The Korean Times reported late yesterday that David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer (CLO), said that the company would continue to defend the Android ecosystem amid the rising tension in global patent disputes. While this is Google's standing good-guy routine in the public, the fact is that the Department of Justice, FTC and International Telecommunication Union don't seem to agree with them. In fact an international Patent Roundtable event being held today will be highlighting Google's practices in an attempt to find a remedy to halt damaging essential patent tactics being employed today that could harm the smartphone industry as a whole. Apple will be in attendance at this event and didn't release a pre-event statement.

Apple has received a Granted Patent that relates to a Point-of-Sale System. Apple's invention covers methods and systems for scanning two or more images visually encoded to have different types of codes encoded therein, in a single scanning operation, and processing the codes. In some embodiments, the present technology is particularly useful in the retail environment, wherein some products now have multiple barcodes which must be scanned to complete the transaction. To round off our report we present you with the links to the remaining 9 granted patents of the day which covers chroma noise reduction for cameras and much more.

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of twenty-seven newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In our first granted patent report of the day we cover a newly detailed single and multi-touch centric patent along with another which covers screen locking based on dual sliders. We close out our report by presenting you with 3 new Apple design patents and a list of 11 granted utility patents which touch on such things as Apple TV and parallel computing on multiple processors.

Since 2006, Apple has reportedly been sued by patent trolls 135 times and in that same timeframe has launched a small number of focused lawsuits against competitors who have copied the iPhone. In Fairview Research's 2011 top 50 US Patent Assignees' list, Apple came in thirty-ninth place with 676 patents while Samsung clocked in at the number two position with 4,894 patent filings. Yet despite Apple's ranking and right to sue those who are allegedly copying their high profile iPhone, a recent article by The New York Times titled "The Patent, Used as a Sword," definitely takes a calculated swing at Apple by allowing a clearly biased expert to taint one of Apple's key patents in the public's eye. Yet with that said, the New York Times article covers a lot of very interesting ground including a wrenching case where an up and coming company with Siri related technology died by the hand of their very sophisticated competitor, Nuance, even though they actually won their case in court. Today's report focuses on a few of the segments found in the NY Times article that directly relate to Apple.

While Bloomberg was reporting on Friday that Samsung had reported a record operating profit jumping to 91 percent, I was reading a scathing report titled "Samsung Factory Exploiting Child Labor," which made me wonder: did Samsung's huge leap in profits come off the backs of child laborers? Members of China Labor Watch (CWL) who were responsible for the report stated that they "were stunned by the results of the investigation of HEG Electronics, which showed that the practice of hiring child labor is prevalent in this factory." HEG Electronics is an important partner of South Korea's Samsung, processing such products as mobile phones, DVDs, stereo equipment and MP3s for Samsung.  

It's being reported on this morning that Foxconn Technology Group workers on an assembly line that makes Apple's iPhone 5 walked off their jobs yesterday, said advocacy group China Labor Watch. Three to four thousand production employees only returned to work today after management threatened to fire them for failure to show up for work. 

Last week Patently Apple broke the news about an Apple invention describing a new laminate notebook with a hidden display in its lid. The basic idea behind this concept had been around for some time and Intel actually presented a prototype of it at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in January. Intel's Ultrabook prototype, dubbed "Nikiski," featured a "transparent mouse-pad spanning the width of the device. When closed, the pad made it possible to continue to view the top-third of the device's screen, with the pad acting as a touch-screen interface, enabling the user to view and interact with a custom Metro UI app for quick access to social media and important information without the need to open up the Ultrabook." Coincidentally or not, this just happens to be a page right out of one of Apple's recent patent applications filed for years ago. Today we'll review the highlights of this patent that interestingly provides us with a few twists along the way.  

The late Steve Jobs was one of the greatest CEO's of our time. Though for my generation, he was so much more. He was an inspirational force, a rebel with a cause, and definitely one of the "craziest ones" of our time who indeed made a difference in how we use computers and mobile devices in our daily lives today. On this day, we respectfully remember the late, great Steve Jobs. 

On October 4, 2012, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a rather inventive new headset that provides users with a temporary wireless option that's great for when you're working out in the gym or jogging. 

On October 4, 2012, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a new iDevice project that relates to advancing print settings. Apple's invention introduces new iDevice motions to define print settings quick and easy. Apple also reveals a new side menu for printing options that could be quite useful in quickly identifying which pages to print and which types of paper stocks to print your content on. As Apple's iDevices continue to move into the enterprise and deeper into the offices of the Fortune 500, advancing print options on iDevices is exactly what the doctor ordered.

According to AustralianIT, Apple has struck an agreement with an Australian biosecurity start-up in another sign the company is readying its iPhone line for the mobile payment era. However, MicroLatch's website makes no mention of this deal with Apple while oddly presenting a 2011 Australian report under their "latest news" banner about the hopes of Apple using NFC in the iPhone in the future. While Apple has in fact filed many patents regarding a future iWallet, we have to be a little skeptical about the news of this deal until further supporting facts arise, mainly due to Apple's recent acquisition of AuthenTec in July for fingerprint sensor technology. We'll update our report if further facts arise this week.   

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office's database was updated yesterday and behold, we see that both Nokia and Amazon are continuing their formal opposition to Apple's App Store trademark filing. Our report fills you in on the status of this case.  

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of nineteen newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we primarily cover Apple's patent wins for a Multi-Touch surface controller and a surprisingly fast win for a Spiral-like user interface replacement for today's current Cover Flow in iTunes. Other patents that we briefly look at include Apple's Mighty Mouse and a docking station that never made it to market. 

Every once and a while Apple surprises us with a new invention on granted patent day because they filed the original patent filing under one of the engineer's name instead of "Apple Inc." Today, we're treated to a granted a patent that basically reveals that Apple may be thinking of introducing a new hybrid iDevice "Home Button." Since day one Apple had their classic Home Button and more recently introduced a hybrid button for muting audio and/or locking the orientation of your display as noted here. The proposed hybrid Home Button would essentially be constructed in such a manner so as to allow the user to lock the orientation of their iDevice display from the Home Button instead of a side button that exists today. It looks like Apple's reinventing the Home Button for iDevices and it sure makes sense. (Report Updated October 3.)  

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of nineteen newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we briefly cover two of Apple's granted patents relating to 4G LTE. These are part of the 434 LTE patents that have been amassed by Apple to fully support the iPhone-5 and to fend off potential lawsuits from competitors. On another note, Apple has been granted a design patent for their classic iTunes Logo that lists Steve Jobs as one of the inventors.

A California base company by the name of Ameranth has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. Ameranth's "award winning" inventions enable generation and synchronization of menus, event tickets, and other products across fixed, wireless and/or internet platforms. Ameranth is suing Apple on four counts related to the Passbook Ticketing System that is integrated with iPhone 5 and other iPhone and iPod Touch devices that are running Apple's iOS-6 software, and linked to/with Apple's iCloud, the "Apple Notification Service", and Apple's Safari browser. One of Ameranth's patents were quoted as prior art in an iPhone patent that listed Bas Ording and the late Steve Jobs as inventors.

Research notes from British bank Barclays show that Apple is still on target to release the iPad mini in 2012 and should sell up to 9 million units. Production in one plant has reduced the number of iPads that were expected for the year.