“Apple Inc. lost an infringement case brought by patent-licensing firm MobileMedia Ideas LLC when a federal jury decided the maker of the iPhone misappropriated protected technology for handheld devices,” Phil Milford and Dawn McCarty report for Bloomberg.
“Jurors in Wilmington, Delaware, deliberated about four hours after a weeklong trial before also concluding today that the three patents are not invalid,” Milford and McCarty report. “U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson hasn’t yet scheduled a trial on damages, which MobileMedia Chief Executive Officer Larry Horn said could be ‘substantial.'”
MacDailyNews Take: “Substantial” to whom?
Milford and McCarty report, “Horn said one patent is for the camera phone and others cover call handling and call rejection.”
Read more in the full article here.
Live by the iSword….
What comes after the elipses? And what does it mean?
ellipses only have three dots…
The fourth dot would indicate more than one sentence involved in the consequences.
MobileMedia Ideas LLC is suing everyone they can, RIM was already another target.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
A very old saying that isn’t always true, nor is it true in this case David. Nice try though. ;p
The story is more interesting since the CEO of MobileMedia is apparently also the CEO of the MPEG-LA patent pool, which Apple belongs to.
Both Nokia and Sony assigned some of their patents to this patent troll which they now use to chase the rest of the industry.
Nokia, as we all remember, reached settlement in their litigation against Apple.
Let me now apologize in behalf of my fellow Delawareans, for the few idiots who gave a patent troll a victory.
This is not eastern texas… Delaware is renown for having a solid court system. It is what it is.
The trouble is that there are tons of patents for camera, phone call handling, etc. Apple ought to require as part of any settlement that any patents it licenses, that company must defend that patent in court should Apple be sued over another same but worded slightly different patent.
The trouble is that the really stupid patents are winning cases while the totally new stuff (usually Apples) is getting rejected cause it was on star trek.
OK over simplified but so darn close to the truth that its down right scary.
Jusy a scary thought.
I agree look at lodsys with their in app purchase patent. Shit is broken.
The amount of money being wasted in lawyer and court fees over our crap patenting system is shameful and beyond comprehension. I point directly at the patent offices.
Sorry, but “solid” and “gave us Joe Biden” kind of don’t go together. At all.
Apology accepted Curio. I have Delawaraphobia, consistently finding they have the most bizarro drivers in the USA whenever I have to pass through on their highways. It’s good to know that not all Delawarians are crazy.
It’s not the Delawareans who can’t drive. It’s all the people who have moved here from other places in the past few years. 😉
+100
Clearly East Texans are breeding at such a rate they’re having to move north.
LOL
Good grief! Did anyone READ the phone answering patent Apple is being held to infringe? It is a patent for displaying on the screen contextual options of which buttons or what actions a phone user can take in handling a phone call on a phone with non-obvious controls such as “press 2 to place call on hold” or “press 4 button to mutet” or “press 9 to hold and answer 2nd call.”
In other words any button on a touch screen with a label would infringe this patent by labeling its purpose. . . except, the described purpose in the patent is referential to off screen controls throughout the invention and uses the screen only as a display for said instructions of what controls and what steps to take to accomplish the task needed.
So apparently a touchscreen button you need to touch to answer the phone violates this patent if it has an on screen label, according to the interpretation by this jury. . . Even though that does not, as this invention claims, provide instructions for hard to remember button controls for phones without referring to a manual. Sheesh!
It is also odd that Apple was GRANTED a patent for a multi TOUCHSCREEN version of just such contextual call controlling selection system that they DO USE on the iPhone. This patent actually cites this patent in its application.
Ergo, Apple cannot be held to infringe this patent when they are using their own patent which cites this as prior art and shows how their patent is an improvement and is different purpose, i.e. touchscreen control, rather than off screen keypad control reference. This will be reversed as a matter of law. The existing at issue patent was essentially an on screen automatic contextual reminder or manual, while Apple’s is actually contextual controls. BIG DIFFERENCE.