S3 Patents that Apple Violated Were Ruled Unpatentable | Analysis | The Mac Observer

S3 Patents that Apple Violated Were Ruled Unpatentable | Analysis | The Mac Observer:

In a rather interesting turn of events, the two patents owned by S3 that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) were being violated by Apple’s Mac OS X operating system have been ruled to be unpatentable due to prior art by the U.S. Patent & Trade Mark Office (USPTO). The curious thing about the ruling, however, is that it came the same day as the ITC ruling, five days before HTC bought S3 in order to use that ITC ruling against Apple...

According to Mr. Macari’s analysis, there isn’t anything that necessarily binds the ITC to pay attention to USPTO reviews, but it’s common for it to do so. The other two S3 patents were still being reviewed, however, and it’s a complete coincidence that the USPTO’s review findings were issued on the same day that AL Gildea issued his own ruling.

All this happened on July 1st — the ITC found that Apple was infringing on the S3 patents (it was July 26th when the ITC revealed some details of the ruling, including that it was Apple’s Mac OS X that infringed, clearing iOS in the process) and the USPTO ruled those same patents as unpatentable.