It seems that suing a company for anything under the sun to make easy hard cash is the thing that every company or person who owns a patent is thinging of. The latest in the world of Patent wars is Samsung and RIM being sued for the use of Emoticons in their smartphone. Yes you read it right, for using emoticons.
Varia Holdings LLC has filed a complaint in a New York based court on March 15 that accuses Samsung and RIM of infringing US Patent 7167731. The patent in question is titled “Emoticon input method and apparatus.”
It goes on to read:
“A mobile communication device having an input key that, when pressed by the user while in text mode, results in the display of a list of emoticons for selection by the user. By displaying a list of emoticons, a more user friendly environment is created through which users may employ emoticons in their communications.”
Varia Holdings has held to the patent since the 2007 and now demands a remedy for both the infringement by RIM and “the harm caused”. Varia has listed BlackBerry device like BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry Storm (in short all the device) and around 30 Samsung devices which include the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S II too.
Varia wants the court to stop the sales of all these select Samsung and BlackBerry devices which contain emoticons (which my go on to include ALL devices) and also be compensated for infringement.
Aha! Now this would be interesting as how Samsung and BlackBerry manage to get through this patent infringement case and will they be paying the damages to Varia? We’ll keep you updated.
