A lot of innovation is going on in OLED screen technology, our spot check on new patent filings finds. We searched around the world on pending patent applications published in the past month, using the World Intellectual Property Organization database in Geneva. As a general rule, publication follows 18 months after the first papers are filed anywhere in the world, so the WIPO results give the most up-to-date patent snapshots available. Our search unearthed 104 recent filings on OLED technology, including 26 from LG and 14 from Samsung, with 17 from Chinese company Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology, seven from BOE Technology Group, and two each from Corning and Nubia Technology. The patents variously cover flexible screens, double-sided screens and triple-layer pixel stacks, plus methods for higher-yield OLED manufacturing. Among the more noteworthy filings, Nubia Technology, of Shenzhen, filed for the idea of overlaying an e-ink screen with an OLED screen layer, with either or both of the two different display types then used for the best visual effect depending on the picture content (WO/2016/107308).

A technique for embedding an infrared sensor in the LED backlight of an LCD TV for receiving “command codes” from a remote control is described in a Vizio utility patent application published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. TV remote control receivers typically are mounted on the set behind a light filter that passes infrared light and blocks white or visible light, said the application, which was filed in January 2015 listing Vizio Chief Technology Officer Matthew McRae as the sole inventor. “The actual IR receiver element is typically a phototransistor which receives filtered IR light emitted by the remote control,” said the application. Problem is, TV styles “and exterior designs have constantly been evolving over the years,” it said. With the advent of large-screen flat TV form factors, “the available area on the front surface of a television has been diminishing,” it said. IR receiver assemblies previously were mounted directly behind the front bezel panel of the TV, it said. But as the bezels have become “substantially thinner,” those IR receiver assemblies “have been moved off of the bezel and into the interior of the assemblies with light being carried from the front of the televisions to the IR receivers through light pipes or light guides,” it said. But the assemblies “have become expensive and the size of the light guides have, to some extent, dictated the minimum thickness of the front bezel,” it said. “The inventor recognized a need for removing the light pipe or light guide to direct infrared light from the front of the television to where the IR receiver is located.” In a “preferred embodiment,” the application said, the IR receiver assembly is mounted “within the direct LED or LED edge lit backlight assembly, within a combination backlight/light bar assembly, or integrated into the TFT layer residing under the LCD sub pixels with the IR receiver being a TFT photosensitive transistor with a IR filter residing on the color filter layer.” Vizio officials didn’t comment on plans to commercialize the invention.

Qualcomm said it filed a patent infringement complaint against Chinese smartphone maker Meizu in Beijing Intellectual Property Court. The complaint seeks rulings that terms of a patent license offered by Qualcomm to Meizu comply with China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML), and Qualcomm’s “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing obligations,” said Qualcomm Friday. The complaint also seeks a ruling setting a basis for a patent license with Meizu for Qualcomm technology used in 3G and 4G mobile devices. Meizu has been expanding its business through the use of Qualcomm intellectual property without compensating the company, Qualcomm said. More than 100 other Chinese companies have accepted a rectification plan submitted by Qualcomm and accepted by China’s National Development and Reform Commission last year after the NDRC found that Qualcomm had violated the AML. “Qualcomm’s technologies are at the heart of all mobile devices," said Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg: "Meizu is choosing to use these technologies without a license, which is not only unlawful, but is unfair to other licensees that are acting in good faith and respectful of patent rights, and ultimately damaging to the mobile ecosystem and consumers.” Meizu didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Supreme Court ruled in Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee that the Patent and Trademark Office's ability to institute inter partes reviews via the 2011 America Invents Act isn't subject to appeals. The Supreme Court also upheld Patent and Trademark Appeal Board's patent claims interpretation standard. Cuozzo sought a Supreme Court review after the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in 2015 that AIA bars parties from challenging PTAB authority to conduct IPRs. Cuozzo unsuccessfully defended its patent on an interface for displaying a vehicle's speed and the speed limit at a particular location during a Garmin-initiated PTAB IPR. “Applying the broadest reasonable construction standard in inter partes review is not, as Cuozzo suggests, unfair to a patent holder, who may move to amend at least once in the review process, and who has had several opportunities to amend in the original application process," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the court's majority opinion Monday, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Anthony Kennedy. “And though the application of one standard in inter partes review and another in district court proceedings may produce inconsistent outcomes, that structure is inherent to Congress' regulatory design, and it is also consistent with past practice, as the patent system has long provided different tracks for the review and adjudication of patent claims.” Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion, and Justice Samuel Alito filed an opinion that partially concurred and partially dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined Alito's opinion. Congress has given PTAB “considerable authority” to review patent claims but has also “cabined that power by imposing significant conditions on the Patent Office's institution of patent review proceedings,” Alito said. “Unlike the Court, I do not think that Congress intended to shield the Patent Office's compliance -- or noncompliance -- with these limits from all judicial scrutiny.” PTO believes the Supreme Court's ruling “will allow [PTAB] to maintain its vital mission of effectively and efficiently resolving patentability disputes while providing faster, less expensive alternatives to district court litigation,” said Director Michelle Lee in a statement.

The International Trade Commission is investigating Apple and AT&T alleged patent infringements by importing smartphones and laptops that include haptics technologies, as requested by Immersion, the ITC said in a news release last week. Immersion's complaint earlier this year alleged Apple and AT&T are importing and selling iPhone 6s, MacBook and MacBook Pro devices that include infringing technology, which allows users to feel a vibrating force or resistance based on different user interactions with the device. The ITC will consider whether to issue a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders against Apple and AT&T Mobility. Those companies had no comment Friday.

MPEG LA updated the coverage of its DisplayPort patent pool to include the v1.4 specification approved in March, the company said in a Monday announcement. MPEG LA’s goal “is to provide worldwide access to as much DisplayPort essential intellectual property as possible for the benefit of licensees,” it said. Its pool of DisplayPort licensors includes Hitachi Maxell, Lattice Semiconductor, Philips, Rambus and Sony, it said.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., urged the International Trade Commission Thursday to use its authority to take actions stakeholders recommended to address patent assertion entities' abuse of the ITC's process for evaluating Section 337 exclusion orders. PAEs take patent infringement cases that should be litigated in U.S. district courts and bring them to the ITC in a bid to force entities to pay licensing fees, Goodlatte said during a House IP Subcommittee hearing. Stakeholders recommended the ITC return to a previous evaluation standard that “does not allow legal expenses, airplane flights, and the like to satisfy the domestic industry requirement,” Goodlatte said. The ITC should apply the public interest test and the economic interest test at the beginning of a Section 337 review when determining claims consideration and the issuance of exclusion orders, Goodlatte said. The ITC should also use its public interest and economic interest analyses to articulate agency standards to “clarify which patent disputes should be adjudicated by the ITC and those which are more properly addressed by U.S. district courts,” Goodlatte said. House IP ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., questioned whether Congress needs to act to curb PAE abuses of the ITC process because the agency is already beginning to address the issue.

The U.S. in 2015 “extended its long-standing position as the top source of international patent applications,” the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a Wednesday report. International patent applications filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system grew 1.7 percent to 218,000 in 2015, setting a new annual record, WIPO said. “Innovators based in the U.S. have filed the largest annual number of international patent applications for 38 years running,” it said. “Still, large increases in patent-filing activity by China-based innovators accounted for much of the overall growth.” The U.S., with 57,385 international patent applications, remained the largest user of the PCT system last year, despite a 6.7 percent decline in the number of applications from a year earlier, it said. WIPO attributes the 2015 U.S. decline to “an unusually large number of filings in 2014" spurred by changes in the U.S. patent system under the America Invents Act, it said. In 2015, the U.S. was followed by Japan (44,235 PCT filings) and China (29,846) among the top international patent filers, WIPO said. Asia more than doubled its share of all PCT applications filed since 2005, reaching 43 percent of the total, it said.

Techniques for giving users of “stream casting devices” the ability to encrypt content before it can be viewed on “second screens” are contained in a Vizio patent application (US 2016/0072774) published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. “Casting” video or audio content is a relatively “new initiative where content can be discovered” on laptops, tablets, smartphones or other devices “capable of finding content residing on networks or local storage,” says the application, which lists Vizio Chief Technology Officer Matthew Blake McRae as the sole inventor. When content is located, it can be played on the device that found it or “redirected” or “cast” to a second screen, “typically” a TV, monitor or virtual-reality device, it says. “Currently few if any casting agents can provide content encryption notifications to stream receivers for the stream or content to be casted,” it says. “This is often not a large concern for home environments but can present a significant issue with business environments. In the business environment, data cast to a display device can contain sensitive business information that would be relatively easy to compromise between the content server and the stream receiver.” The inventor recognized “it would be useful” to devise an encryption technique that would occur “on the fly,” such that the stream “would be encrypted prior to being transmitted and decrypted just after being received and just prior to being displayed,” the application says. Vizio representatives didn’t comment on ways the company might commercialize the invention.

Vizio landed the assignment Tuesday of a U.S. design patent (D748,075) for an undescribed “audio device,” Patent and Trademark Office documents show. The patent, which was applied for in August 2014, lists Scott McManigal, Vizio vice president-design, as the inventor. A series of six drawings in the patent depicts a rectangular box with an HDMI input and appears to show speakers at either end and three buttons at the top. To us, the renderings appear to be those of a soundbar, or perhaps a Bluetooth speaker that can also be used as a soundbar. Vizio representatives didn’t comment.