BlackBerry and Qualcomm reached a settlement resolving all amounts payable in connection with an interim arbitration decision announced in April (see 1704120059), BlackBerry said Friday. Qualcomm will pay $940 million by May 31, including interest and attorneys’ fees and royalties for 2016 and Q1 of this year, it said. BlackBerry said in April that Qualcomm would have to pay a minimum of $815 million for patent royalty overpayments stemming from a Feb. 27-March 3 binding arbitration hearing in San Diego over whether Qualcomm’s agreement to cap certain royalties was applicable to a licensing agreement between the companies. In response to our request for comment Friday, a Qualcomm spokeswoman referred us to the company's April 13 news release. She also cited comments from Canaccord Genuity technology analyst Michael Walkley, saying: "In 2010, before its smartphone business collapsed, BlackBerry signed a nonrefundable agreement with Qualcomm covering royalty payments through 2015." Further, "A slump in demand for the Canadian company’s devices following the accord meant that it shipped far fewer phones than it expected, leading it to seek a refund on some of the payments.”

Apple and Nokia said Tuesday they reached a patent licensing agreement that ends a six-month legal dispute over Apple's use of Nokia-patented technology in its iPhones. Nokia sued Apple in the U.S. and 10 other countries for patent infringement after Apple said it wouldn't continue to pay patent royalties to Nokia. The settlement resulted in a new patent licensing agreement in which Apple will pay royalties to Nokia effective in Q2. The companies said the pact involves Apple beginning to sell Nokia-made digital health products in its stores.

Qualcomm sued Apple iPhone manufacturers Compal Electronics, Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron, opening a new front in the Apple-Qualcomm patent licensing battle. Apple sued Qualcomm in January on claims the smartphone chipmaker gouged Apple for billions of dollars in patent royalties on technologies it didn't own (see 1701230067). Qualcomm countersued (see 1704110026). Qualcomm also faces an FTC complaint the manufacturer had a monopoly in baseband processors used in cellphones and other devices (see 1701170065, 1704040040 and 1704040037). Qualcomm’s lawsuit against the manufacturers, filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego, claims the firms are in breach of patent licensing agreements and other commitments to Qualcomm by refusing to pay royalties on products they made for Apple, which also include iPads, at the company’s behest. Apple faces a separate lawsuit for interfering in Qualcomm's licensing agreements (see 1704200016). The firms entered into the agreements before they began making iPads and iPhones and are still paying royalties on all non-Apple products, Qualcomm said. “We cannot allow these manufacturers and Apple to use our valuable intellectual property without paying the fair and reasonable royalties to which they have agreed," said Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg in a news release. "As Apple continues to collect billions of dollars from consumer sales of its Qualcomm-enabled products, it is using its market power as the wealthiest company in the world to try to coerce unfair and unreasonable license terms from Qualcomm in its global attack on the company.” Apple pointed to CEO Tim Cook’s statement during the company’s Q2 earnings call (see 1705030051) that Qualcomm is “trying to charge Apple a percentage of the total iPhone value” when its patents are just “one small part of what an iPhone is.”

Samsung, Intel and others filed in support of the FTC’s complaint against Qualcomm alleging the smartphone chip manufacturer had a monopoly in baseband processors used in cellphones and other devices (see 1701170065 and 1704040040). The entities Friday filed proposed amicus briefs in support of the FTC’s opposition to Qualcomm’s April motion to dismiss the complaint (see 1704040037). Qualcomm’s licensing practices are “exclusionary,” Samsung said (in Pacer). “Despite having requested a license from Qualcomm, Samsung cannot sell licensed Exynos chipsets to non-Samsung entities because Qualcomm has refused to license Samsung to make and sell licensed chipsets.” Qualcomm has “inflicted and continues to inflict precisely the harms that the antitrust laws seek to protect against,” Intel said (in Pacer). ACT│The App Association said it believes standard essential patent “abuses” of the type the FTC has claimed limit its members’ “ability to obtain fully licensed standardized components, or that and usurp value or technology that our members’ have themselves created.” The FTC’s complaint outlines behavior that if allowed to continue “would grievously harm industry and consumer interests in adapting current industries -- and building new industries -- that utilize technologies associated with 5G and IoT,” ACT wrote (in Pacer). “Such behaviors stunt businesses that rely on -- or will soon rely on -- an efficient, fair and balanced approach to licensing of wireless communication standards.” Dismissal of the FTC’s complaint “not only would prevent the FTC from addressing a serious anticompetitive problem in the mobile cellular industry, but would undermine the enforcement of the antitrust laws in other industries that are dependent on standard setting and throughout the economy,” the American Antitrust Institute said (in Pacer).

Vizio developed a system of "tracking pixels and cookies" that enables "real-time" monitoring of TV "programming consumption specific to an individual television or other viewing device,” said a patent application published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. “The ability to accurately determine in near real-time exactly what TV program or advertisement each and every TV viewer in the U.S. is watching at any moment has long been an unmet market need,” said the application, assigned to Vizio Inscape Technologies, and naming Zeev Neumeier, Michael Collette and Leo Hoarty as inventors. “One reason this has been such a challenge is because it would require being able to identify not just what channel has been tuned to, but specifically what content is being watched, since the media actually being consumed by the viewer can include not just the scheduled programming but also regionally or locally-inserted advertisements, content that has been time-shifted, or other entertainment products.” The invention envisions that information about media consumption “by such specific television sets or other viewing means may be returned to a commercial client of the system through a trusted third-party intermediary service,” it said. “In certain embodiments, encoded tokens may be used to manage the display of certain events as well as to enable robust auditing of each involved party's contractual performance.” Vizio reached an agreement with the FTC in February to pay $2.2 million to settle allegations it fashioned its Inscape viewer-tracking function in its smart TVs to spy on consumers' viewing habits without their knowledge and then sold the data to third parties (see 1702060042). Company representatives didn’t comment Monday on commercial plans to use the technology described in the new patent.

Voxx subsidiary EyeLock received U.S. Patent No. 9,633,260 for biometric identity authentication said to contribute to the performance of EyeLock's technology used in mobile devices. The invention uses conditions of the eye's iris "to predict a time sequence for acquiring a high probability of quality iris images” and then acquires a series of images during that window, said the company in a Wednesday announcement. The patent complements the company’s recently issued U.S. Patent No. 9,626,563, it said.

Qualcomm will be required to pay BlackBerry a minimum of nearly $815 million for patent royalty overpayments, BlackBerry said Wednesday. The $815 million award stemmed from a Feb. 27-March 3 binding arbitration hearing in San Diego over whether Qualcomm’s agreement to cap certain royalties was applicable to BlackBerry’s licensing agreement with Qualcomm. Qualcomm may pay upward of the initial award amount depending on the results of a May 30 hearing to determine interest and reasonable attorneys’ fees, BlackBerry said. “We are pleased the arbitration panel ruled in our favor and look forward to collaborating with Qualcomm in security for ASICs and solutions for the automotive industry,” said BlackBerry CEO John Chen in a news release. “While Qualcomm does not agree with the decision, it is binding and not appealable,” Qualcomm said in a statement. Qualcomm also faces ongoing legal battles with the FTC (see 1701170065, 1704040040 and 1704040037) and Apple (see 1701230067 and 1704110026).

A TV can be fitted with a “software module” that can use GPS or an internet “reverse look up” to determine if the set resides in a “retail store location” so it can “automatically default” to its retail mode. So says a patent (9,621,835) that Vizio landed Tuesday from the Patent and Trademark Office, based on an October 2014 application, listing Chief Technology Officer Matthew McRae as the inventor. If the TV’s location is determined to be in a retail store, the set will “initialize the video and audio quality for a retail store environment,” and do the same for a “residential environment” if it’s determined the set is not located in a store, says the patent. TV sold at retail are “generally, manually placed” into retail mode to make picture and sound conducive to “environments where the ambient light levels and ambient audio levels are quite high,” it says. A TV with “brightness levels and color saturation suitable for the home environment will appear washed out and dim in a retail environment,” it says. “The inventor recognized a need for a television to automatically determine if it is in a retail environment or a home environment and to set up the display variables such that the first time power is applied, the screen variables are automatically set to be appropriate for the environment.” Vizio representatives didn’t comment Tuesday on whether the company plans to commercialize the invention.

Qualcomm escalated its legal battle with Apple, filing a countersuit on claims Apple made “false statements” against Qualcomm and was in breach of agreements with the smartphone chip firm. It followed Apple's January lawsuit against Qualcomm claiming Qualcomm gouged Apple for billions of dollars in patent royalties on technologies it didn't own (see 1701230067). Qualcomm sought dismissal last week of the FTC's complaint against the company alleging Qualcomm had a monopoly in baseband processors used in cellphones and other devices (see 1701170065, 1704040040 and 1704040037). Qualcomm filed its countersuit in response to the Apple suit in the U.S. District Court in San Diego. Apple “chose not to utilize certain high-performance features of the Qualcomm chipsets for the iPhone 7 (preventing consumers from enjoying the full extent of Qualcomm’s innovation)” and “falsely claimed there was 'no difference' between” the performance of iPhones that contained Intel and Qualcomm chips, Qualcomm said in its complaint: Apple “threatened” to not publicize the differences in chip performance, which would make “public comparisons about the superior performance of the Qualcomm-powered iPhones.” Qualcomm claimed Monday Apple made false statements about Qualcomm to undermine its reputation. Apple “has launched a global attack on Qualcomm and is attempting to use its enormous market power to coerce unfair and unreasonable license terms from” the company, said Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg in a statement. An Apple spokesman pointed to its statement on the January suit. The company said then that “despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined.”

Clues to how Apple phones, tablets, wearables and computers might look in the future can be found in U.S. patent application 2017/0093070, published March 30, describing methods for rendering all electrical contacts "hidden" so that they’re virtually invisible. First filed in September 2015, the patent suggests the same approach can be taken for TVs, cable boxes and cars. It acknowledges some peripherals like headphones can be connected wirelessly, but others either need a physical connection for power or work better when connected by electrical plug contacts. Apple’s answer is to blend new styles of electrical contacts with the device housing, said the patent. This is done with plugs that are made from insulating material dotted with tiny pathways filled with conductive material, it said. The pathways can be as little as 50 microns wide, the width of a human hair, it said. The electrically porous plugs push into holes in the casing to touch conductive plates on the inside of the casing, and there they connect with the device circuitry in the conventional manner. The plugs and socket hole have closely matching color and texture, so they're “imperceptible by the naked eye” and don't spoil the product's aesthetic appeal, said the patent. Apple representatives didn’t comment Friday on the invention’s commercial implications.