Samsungs appeal against Galaxy Nexus ban denied

The battle between Apple and Samsung is heating up. A few days ago Apple managed to get sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus blocked in the US. It was all down to a patent regarding the persistent search box on the screen of the Nexus.
This ban was quickly appealed by Samsung and on Tuesday in the US a judge turned down the appeal, much the same way that the appeal on the ban of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was turned down last week.
All is not lost though Samsung and Google have apparently come up with an update for the Nexus to fix this problem. The update will be an ota update and also not carrier impeded.
This was with Apple vs the rest does not show any signs of letting up. I for one am getting a little tired of the tit for tat way these companies are approaching it. Yes I know that patents are there to stop people copying other peoples designs etc, but currently the patents system just seems to be used to block any competition by other companies.
Source – Reuters

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Nokia files patent claims against HTC, RIM and Viewsonic

With Lumia sales still unable to fill the coffers, Nokia has turned to its rich patent portfolio as an extra source of income.
Nokia is suing HTC, RIM and Viewsonic for patent infringement in the USA and Germany. To be more specific, Nokia filed a complaint against HTC with the US International Trade Commission and another one against HTC and Viewsonic with the Federal District Court of Delaware. In Germany Nokia is suing HTC and RIM in Dusseldorf and all three companies in Munich and Mannheim.
According to Nokia the total number of infringed patents is 45. Here is the official statement about what patents are actually in question.
"Nokia proprietary innovations protected by these patents are being used by the companies to enable hardware capabilities such as dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, as well as to enhance software features including application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device."
As you can see Nokia is preparing for a fight, and probably so must HTC, RIM and Viewsonic.
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