Monday August 1, 2011 – Stewart Wolpin
One look at the list of patent infringement lawsuits occurring amongst the smartphone and tablet set tells you all you need to know about how high the stakes are in these red-hot markets.
And Apple, the epicenter of the smartphone and table market, seems to be the most active patent plaintiff and defendant. Not since the mid 1990s when GoVideo seemed to exist almost solely on proceeds from patent lawsuits on its dual VCR design have I seen this much tech legal activity.
It seems not a day goes by that I don't read that Apple is suing someone, someone is suing Apple, a previous law suit has been settled or adjudicated or is moving on to the next arcane stage of the legal process.
Sue me once, shame on you…
For instance, Austin, Texas-based Affinity Labs is suing Apple for the second time in two years, this time over two patents covering "content delivery system and method" and "method for managing media." In 2009, Affinity Labs sued Apple over three different patents.
Samsung and Apple lately have been lunging at each other's legal throats – odd since iPod, iPhone and iPad components comprises Samsung's largest component business. Business meetings between the two must be just slightly less awkward than Woody Allen's Easter dinner with Diane Keaton's Wisconsin family in Annie Hall.
Anyway, their latest legal tug-of-war has Samsung applying to the ITC (International Trade Commission) to ban imports of all Apple products (wait, I'm ROFL) because Samsung claims Apple copied many of Samsung's innovations.
Samsung's action follows Apple's April allegations against the Korean company for allegedly copying iPhone's and iPad's look-and-feel. Hmmm. Why does that claim sound familiar?
Nokia and Apple recently settled a two-year legal back-and-forth with the latter signing a patent license with the former, which I guess means Apple lost this one.
Kodak is waiting on an ITC ruling about Apple and RIM allegedly violating its digital photo patents. Sadly, like Go Video, the photo pioneer's primary source of income seems to be its digital photo patent portfolio, which it may soon have to sell.
Last week, the ITC ruled Mac OS X violated some of S3's patents, which had been acquired by HTC – more about those folks after the next subhead.
Then there's a company called Personal Audio which, less than two weeks after scoring a patent infringement victory against Apple and a bunch of other well-heeled companies over a technology used in iPods, is suing Apple AGAIN over (wait for it) the same exact patent. This time, though, the company is claiming other Apple products are infringing. Apple is, of course, arguing the original settlement covered all infringing products. At the end of last week, a judge sanely ruled the first judgment covered all of Apple's products.
And this is all just a recap of the last week's action. Does anyone make anything but lawsuits anymore?
Hold that OS!
Possibly the most impactful suit is one Apple seems to have won against HTC – as previously noted, one of numerous litigious brouhahas between the two – after a ruling two weeks ago by the ITC. (And Apple has laughingly demanded for an HTC import ban as well.)
Apple claims the ability of a smart phone operating system to detect and highlight a phone number embedded in an email or text and then to be able to tap that now-highlighted number to initiate a voice call is its patented technology. ITC has agreed.
I'm not sure why Apple sued HTC over this since this is an Android, and therefore, a Google issue. Google apparently agrees, because it has joined HTC in its appeal.
You don't need me to tell you what happens if Apple's appeals on this matter are successful – because no one knows. Just as banning imports is unrealistic, so is forcing Google to update Android to eliminate this embedded phone number detection capability.
One wise Nostradamus has prognosticated that money likely will change hands (Really? Ya think?). There’s so much money at stake and there are literally hundreds of patents that go into these converged products. We’ll just call it the latest high-tech spectator sport.
