Queen's University in Canada and a related non-for-profit entity, PARTEQ Innovations, have filed a lawsuit against Samsung alleging the company's “Smart Pause” technology infringes on a patent filed by the university back in March 2003. The patent was for a technology called “Attentive User Interface” (AUI) which would track the eyes of a user and cause a device to perform certain actions based on detected eye movements. For instance, if a user looked away from a screen, a video being played on the device would pause. You may recognize this as being similar, if not the same, as Samsung's Smart Pause feature found on the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3.
According to the court filing, Samsung was in negotiations with Queen's University and PARTEQ regarding the technology between October 2003 and January 2004. However, the company decided to abandon a deal.
Neither Queen's University nor Samsung have responded to inquiries seeking further comment regarding the lawsuit. Queen's did post a statement on their Patent Litigation web site indicating, “Queen’s is protecting the rights of its faculty and students and the groundbreaking discoveries that result from their research.” The AUI technology was originally developed by Professor Roel Vertegaal and some graduate students of the Human Media Laboratory, part of the university's School of Computing.
No court date has been set and the initial filings do not indicate how much Queen's University and PARTEQ are seeking in damages.
source: Global News
via: phoneArena
Bullshit. You shouldn’t get a patent if you have no product. Otherwise you’re patenting an idea.