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GEN-ERIC Patent News
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

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HEADLINES (patents issued a few hours ago..)
The Tele-IM Patent of the Day goes to
Tellme Networks, Inc. of California for a
Instant messaging via telephone interfaces

The URL Channel Patent of the Day goes to
America Online, Inc. of Virginia for a
Displayed complementary content sources in a web-based TV system
    Index
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NEWS
Halliburton awarded $24M in patent infringement suit
http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/06/28/daily3.html
A Houston jury has awarded Halliburton Co. $24 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit against Smith International Inc. Security DBS, Halliburton's drill bit business, filed the lawsuit in September 2002 seeking damages for Smith's alleged infringement of the patented technology. The jury found that Smith's competing bits, known as IDEAS, including Twist and Shout bits, willfully infringed three of Halliburton's patents. Halliburton said the jury also rejected Smith's claims that the patents are invalid.
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Microsoft gets under your skin - patently!
http://www.in-sourced.com/article/articleview/1948/1/1/
Software giant Microsoft has gone one step nearer global domination by patenting a new kind of network - human skin. US Patent No. 6,754,472 - just awarded - is a "method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body." The idea is to link together multiple devices, like watches, displays and keyboards, using the skin. Microsoft cites speakers as an example: why have separate speakers for a watch, a PDA and a radio, when one will do? One connected by skin! A number of different devices could be powered from a single power source strapped to the skin. Each would be driven by multiple power supply signals working at different frequencies, according to the patent abstract. Data and audio signals could be transmitted over that same power signal. The power source and devices would be connected to the body via electrodes. Other research has gone along similar lines. The New York Times has reported research into tiny fuel cells that convert the body's glucose into power. Such sugar-powered fuel cells have been inserted into and powered by grapes. It also gave an example of where the technology could go: plugged into a soldier who could eat a banana to power up his radio.
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Patent Wars Go Wireless
http://channelzone.ziffdavis.com/article2/0,1759,1618071,00.asp
A Canadian company with patents on core wireless technologies is engaged in a litigious crusade to sign up licensees. Is that any way to court partners? It's tempting to look at the patent infringement suit that Wi-LAN slapped against Cisco Systems last week, wring our hands and lament, "Here we go again." On the face of it, this one has the makings of high drama—a classic David and Goliath battle, as a small, Canadian firm takes on the heavyweight champion of the networking world. But a key interest here isn't the players or the fight itself; it's what inspired the battle in the first place. At the heart of the issue is OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), the modulation technique behind the high-speed data transfers enabled by the 802.11g and 802.11a Wi-Fi standards, as well as the 802.16 WiMax standard and short-distance ultrawideband technologies.
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PATENTS OF THE DAY

6,757,365

Instant messaging via telephone interfaces

Abstract: A method and apparatus for enabling users of a phone based speech activated system such as a voice portal to communicate with users of an Internet based instant messenger (IM) service is described. Phone based users are able to send and receive IMs. Incoming messages can cause an asynchronous notification in the user's current voice application and the user can (if they desire) switch contexts to hear the IM and respond. Sent messages may be expeditiously sent to users of the GUI as a hypertext link to a recorded audio. Other sending formats are also possible; similarly, buddy lists can be supported.

Index

6,757,707

Displayed complementary content sources in a web-based TV system

Abstract: Featured Tuning includes a computer-implemented method of displaying related sources of viewing content. The method includes receiving a user input specifying a URL address corresponding to a web page, determining a corresponding television channel and displaying the corresponding television channel.