly smart phones, are some areas where such strategies could be implemented. Focusing on Smart Phones and related communication devices like Smart Watches, this article talks about how display technologies are improving to reduce battery consumption. Battery consumption is one of the most important factors that are looked into while buying a Smartphone. Smart phone displays are getting bigger and better, but so is their capacity to drain the battery life. The battery capacity for smart devices can only be increased to a certain limit, beyond which it can become hazardous for the user. Apple recently launched its fourth generation Apple watch. An advanced communication system, along with revolutionary health capabilities, including a new accelerometer and a gyroscope are just a few of it's amazing features. What takes the crown is the new electrical heart rate sensor that is useful in taking an Electrocardiogram (ECG) using the new ECG app. In addition to that, the watch also got a 30 percent increase in the display size over the previous generation Apple watch. Besides the flashy specs, Apple brought in the new LTPO-TFT display technology, which is by far the most important upgrade to the watch. The company claims that this technology would help improve the power efficiency of the battery. Fig 1: Apple Watch Series 4[2] Why Apple moved to LTPO Apple uses LTPS-TFT technology in their iPhone x models. A major drawback of this technology is that it reduces the pixel density of the display. The pixel density of the iPhone X is 459 PPI, however it only works on 306 PPI which is lower than the 326 PPI of the Retina LCD screen of the iPhone. The reason for this is the PenTile pixel-aligned OLED screen of the iPhone X. Apple uses the LTPO-TFT technology for restoring the RGB subpixels alignment, so that the display panels give high-resolution image quality. LTPO technology can also improve the battery life for the future Apple smartphones. LTPO-TFT can save up to 5-15% more power when compared to LTPS-TFT, by decreasing the power consumption of the display screen. In addition to power savings, LTPO-TFT panels are easier to make. They also have higher pixel density (greater resolution) and refresh rates (240Hz or higher) than LTPS-TFT. LTPS-TFT In the LTPS-TFT (Low Temperature Polysilicon Thin Film Transistor) process, a thin layer of amorphous silicon (~ 50 nm) is deposited on a glass substrate. This is annealed and crystallized using excimer laser of 300nm to convert the a-Si into the Polysilicon layer. The laser is scanned over an amorphous silicon layer, through which an amorphous silicon layer is melted by absorbing the ultraviolet radiations. Once the laser passes, the melted material solidifies and becomes a Polysilicon layer. This whole process occurs at a temperature lower or equal to 600 degree Celsius. LTPS-TFT has regular grain patterns which is better than the amorphous silicon TFT (previously used in electronic devices). Because of these regular grain patterns, the movement of electron is 100 times faster than amorphous silicon which results in high resolution and pixel quality. Drawbacks of LTPS The quality of LTPS-TFT decreases due to an increase in temperature when the transistor is on, which degrades the film by breaking the Si-H bonds in the material. This causes the device to suffer from drain breakdown and current leakage, mostly in small and thin transistors. IGZO “IGZO” is an acronym for indium gallium zinc oxide. IGZO-TFT is used as an oxide transistor, as it reduces the need for backlight intensity, and improves the battery life of the display panel. IGZO-TFT also has higher electron mobility than LTPS. Smaller IGZO transistors also help increase the pixel density of display panels. LTPO-TFT LTPO-TFT (Low Temperature Polysilicon Oxide Thin Film Transistor) is the combination of two different elements i.e. LTPS and IGZO, which gives high current when the transistor is on, and low power consumption when the transistor is off. LTPS Transistor is used because of its high switching speed and good drive current, whereas Oxide transistor (e.g. IGZO transistors) is used for its low leakage current. LTPS transistors and Oxide Transistors are formed with different layouts. LTPS transistors have long gate lengths (L) and short gate widths (W) which ensure low ratios of W/L, and also reduce the high mobility of these transistors. This may cause LTPS Transistors to be inefficient for pixel layout. On the other hand, Oxide transistors are constructed with W/L ratios with smaller aspect ratios (4/4 for oxide relative to 3/30 for LTPS). Due to these layout efficiency considerations, it is preferred to use Oxide transistors as a drive transistor in a display pixel. LTPO achieves more efficient electron mobility, better stability, and scalability because of less leakage of the oxide TFT structure than that of LTPS. #Apple #LTPOTFT #patents

Imagine living in a home surrounded by devices ready to track every little move you make. I’m talking about every little detail that is physically noticeable to the human eye - ranging from the print on your t-shirt, to what you had for dinner on the weekend. Believe you me, this is not a CIA operation we’re talking about, but an actual patent by Google that describes a home automation system, that will suggest or automatically implement household policies on sensed observations. Think of it like that one time you wanted to buy shoes online, and after a few searches, all you could see were shoe ads everywhere. This new patent however, takes things to the next level, and consequently isn’t as straight forward. In the first Patent, Google talks about devices that would scan and analyze the interior of your place, and then reciprocate by offering you content based on what they discovered. A smart camera for instance could detect the presence of a movie poster on the wall, that directly points towards your liking of that film or the actors in it. Responding to this observation, the device will provide you information regarding any upcoming movie of a similar genre. Besides the more obvious inferences, the device tries to delve into factors that help it connect with the user more intimately. Take fashion sense for example. This device can scan your clothing and even deduce how good you are financially by detecting the presence of any expensive piece of equipment at your place. Audio signatures used to identify users, can also help determine gender and age based on the timbre of their voice.This information is then piled up into categories of taste, income, and interest, which helps in making recommendations that are pertinent. This whole concept of being under surveillance at all times may seem intrusive, but it’s something that has been in effect since a long time now. Google and Facebook take note of our online activity and sort people into categories. This helps them decide the appropriate content to be targeted at their audience. It’s believable that Facebook knows your race and religion, while Google uses your emails and search history to sort you into ad-ready brackets. Netflix on the other hand derives information based on the kind of content users watch, and reciprocates by providing hyper-specific movie and TV categories. This new patent shall just expand the horizon for mining your behavior further. The second patent suggests a smart-home system that would serve as your household companion by using sensors and cameras that monitor kids’ behavior. Parents could be made aware if there’s usage of foul language among children, and determine if there are instances where mature and objectionable content has been surfed on the internet. Besides that, occupancy sensors can be used to mark areas that are out of bound for children- Like the house bar, or even the swimming pool. There could be a smart lighting system used to alert children if they are caught breaking the house rules, by changing the lighting scheme. An automation system this efficient makes it easier to set goals, and more importantly help you stay on track. It also opened gates for companies that evaluate home behavior and consequently offer rewards if you do well. Internal goals can be set by the household to achieve desirable living standards which could include “less time on any kind of screen”, or “low calorie diet for 1 week”. Accordingly, Google devices could connect you with vendors or third party apps that would help evaluate your progress. Health Insurance companies have started partnering with companies and reward employees who meet certain fitness standards. Landlords could use occupancy sensors to keep a track of who comes and goes, or keep a check on their pet if they’re away. Life-insurance companies can also penalize smokers caught on camera. For a reward system to work efficiently the devices would have to be functional at all times, taking note of even the minutest of details. As much as it’s intriguing, it’s also scary how much information can be revealed from mere auditory inferences. The smart home system can detect if an individual is working, from an audio signature of keyboard clicking or papers shuffling. It doesn’t stop there. The smart home system can make inferences on your mood if it hears voices of crying or shouting. It can also assess your dental hygiene based on the sounds and images it collects while you brush your teeth. Clearly, this patent is bound to raise questions, if only for the fact that people would eventually have to choose between convenience and invasion of privacy. This patent sure promises to shape modern living standards, but whether people would be willing to go ahead with it, still remains to be seen. #google #homeautomation #patents

Remember when people used to carry cell phones the size of bricks? This is around the time when instead being an economic necessity, the cell phones only served a singular purpose - calling. Let’s quickly go through some of the key milestones ( focusing on the basic embodiment) that helped shape what would now be referred to as man’s most loved invention. 1973 - The first ever phone call was made by Doctor Martin Cooper, a Motorola employee in New York using a prototype Dyna TAC phone. This phone however, wasn’t just another one of your accessories you could carry around in your pocket. It weighed more than a kilogram, and took 10 hours to charge. 1983 - The first mobile is launched in the market, named Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, that would leave you $4000 USD lighter if planned on buying one. 1989 - The Motorola 9800X hits the shelves - a device which we could legitimately call the first portable phone. It showcased a flip down mechanism that could cover the keypad. 1994 - IBM launches the first touchscreen phone called Simon, that even had a primitive version of what is popularly known today as Apps. It has also been called the first Smart phone, though no one at that time really knew what the term meant. Operable in only 15 of the total no of states in America, this phone would have costed you $899 to buy the Simon. In a different part of the globe, Nokia launches it’s 2110 model in Europe, and became the smallest GSM phone available at the time. 1997 - Ericcson brings out a phone with colored keyboard panels, while Siemens launches the first colored screen phone - the S10. 1998 - Nokia launches it’s customisable 5110 which incorporated replaceable faceplates. 2000 - The Sharp j-SH04 becomes the first camera phone on the market, although, available exclusively in Japan. Blackberry launches their 857 which supports email and web browsing. 2004 - Motorola launches the Razr V3. With it’s ultra sleek finish, it was no doubt the most good looking phone back in the day which definitely set design standards for its rivals. 2007 - Apple launches the first generation iphone which changed the tech industry. Nobody had seen anything like it before and it was an instant success. 2008 - The first android phone is released called the G1. It has limited touchscreen and a slide out keyboard 2011 - Samsung establishes itself as the biggest smartphone vendor. The Galaxy S II is a hit, packing an 8MP camera with a phenomenal AMOLED display. 2013 - Apple implements a fingerprint scanner in the touch button of its iphone 5s, after which the concept became mainstream. 2017 - Screen design dominance is on the rise, with Samsung S8 and iPhone X adopting over 82% screen to size ratio. Impressive right? We went from shaping the cell phone to the cell phone shaping our lives. Studying this exponential climb of technology, one thing is certain - there’s always scope for something new, and Sony’s new patent sure proves that. Sony’s Patent “Display device and electronic apparatus” got published on 22 November 2018. The patent describes a smartphone with dual screens, both at the front and rear. The first display is equipped with light emitting elements while the second display has light controls that would manipulate the reflection of incoming light, with the aim to create a transparent display. As reported by LetsGoDigital, the display is made up of self-illuminating pixels that are two-dimensionally arranged in a matrix arrangement. Each pixel has an individual light control element that controls the transmission and reflection of incoming light. The light emitting element radiates light to both sides of the display surface (front and rear). Due to the amount of light emission and the amount of light variation, the optical transparency of each pixel changes, resulting in a transparent display. The smartphone also consists of a light sensor and a gravity position sensor, such as an acceleration sensor and/or a gyro sensor. These sensors would determine whether the display is being used in the front or rear. The front side is also provided with buttons that could be either physical or touch responsive. The user has the option to choose from 6 different modes, 3 for each side. They range from transparent, to semi - transparent, to non transparent. Next the patent talks about different smartphone designs where the patented technology can be implemented - a foldable phone for instance. It would constitute of 4 screens, with two displays opposite each other. Each screen would have a separate control, with the help of which the user gets the option to customize each screen with the mode of his choice (transparent, semi - transparent, non - transparent). In addition to this, the patent also describes the possibility to produce three or more foldable displays. ( 6 screens in total). Now with multiple screens implemented on the device, what remains to be seen is how Sony plans to monitor its power consumption. A high performance screen like this one would definitely pose a challenge concerning the battery life. Most devices that involve a display today are heading towards transparent screen technology, so it would be reasonable to say that this move by Sony might just prove to be their ticket to revive themselves in the Smart Phone industry. #Sony #technology

A recent analysis brings to us that Swiss research institutes have transcended Oxford and Stanford in terms of patent quality, putting Switzerland in 3rd position globally. 17 technology fields were assessed, out of which a total of 671 Swiss patents were analyzed. The international comparison included ten institutions ranked among the world leaders in research. The analysis was commissioned by the domain of the Swiss Federal institutes of technology (ETH domain) and carried out by BAK economics. The results reflected that a third of the total patents produced by the ETH domain constituted the top 10% of internationally ranked patents in their field. The analysis was based on 2 main criteria - technological impact ( number of citations of the patents by third parties) and their media coverage ( no of countries in which the patents were filed). Besides Harvard and Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT), the ETH domain did better than the rest of the competition. Switzerland was found to be strong in areas such as drone technology, security technology and photovoltaic energy. The country also has a strong monopoly in patents related to quantum technology, image analysis and radiodiagnostics and radiotherapy.The ETH Domain patents have been cited by more than 2000 companies and research institutions. Switzerland’s ETH Domain institutions comprise of two Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich and Lausanne (ETHZ and EPFL respectively); and four research institutes: the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). In total, they produced 206 patents, 505 industry collaborations and 48 spin-off companies in 2017. Another significant finding from the analysis showcased how China had overtaken Europe in many technological domains when it comes to patents. The interesting thing is that China hadn’t started filing patents in these sectors until 10 years ago. However, this doesn’t necessarily point towards the growth of the country’s national power. When measuring China’s evolution in Patent technology, it is important to consider the source of Chinese innovation. The Chinese government encourage universities, companies and backyard inventors to file patents in bulk, while shutting eyes to the importance of drafting claims that are useful. Despite the high rate of patent filing in China, most of the patents lose meaning within the first five years of the grant, as the owners refuse to pay the escalating fees. Besides that, 9 out of every 10 design patents turn out to be flawed. So regardless of the no patent applications that come out of a country, volume can never be regarded as a decisive factor in determining nationwide growth. A total of 3,168,900 patent applications were filed in 2017 across the globe, up 5.8% for an eighth straight yearly increase. While these numbers are constantly shooting up, it’s important that innovators maintain a balance between quality and quantity.

What’s being called as the greatest animation film of all time, the new spider-man movie is definitely setting new standards in Hollywood Town. In fact, the movie visuals are so extraordinary that Sony actually went forward and filed a patent, protecting the animation process and technologies used to produce Spider-Man : Into the Spider-Verse. The film’s distinctive visual achievement brings back the storytelling that was depicted in Vintage Marvel Comics. The movie showcases the use of various old school animation techniques including Ben-Day dots, thought balloons, panels, written sound effects and deliberate alignment flaws in color separation. This whole concept of using retro style animation looks like a fusion of 3D , stop motion and 2D making it look as if the comic book came alive. It didn’t take long for its filmmakers to realize that the movie’s potential exceeded beyond normal limits, marking its innovations as special and distinctly inventive. The filing cites a half-dozen specific components of the process, however they made no comment on the patent application, or its contents. The film’s directors (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman) see this project as an opportunity to open the floodgates for better, more creative styles of animation, setting aside the predominant CG animation for once. The intent for using this particular style they explain, was to constitute the impression of hand drawn art and its textures into the finished product. Every frame in the movie finds a computer generated image as its origin, which is followed by an overlay of hand drawn art. This has its own set of challenges, with each frame coming out unique, giving rise to imperfections. But that was the point. The whole idea to make it look choppy was to create an impression like you’re flipping through comic book pages. The conventional CGI that accounts to a digitally clean and more precise output could have never achieved that. Needless to say, Sony put in a lot of effort putting this project together. For the hand drawn aspirations of the Spider-verse to see the day of light, a new visual language had to be created, following the animation and lighting pipeline rebuilt from scratch. Moreover, it was a cumbersome process. Most animated projects today would require a week’s worth of labor to produce 4 seconds of screen action. For Spider-verse it was more like a week of work for every single second. The film’s shot count (number of shots the camera takes during the total length of the film) is also two- to three-times the number found in other animated releases. Now it’s all up to the USPTO to figure out whether the effort put into engineering this project was an innovative one or not. Here’s a summary of the Sony patent application’s claim: Unique rendering and compositing technologies that can artistically modify the smooth shading of a surface via “stylized quantization.” Those technologies can add specific patterned-controls over the break-up of light hitting skin and also integrate half-tone dots and hatched lines (called “Screentones”). Sony also shed some light over the technology used to make the Spider-Verse. The company describe an Ink-line software that allows an artist to draw on the character surface irrespective of the underlying geometry - something close to illustration techniques. The hand-drawn lines of the character faces are converted to geometry and then rigged for animation control. The patent filing further discusses a machine learning component which facilitates the process as an automated function that predicts the position of lines on the next frame. The extrapolated lines gives animators an advantage for fine-tuning the lines. The application also cited “stylized abstractions of reality” constructed with shading tools that create the illusion of depth on a flat surface, the emulation of interior volumes of buildings and illustrated graphic reflections. Other than that the application points to some artist-friendly lighting tools that interactively light-up large sections of buildings while maintaining crisp, hard shadows. Despite the great response for the most part, there were some viewers who felt differently. This new approach of combining the traditional animation with the current digital form, just didn’t do it for some people. While some people appreciated the idea of adding fewer in-betweens in the animation which gives it the stylized look, others hated this approach. They stated, that despite the stunning visuals, the FPS of characters seemed annoyingly low, which just took away from the movie. Well, seeing the movie’s success at the box office, a few negative reviews don’t account to much significance. Already being considered as the best animation movie of the year, Spider-Verse alongside its cast and crew is all set for for a plausible winning spree in the coming Golden Globes and Academy Awards. #Sony

The U.S - China trade war is at its peak, and it looks to me that the two greatest world economies have taken the phrase "fight fire with fire" a bit too seriously. With both sides calling eye for an eye, the tariff they imposed on each other was recently reported to have covered goods worth more than $300 billion. This trade war has left people dreading a possible relapse of the turmoil caused during the great depression. The United States has always expressed grave concern regarding China’s attitude towards handling affairs pertaining to intellectual property rights - and rightly so. Following a 7 month investigation, the United States trade representative inferred that China’s intellectual property theft had been hitting the American economy hard - with an estimated damage of $225 to $600 billion annually. Adding to that, is another problem, which the US authorities like to call China’s “forced technology transfer”. They are basically referring to China’s business strategy when a foreign company wants to do bring their product in their country, where they “willingly” have to share their intellectual property with a domestic partner. So in order to get access to sell your product in Chinese markets, you would also have to transfer a part of your technology. This happens almost everywhere when manufacturing is involved, and seems fair. The problem arises when a country decides to get greedy. In china’s case, when the domestic employees got sufficiently skilled to run all operations on their own, they started their own company, while kicking the foreign company out, at their disposal. The US claims damages worth anywhere between $180 billion to $540 billion annually due to the forced technology transfer, holding China responsible for most of it. Thankfully, China has started to realize that the whole spat about imposing unjustified tariffs on each other isn’t benefiting anyone, and have finally decided to do something about it. In order to put this thing to rest, they are trying to fix the main grounds on which all the quarrel started- Intellectual property violation. As of January 1, China’s Supreme court would be taking on all the cases pertaining to intellectual property rights. This would be China’s first ever appeal court for intellectual property disputes. Prior to this decision, it was the provincial level high courts that would handle such cases. The main agenda for this movement is to bolster the IP protection law that prevails in the country and eliminate IP theft to maximum extent. The move will "help prevent inconsistency of legal application and improve the quality and efficiency of trials," as said by Deputy Chief Justice Luo Dongchuan. (source) We could also expect a hike in the compensation amount for IP law violation up to 5 times its present value. The new Supreme court is aimed to handle cases strictly relevant to cases involving patents, new varieties of plants, the design of integrated circuit boards and computer software, and monopolies, among other things. Cases concerned with unfair competition, trademarks or commercial secrets would not be addressed by this court. Besides that, there was another draft law proposed at the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, that reflects on allowing victims of intellectual property theft to sue for damages. A major issue pointed out by foreign companies was the existence of different standards at different local courts. The national appeal could help centralize the system, that would protect foreign companies from local protectionism. Luo also made it clear, that this decision to set up a new supreme court does not come as result of foreign persistence, but their own will to strengthen their intellectual property law, which forms an integral part of the country’s development. “China has for many years followed international regulations and international treaties to protect intellectual property rights,” he added.“So it’s not because of the demands by foreign countries that we’ve stepped up protection [efforts]. This is an integral part of our own development.” (source) Interestingly, China has always been of the opinion that it most certainly justifies its role as a member of the World Trade Organisation, and does everything in its power to protect intellectual property rights that concern foreign firms. However, most foreign companies that are currently operational in China, or have been in the past, beg to differ. Though improvements have been made in IPR protection, they are barely sufficient for a country that is now the second-largest economy of the world. #China #patents

US20190101980A1 was published by Sony that describes a head mounted display and prescription glasses to be worn with it. Instead of incorporating the eye tracking system in the HMD alone like their traditional headset, Sony decided to implement it in the prescription glasses as well. This could eliminate the image distortions created by the lens of the prescription glasses as seen before. The user information captured by the glasses is transmitted through a wireless signal to the HMD by the emitter. This signal is in the form of pulses of data that carry the gaze information to the HMD. Electro optical elements such as infrared LEDs are implemented in the glasses to illuminate the user's eyes. #sony #virtualreality #emergingtech #patents #technology #electronics

Online payments company PayPal has been awarded US Patent No. 10262138B2 that describes a technique to combat ransomware attacks. The first method described in the patent suggests an alert system that triggers when a program is attempting to encrypt data where the user has full discretion whether to halt the program or not. The alternative method talks about duplicating the unaffected original file and saving it at a remote server before it gets encrypted. #paypal #technology #patents #fintech #emergingtech #electronics