Officials on a US trade panel said yesterday that it has voted to begin an investigation of an imaging patent dispute brought by FlashPoint Technology Inc against Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電) and other handset makers.
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) said in a press release that the products in this investigation include mobile phones, tablet computers and other devices having imaging capabilities that allegedly violate four patented technologies owned by FlashPoint.
The investigation is based on a complaint filed on May 23 this year by the US digital imaging company, which accused HTC, Pantech Co, Huawei Technologies Co (華為), FutureWei Technologies Inc and ZTE Corp (中興) of patent infringement.
The ITC’s chief administrative law judge will assign the case to one of the commission’s six administrative law judges, who will schedule and hold an evidentiary hearing.
Within 45 days of instituting the investigation, the ITC will set a target date for completing the investigation.
HTC, which had won a similar case against FlashPoint last year, declined to comment on the case because it has already begun legal proceedings.
In November last year, the ITC ruled that some of HTC’s electronic imaging devices, including its Android smartphones and Windows Phone 7 smartphones, had not infringed on patents owned by FlashPoint. FlashPoint also sued Nokia Corp, Research In Motion Ltd and LG Electronics Inc in the previous case, but the other three companies settled with FlashPoint before the USITC’s final ruling.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained