Smartphone a patent can sue to prevent competitors from using the methods the patent covers. Since the 2010's the number of lawsuits, counter-suits, and trade complaints based on patents and designs in the market for smartphones, and devices based on smartphone OSes such as Android and iOS, has increased significantly. Initial suits, countersuits, rulings, license agreements, and other major events began in 2009 as the smartphone market stated to grow more rapidly by 2012. Some apps allows for sending and receiving facsimile (Fax), over a smartphone, including facsimile data (composed of raster bi-level graphics) generated directly and digitally from document and
Usage share of operating systems and use both. Conversely, sales underestimate usage by not counting unauthorized copies. For example, in 2009, approximately 80% of software sold in China were due to copyright infringement. In 2007, the statistics from an automated update of IE7 for registered Windows computers differed with the observed web browser share, leading one writer to estimate that 25–35% of all Windows XP installations were illegal. The usage share of Microsoft's latest client operating system Windows 10 has been slowly increasing since July/August 2016 (while Windows 7 has had a slight decrease at the same time), reaching around 27.15% in December 2016. Windows