What would you do if the US patent office gave you the go-ahead on a far-reaching, non-specific application filed for a "mobile entertainment and communication device"? If your answer was that you would immediately draw up lawsuits against almost every major electronics manufacturer that even looked at a smartphone funny, you get a cookie. Yes folks, as impossible as it is to believe, the holders of the aforementioned patent have just sued Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, and Samsung... amongst others. So eager was this company to sue, in fact, that legal papers were filed a day before the patent was granted, and subsequently had to re-submitted. The real sucker-punch here is that the patent simply combines a list of prior technologies jumbled into one product, a practice which has recently been ruled against by the Supreme Court. Still, we doubt it will stop the holders from trying to nab a few dollars in settlements, staying the work of real innovators, and generally making a mockery of our patent system. Bravo!

[Via Slashdot]

It's been a crazy few years for the once unknown Taiwanese OEM known as High Tech Computer. Although still not a household name like Sony or Samsung, HTC has leveraged its strong ties with Microsoft to offer tantalizing products that have made us early-adopters stand up and take notice, and now the company feels that it's in a strong enough market position to ditch the Qtek brand and begin selling phones under its own name. The Qtek phase-out was announced as part of HTC's official unveiling of the 3G Hermes Windows Mobile Pocket PC phone -- now known as the TyTN -- as well as the compact, UMTS-capable Breeze smartphone -- which is now called the MTeoR (yeah, we're noticing a MOTO-like naming trend too; see the rebadged STRTrk for further proof). In announcing July's European launch of these self-branded handsets, HTC reemphasized its dedication to the many carriers selling its products under their own names, but this development certainly bodes well for the company's overall name-recognition; imagine, instead of lying and telling people we have a Treo because Sprint-branded-UTStarcomm-PPC-6700-based-on-the-HTC-Apache sounds so nerdy, we may one day be able to proudly proclaim "Oh, it's an HTC." [Warning: PDF link]

[Via Geekzone, thanks to everyone who sent this in]