Patents

The patent, which was filed in 2018 and granted on 12 January, would allow the streaming giant to "make observations" about a user's environment and emotions using speech recognition technology.

In order to digitally recreate a deceased person based on their "images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages," and other data, Microsoft has been granted a patent for an underlying technology trying to achieve that. In addition to creating a chatbot, it is suggested that 2D or 3D models could potentially be created.

A federal jury in Texas has decided that Apple needs to pay $506,2 million in damages and interest for using patented 4G technology in hardware made by the company.

Following the jury verdict, five patents were willfully infringed leading the District Judge Rodney Gilstrap to be able to increase the compensation amount by three times compared to what the jurors have set. Panoptis Patent Management had sued on behalf of one of its clients as they manage the intellectual property and patents for companies in order to enable them to focus on "innovation and new development".

According to local media Apple will appeal the decision made by the court.

Apple has been granted a software patent that could enable users to take selfies without being physically together. The software could ask users to take a selfie separately with Apple then digitally stitching the single images and videos together and arranging it so that multiple people would be seen in one image or video. The users would keep the original and merged versions.