Switzerland, the U.K., Sweden, the Netherlands and the U.S. are the world’s five most “innovative nations,” according to the 2015 Global Innovation Index report released Thursday by the World Intellectual Property Organization, Cornell University and the French business school INSEAD. China, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Jordan, Kenya and Uganda “are among a group of countries outperforming their economic peers,” the report said. The top 25 performers are all “high-income economies,” and the list “remains largely unchanged from past editions, illustrating that the leaders’ performance is hard to challenge for those that follow,” it said. The U.S. and the U.K. are two economies that “stand out” in terms of “innovation quality,” the report said, defining that as a measure of “university performance, the reach of scholarly articles and the international dimension of patent applications.” The U.S. and the U.K. “stay ahead of the pack, largely as a result of their world-class universities, closely followed by Japan, Germany and Switzerland,” it said. “Top-scoring middle-income economies on innovation quality are China, Brazil and India, with China increasingly outpacing the others.”

Any excitement over Apple’s recent patent application filing (2015/0249280) on using fuel cells to power mobile devices “for days or even weeks” is tempered by patent searches in which we found that the same inventors have been filing similar, but increasingly complex, patents on Apple’s behalf for five years, with no sign of any commercial product. In June 2010, inventors Bradley Spare, Vijay Iyer, Jean Lee, Gregory Tice, Michael Hillman and David Simon filed for a “Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device.” The patent document (2011/0311895) describes a stack of individual fuel cells, ganged together to increase the voltage, with bidirectional control communication between the stack and computer. As a “consequence” of the increased consumer awareness “to promote and use renewable energy sources” in portable devices, CE manufacturers “have become very interested in developing renewable energy sources for their products, and they have been exploring a number of promising renewable energy sources such as hydrogen fuel cells,” the patent document says. Hydrogen “can potentially achieve high volumetric and gravimetric energy densities, which can potentially enable continued operation of portable electronic devices for days or even weeks without refueling,” it says. “However, it is extremely challenging to design hydrogen fuel cell systems which are sufficiently portable and cost-effective to be used with portable electronic devices.” Since individual “proton exchange membrane” (PEM) fuel cells, using hydrogen as a fuel, generate voltages that are too low to run a mobile device, Apple has proposed electrically daisy-chaining many PEM cells together in a series, the filing says. A set of 25 PEM fuel cells is needed to deliver the 12.5-17.5 volts required to drive a laptop, mobile phone or “other type of compact electronic device,” it says. US 2011/0256463 from April 2010 acknowledged that connecting fuel cells in series to increase the voltage can be problematic. For example, if one cell fails, the whole stack may shut down, it says. So Apple has also been looking at cell connections in parallel, to give low voltage at high current, which is then up-converted to the working voltage needed to drive a mobile device. “The parallel configuration of fuel cells may represent a significant improvement in reliability over a series configuration,” Apple says. The patents leave no doubt that using fuel cells to power mobile devices isn't a trivial challenge.

A recent patent filing from Samsung and Young Eun Cho, a Korean inventor based in the U.K., (US 2015/0235084) tells how a TV, tablet or smartphone screen can be adjusted automatically if the user is having difficulty viewing it. But the patent reveals that the system relies on extensive viewer surveillance. The patent was filed in 2014 but our patent searches showed Samsung has filed for similar ideas dating back a decade or more. The filing describes how the screen is paired with a video camera, which captures a running video image of the viewer’s face, and compares it with previously captured images. Changes in facial shape, eye size and eye-scroll motion, along with any changes in viewing distance and any decision to wear glasses are sent over the Internet to a remote server, the patent says. The server analyzes the data and returns a control signal, which adjusts the display to make viewing easier, for instance, by increasing text font size and increasing brightness or contrast. In 2004, four inventors working for Samsung in Korea filed claims (US 2006/0048189) for a “Method and apparatus for proactive recording and displaying of preferred television programs by user’s eye gaze.” That patent told how the screen watches the room with a camera, which analyzes the viewer’s gaze, and decides whether a program is capturing attention or whether the viewer’s eyes are wandering. When an arbitrary threshold of interest is exceeded, the system checks an electronic program guide and adds a “preferred” program tag, the patent said. When similar programs are subsequently detected in the EPG, the TV makes the decision to display and/or record, it said.

HEVC Advance and MPEG LA both sidestepped reacting to Cisco’s recent allegations that the formation of those two competing patent pools for one-stop-shop H.265 licensing means “the patent licensing situation for H.265 has recently taken a turn for the worse” (see 1508140051). It was partially on that basis that Cisco said it was helping to lead the charge for a “high quality, next-generation codec that can be used everywhere” and will be royalty-free. Though HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller didn’t directly take Cisco on for its comments that the H.265 license process has soured, he released a statement in which he said H.265, “just like every codec before it, is working through the IP process.” H.265, as an “industry standard codec, brings together the best technology from a vast number of companies that have committed to license their patents, rather than a proprietary codec for which licensing commitments may or may not be available,” Moller emailed us Tuesday. “The establishment of HEVC Advance furthers the IP process by providing an alternative pool option for many patent owners. We believe the existing patent pools provide a basis to solve the IP process and we encourage patent owners to make their patents available through one of the two existing pools and patent users to support H.265 by becoming licensees and bringing all the benefits of H.265 to the marketplace.” An MPEG LA spokesman declined to comment on Cisco's remarks.

Limelight Networks infringed on a content delivery patent held by Akamai, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in an en banc opinion Thursday. The Federal Circuit reversed a previous decision saying Limelight wasn't liable for direct infringement. "We are disappointed this outcome isn't aligned with the recent rulings in our favor," Limelight CEO Bob Lento said in a statement: "We will not allow this to distract us from serving our global customers." Limelight will study all options to determine its next steps, it said. "We are extremely pleased with the Federal Circuit's decision," Aaron Ahola, Akamai deputy general counsel, said in a statement. A jury ruled in 2008 that Limelight infringed on the patent, Akamai said, and initially awarded the company more than $45 million in damages.

Nintendo didn't infringe on a patent held and asserted by Quintal Research Group, a U.S. District judge in Oakland, California, ruled. Quintal's infringement claim alleges the disputed patent addresses the positioning of buttons and controls on several of Nintendo's handheld gaming devices. Friday, Judge Saundra Armstrong granted Nintendo's request for summary judgment, saying Quintal failed to sufficiently prove the alleged infringement. “The result in this case continues to prove that Nintendo will vigorously defend its innovations against patent lawsuits and will not pay to settle cases simply to avoid litigation," Nintendo General Counsel Devon Pritchard said in a statement. Quintal didn't comment.

Google released an updated version of its Google Patents tool, a company blog post said Thursday. The revised search tool contains an updated classification tool, using cooperative patent classification codes to classify everything found in Google Scholar, the company said. It said that Google Patents now contains a simplified user interface and the option to search for foreign patent documents using English keywords.

Garmin plans to modify its SideVu sonar products after an International Trade Commission administrative law judge determined some were too similar to a patent held by Johnson Outdoors, the GPS company said Tuesday. Johnson Controls filed an ITC complaint in 2014 alleging that some Garmin hardware, including its SideVu sonar imaging transducer, infringe on Johnson Outdoors patents relating to marine sonar imaging. The ALJ's initial determination was that first-generation SideVu products were too similar to some claims of one of the three Johnson Outdoors patents in question, Garmin said. The GPS company said that while it disagrees with the determination and will seek ITC review, it will make changes to SideVu products and should have them commercially available before any ITC final determination becomes effective.

Hyper-local and indoor positioning services firm sensewhere secured patents in China and the U.S., a company news release said Wednesday. The patent issued by the Patent and Trademark Office is for a method by which a singular device can "assist another device to obtain a position fix," sensewhere said. The patent issued by the Chinese government differs from the U.S. patent in that it covers a method to map wireless access points by using location references from a user device, the company said.

Three multichannel video programming distributors settled DVR-related patent infringement cases brought by the same firm, Custom Media Technologies. Custom Media sued eight companies in August 2013 in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, alleging that the defendants were violating Custom Media's patent for a “Method and System For Customizing and Distributing Presentations For User Sites.” The 17-year-old patent involves distributing video, audio and text over various networks -- such as the Internet, satellite or cable systems -- for on-demand use. Cisco -- which manufactures many of the DVRs -- in 2014 sought a Patent and Trademark Office review of the Custom Media-owned patent, but the PTO declined earlier this year. Monday, the suits against DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon were dismissed as court paperwork indicated the companies had resolved Custom Media's claims. A suit against AT&T was settled last week. Terms of those settlements weren't made public. Still outstanding are patent complaints against Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications and Dish Network. None of the involved companies had any comment Tuesday.