An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
German police raided 51 booths at the CeBIT computing show this weekbecause of breaches of audio compression (MP3) patents. According tosenior prosecutor Hans-Jurgen Lendeckel, several mobile phones,screens, sat navs and MP3 devices were seized.
Italian firm Sisvel, whichitself has a booth at CeBIT in Hall 19, filed patent complaints inHanover on behalf of big companies including Philips and FranceTelecom. The company says that through its agreements it can demand alicensing fee for consumer electronics devices sold in Europe.
document.write('\x3Cscript src="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/adj/reg.main_hardware.4159/front;'+RegExCats+GetVCs()+'pid='+RegId+RegDT+';'+RegKW+'maid='+maid+';test='+test+';pf='+RegPF+';dcove=d;sz=336x280;tile=3;ord=' + rand + '?" type="text/javascript">\x3C\/script>'); <ahref="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/reg.main_hardware.4159/front;dcove=d;sz=336x280;tile=3;ord=5XUWJdRk6j0AABPSOd8AAAFT?"target="_blank"><imgsrc="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/reg.main_hardware.4159/front;dcove=d;sz=336x280;tile=3;ord=5XUWJdRk6j0AABPSOd8AAAFT?"width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" />
Senior detective Oliver Stock led 180 police and customs officers during the biggest crackdownin the history of the annual fair. Companies from China, Taiwan, SouthKorea, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands were searched. Some of thesecompanies were repeat offenders, according to Sisvel.
Sisvel has monitored CeBIT exhibitors for several years. In 2007alone, 112 new license agreements were signed, including one withSanDisk and with the Chinese corporations Aigo and Huawei Technologies.Last year Microsoft acquired a patent license from Sisvel for parts ofits Zune music player and Xbox 360.
In 2006 Sisvel took action against SanDiskat the IFA Expo in Berlin over the same issue, and last year Italianfiscal police seized SanDisk Mp3 players at an Italian outlet of Frenchretailer Auchan. SanDisk insisted that it was not infringing anypatents.
One company whose booth was shut down at CeBIT was Chinesemanufacturer Meizu, which launched a "legitimate iPhone knockoff"called Mini One at CeBIT. However, it was its new portable Mp3 playerthat the police were after.
Although the MP3 format was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute in the late 80s, Philips holds patents for the use of 'padding bits' in a digital transmission system and for intensity stereo encoding and decoding.
Fraunhofer also launched a less aggressive licensing program together with Thomson of France. ®
Digg Topic
Tag topic on On del.icio.us
Technorati Search
Post to Slashdot
