“Apple last week was sued for alleged patent infringement in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan,” Thomas Claburn reports for InformationWeek.
“The lawsuit, filed on behalf of inventor Henry Milan by Detroit-based law firm Butzel Long, claims that Apple’s iPod nano and iPod touch use Flash memory in a way that violates U.S. patent No. 6,991,483,” Claburn reports.
“The patent in question, ‘Flash memory drive with quick connector,’ describes the union of a Flash memory drive and a connection port in a single unit that can be easily adapted to connect to a varied set of devices,” Claburn reports.
“The lawsuit seeks treble damages for willful infringement and an injunction against the sale of the iPod nano and iPod touch,” Claburn reports.
Full article here.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
MDN = away, as in go away.
Some one need to patten the concept of stupid vague lawsuits. Then when one of these hits. Do a counter suit again them.
Good example to clean up the patten regulations…
Another lawyer patent troll… Way to syphon off the success of others, parasite.
Reason # 259-B that America doesn’t make anything anymore.
Here’s to my Long one inside the ol’ Butzel…
MDN magic word = inside
It’s truly unbelievable how vague this patent was, and that the Patent Office actually issued a patent on this “brilliant” idea is really ridiculous. What’s wrong with that office of late? It is granting patents for blatantly obvious ideas to people who have no connection to these technologies and industries.
Apple should relocate their sue-able section to England, then if the maroons who sue, lose; they have to pay ALL court costs. That’s one of the rules courts should employ in the USA. Get rid of the ambulance chasing scam lawyers.
@Ron
How true. Too bad Congress is full of lawyers who would never vote for it.
Steve,”It is granting patents for blatantly obvious ideas to people who have no connection to these technologies and industries.
It’s the ‘government’ Steve. Most of the maroons in government are already retired, or might as well be. I was in the patent office in Washington once. What a laugh!! Look at C-Span and see all the dunderheads milling around in the Senate. The 5 or 6 fat people standing by the door are stewards, they don’t mill around. They just stand there waiting for pay day.
Read the whole description of what they are suing for.
This is the biggest joke of a patent infringement lawsuit I have seen in a LONG time!
@Your Mom BluRay,
A man after my own heart! And perversions, too.
Sign of success, the leeches come crawling out of the slime. Patent law really needs an overhaul.
How the hell did this jack-ass get this patent approved in 2006?????. Didnt Apple have a patent on the ipod years before? Apple should sue the USPTO for idiocy for allowing this patent. When will it end?????? (Can you sue for idiocy?). Time for a tall glass of Camel Milk.
Soooo, He didn’t invent “flash drives” and didn’t invent “the concept of adaptors”, but somehow invented “flash drive adaptors”. Ugh!
Ooh! I need some of that iPod money too! Is it too late to invent, let’s see… Hmm, how ’bout, “A casing enclosure to encase electronic components in an, um, case.” That should work. Mr. Jobs, please send the checks to…
“Flash memory drive with quick connector”
It’s not so quick!
“It’s not so quick!”
It’s all relative. Remember SCSI chains, terminators, IDs and SyQuest drives?
@Ampar,
No, but I do remember “Chains, Maims, and Erotic Feels”.
No, wait. Nevermind.
Whatever happened to Felicity Kendal?
Actually, I meant to say:
This is Idiocy
Wow another vague patent
just how is this system supposed to reward and encourage innovation.
“troll” is too kind a word for these guys.
And they’ll probably lose… but there is enough randomness in the legal system that they just might win something big so they keep at it. After all they RISK nothing.
Plus Apple will spend 100s of thousands on legal expenses putting all the obvious defenses into careful patent legalese. It’s hardly original, applicable, or non-obvious.
This system is supposed to be to protect real inventions.
Yes Apple can afford it. But we’d all be better off if they needed less lawyers and instead hired more engineers. Think about that next time there’s a bug or a poorly implemented feature in a product.
And honestly–knowing this is a reasonably technical audience–would someone really making a contribution to innovation and technology sit around and come up with ideas like “USB connected to flash drive” and then go to the bother and expense to patent the damned thing.
In fact, I have an idea. We could write a computer program to come up with “inventions” by simply pairing inventions together. Another program to “research” prior art and do the necessary filing. And another to let us search of data base of computer generated patents when we see a successful product. Let’s see… ipod has flash memory, USB… hey we got a patent that has those as well. Let’s sue.
I used to moan about patents over obvious things a colleague and I could come up with on an envelope in an hour. But it’s worse… I could write a computer program to generate these “inventions”. THAT is how broken this system is.
@ron – Steady on tiger, you almost made a positive remark about old Blighty.