Google Patent | "Google files for patent on Siri-like TV user interface"

By: Don Reisinger
Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com
Category: Google Patent

Google has filed for a patent on a technology that would let users search their program listings with only the sound of their voice.

According to Patently Apple, which obtained the patent request, Google's application describes a method of allowing users to say a voice command through a mobile device. That command is then relayed to a television or set-top box--likely equipped with the company's Google TV platform--that displays the desired information.

According to Patently Apple, the patent describes one implementation in which a user asks, "When is 'Seinfeld' on?" The software on the television then displays the title, name of the episode, and when it will be on. The patent also relates to users searching for live TV shows and turning the set on, all with their voices.
The patent's description will immediately conjure up comparisons to Apple's Siri. According to numerous rumors swirling around Cupertino, Apple is planning to launch an HDTV by the end of this year that will work with the company's virtual personal assistant. Users will be able to give a command to Siri through the iPad or iPhone, and the Apple TV will respond to them, the rumors say.

Although it might have been purely coincidental, Patently Apple says that the Google application was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just six days before Apple announced the launch of iCloud and Siri last year.

But Apple won't be Google's only concern with its voice-recognition feature. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, both LG and Samsung announced voice-control support in their new TV lines. LG's is made possible with its new Magic Remote. Samsung's implementation is powered by its new Smart Interaction technology, which also supports gesture control.

However, those services don't have what Google is proposing: long-distance control. According to Patently Apple, the search giant's patent filing includes mention of users being able to control their televisions from within one-quarter mile of the set, thanks to their smartphone or tablet's wireless connection. The distance between the devices would be determined by the GPS built into the respective smartphone or tablet.

"We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with," a Google spokesperson told CNET in an e-mailed statement. "Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don't. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patent applications."

Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com/google-files-for-patent-on-siri-like-tv-user-interface-62303951.htm

Google Patent | "Google gets U.S., EU nod to buy Motorola Mobility"

By: Diane Bartz
Source: http://www.reuters.com
Category: Google Patent


(Reuters) - U.S. and European regulators approved Google Inc's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and said they would keep a sharp eye on the web search giant to ensure patents critical to the telecommunications industry would be licensed at fair prices.
It was one of a series of approvals on Monday that underscored the scramble by technology companies to acquire big pools of patents.
The U.S. Justice Department also approved an Apple Inc-led consortium's purchase of a trove of patents from bankrupt Canadian company Nortel Networks Corp and signed off on Apple's purchase of patents formerly owned by Novell Inc.
Google, whose Android software is the top operating system for Internet-enabled smart phones, said in August it would buy phone-maker Motorola for its 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications, as it looks to compete with rivals such as Apple and defend itself and Android phone manufacturers in patent litigation.
The acquisition, the largest in Google's history, will also mark the Internet search company's most significant foray into the hardware business - a market in which it has little experience. Some investors have worried that Google's profit margins may suffer as it becomes a hardware maker, although Google has said it intends to run Motorola as a separate business unit.
Regulators in China, Taiwan and Israel have still not signed off on the Google purchase of Motorola.
Google shares finished Monday's regular trading session up 1 percent at $612.20.
Antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic want to prevent companies from gouging rivals when they license patents essential to ensuring different communications devices work together.
"This merger decision should not and will not mean that we are not concerned by the possibility that, once Google is the owner of this portfolio, Google can abuse these patents, linking some patents with its Android devices. This is our worry," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters in Brussels.
The U.S. Justice Department said it was reassured by Apple's and Microsoft's public statements that they would not seek injunctions in filing infringement lawsuits based on the Nortel patents.
"Google's commitments have been less clear," the Justice Department added in a statement. "The division determined that the acquisition of the patents by Google did not substantially lessen competition, but how Google may exercise its patents in the future remains a significant concern."
Almunia said the EU might be obliged to open some cases in the future.
"This is not enough to block the merger, but we will be vigilant," he said.
Regulators in China have until March 20 to decide whether to approve the deal or start a third phase of review, according to a source close to the situation.
The purchase would give Google one of the mobile phone industry's largest patent libraries, as well as hardware manufacturing operations that will allow Google to develop its own line of smart phones.
Google, the newest major entrant to the mobile market, is already being sued for patent infringement by Oracle Corp, which is seeking up to $6 billion.
The legal battles over patents between technology and smartphone companies has prompted the European Commission to open an investigation into legal tactics used by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd against Apple and whether these breach EU antitrust rules.
Some regulatory experts said the DOJ's comments in approving Google's acquisition of Motorola appeared to be more than mere boilerplate.
"They have to proceed with caution and tread lightly," said Shubha Ghosh, a professor at University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in antitrust law and intellectual property, with regards to Google.
Regulators will be on the lookout for practices that might limit the entry of new smartphones or new technologies.
"If Google makes it more difficult for new technologies to emerge, by locking-in existing licensees of the patents so that it becomes not profitable for them to adopt other technologies, that's the kind of thing that might give rise to antitrust scrutiny down the road," said Ghosh.
Google's move to buy Motorola Mobility came shortly after it tried and failed to buy Nortel's patents. The winner was an Apple-led consortium, which includes Research in Motion Ltd, Microsoft Corp, EMC Corp, Ericsson and Sony Corp, which agreed in July to pay $4.5 billion for 6,000 patents and patent applications.
Google, which runs world's No. 1 Internet search engine, has been under increasing regulatory scrutiny. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union are both investigating Google following accusations it uses its clout in the search market to beat rivals as it moves into related businesses.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/14/us-google-motorola-eu-idUSTRE81C1HE20120214

Google Patent | "Google: That 2.25 Percent MoMo Patent Royalty Sounds About Right to Us"

By: John Paczkowski
Source: http://allthingsd.com 
Category: Google Patent 

Google MoMo Patent

Motorola Mobility’s demand that Apple pay it patent royalties of 2.25 percent on sales of some iPhones and iPads raised a lot of eyebrows. But not at Google, which could close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility as early as next week.


Evidently, Google has no trouble with that percentage at all.

In a letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) today, Google said that should it complete its proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility, it will license the company’s standard-essential patents under “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” terms (FRAND). To that end, it will honor Motorola Mobility’s existing essential patent licensing commitments and grant new ones going forward with “a maximum per-unit royalty of 2.25 percent.”

Now that might not sound like an untoward sum, but applied against a device’s selling price it’s sizable. A rate of 2.25 percent on 2011 iPhone sales, for example, would have amounted to about $1 billion in potential royalties for Motorola.

That doesn’t seem fair or reasonable. More to the point, it runs contrary to the principles of FRAND licensing commitments and bolsters arguments recently made by both Apple and Microsoft that the mobile industry really needs a consistent patent licensing scheme.

“It’s a prohibitive royalty rate as long as they want to apply it against the selling price of what they call the ‘relevant end product,’” says FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller. “If they asked for 2.25 percent of the price of a baseband chip, they would at least propose a reasonable royalty base and one could then talk about how many patents go into such a chip and what the relative value of their patents is. But 2.25 percent of the selling price of the product as a whole is absolutely out of step with the concept of FRAND and with industry practice.”

Source: http://allthingsd.com/20120208/google-that-2-25-percent-momo-patent-royalty-sounds-about-right-to-us/?refcat=mobile

Google Patent | "Google Patents 'Landing Strip' for Self-Driving Cars"

By: Mark Hachman
Source: http://www.pcmag.com
Category : Google Patent

Google Patent

Google has successfully patented a "landing strip" technology for its self-driving cars, providing a method for the cars to automatically slip into autonomous mode and find parking spots.

The "landing strip" appears to be little more than an embedded sensor in the ground, whether it be a radio, QR code, or some other means of transferring information to the car. The key, however, is the information and how the car uses it.

The patent, first noted by TechRadar, was approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Dec. 13.

Google first disclosed its self-driving car in Oct. 2010, already in an advanced stage of development. In October, Google's Sergey Brin, who is overseeing the autonomous car as part of his focus on developing research, said that technical challenges remain, as well as simply gaining permission from states to allow self-driving cars across their roadways.
Google Self-Driving Car Landing Strip Patent

Brin reported in October that his teams have already driven more than 1,000 miles without the need for a driver to manually take control of the vehicle, but that an aggregate total of 1 million miles was necessary. Sebastian Thrun, who leads the dedicated car team at Google, wrote that Google's cars have driven more than 200,000 miles without an accident.

Google's latest patent suggests a scenario where the car would actually stop and transition from an autonomous mode to a user-controlled mode. An image accompanying the patent suggests Google would use a giant QR code that could be painted on the roadway and scanned optically, although the patent text suggests that a RF, cellular connection, or other medium could be used. Google's cars use GPS technology to orient themselves, but in certain cases a GPS signal may not be accessible.

The landing "strip" could also be a parking spot, where an electric vehicle could charge.

Google also suggests that the landing strip could either contain a request to download new instructions, or communicate new data within the strip itself. Although Google uses lasers and other devices to detect objects and determine its own location, the patent suggests that it could update its databases, or receive instructions to move 100 feet forward, turn left 20 degrees, and proceed forward 100 feet.

"For example, the autonomous vehicle may be used as a virtual tour guide of Millennium Park in Chicago," the patent states. "In the example embodiment, the vehicle may have an instruction to drive to the Cloud Gate (Silver Bean) sculpture at Millennium Park. When the vehicle arrives, the autonomous instruction may tell it to wait in the location for a predetermined amount of time, for example 5 minutes. The instruction may then direct the vehicle to drive to the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park and again wait for 5 minutes. Next, the instruction may tell the vehicle to drive to the Ice Rink at Millennium Park and wait for another predetermined amount of time. Finally, the vehicle instruction may tell the vehicle to return to its starting position."

"In some embodiments, the vehicle instruction may be a fixed instruction telling the vehicle a single route and timing for the route," Google's patent added. "In another embodiment, the autonomous instruction may be a list of possible instructions presented to a human in the vehicle. The human may be able to select a point of interest and the vehicle will responsively execute the associated autonomous instruction. In a further embodiment, the vehicle instruction is a single command telling the vehicle to drive itself to one specific location."

One aspect that the patent apparently does not cover: using the landing strip as a transition from a self-driving region to a region where the user would need to take control of his or her own vehicle, such as a transition off of a freeway into a residential neighborhood.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397706,00.asp