November 13, 2012 - Bringing to an end a multi-year, multi-million dollar patent fight that was widely seen as a proxy war against Google, Apple and smartphone manufacturer HTC have come to a settlement agreement.
November 6, 2012 - For the second time this year, a U.S. federal district judge has tossed a patent lawsuit between Apple and Motorola Mobility.
In the first trial, Judge Richard Posner dismissed the two companies' lawsuits against each other because neither had presented a strong case for damages and also because imposing injunctions on either party would not be in the public interest.
November 6, 2012 - Luxury handbag manufacturer Coach won $257 million in its trademark infringement suit against a whopping 573 website owners that were selling knockoffs of Coach purses online.
November 5, 2012 - A Portland, Maine-based company named SurfCast sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing a patent (one of four held by SurfCast) on a "System and method for simultaneous display of multiple information sources."
SurfCast, which has been in business since 1998 and has tried to monetize its patents in the past through a product called the "Broadband Browser," claims that the animated tiles in Windows 8 infringe the SurfCast patents.
November 2, 2012 - In a patent lawsuit between Enzo Biochem Inc. and Life Technologies Corp. over compounds used in DNA sequencing systems, a jury found for Enzo and set the damages award at $48.6 million.
October 31, 3012 - A company called Intercarrier Communications (ICC) filed a patent suit against Apple for alleged infringement of a patent on phone messaging services.
October 18, 2012 - TiVo Inc. claims that its patent damages claim against Google's Motorola Mobility unit is "likely to run into the billions of dollars." The company made this assertion in a filing in federal court in Marshall, Texas, in which TiVo requested that its case against Motorola Mobility be merged with one involving Cisco Systems. Both cases include Time Warner Cable Inc. as a defendant.
October 17, 2012 - The U.S. International Trade Commission announced that its members voted to investigate VirnetX, Inc.'s complaint that Apple is infringing its patent related to a secure connection between two computers over a network. VirnetX claims that Apple's iPhone 5, iPad and other products infringe the patent and thus violate Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930.
October 15, 2012 - A company called Bascom Research is suing Facebook, LinkedIn, Novell, Broadvision, and Jive Software for infringement of four patents. The patents at suit were invented by Tom Bascom of LinkSpace and bought by Lexington Technology Group (LTG), which recently signed a definitive merger agreement with Document Security Systems. Bascom Research is a wholly-owned subsidiary of LTG.
October 13, 2012 - A company called LED Tech Development LLC filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the iPad 3 and MacBook Pro infringe on four patents covering the use of pulse-width modulation signals to drive light-emitting diodes.
LED Tech says that during the discovery process, it determined that Apple was willfully infringing its patents. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.