Apple lawyers up for patent showdowns with makers of iPhone wannabes

13 years ago

“Steve Jobs made Apple Inc.’s iPhone one of the best-selling smartphones on the market with its touch screen, fast Web connection and access to more than 300,000 downloadable applications. Now he’s adding lawyers to the mix,” Adam Satariano and Susan Decker reports for Bloomberg.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s about time. The trade dress infringements alone must be in the hundreds by now.

Decker continues, “This week, Apple is squaring off against Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker, before the International Trade Commission. The dispute, in which each side alleges intellectual property violations, is also a precursor to Apple patent battles with Motorola Inc. and HTC Corp.”

“Apple has been the most-sued technology company since 2008, the year after the iPhone was introduced, topping Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., according to LegalMetric Inc., a compiler of litigation data based in St. Louis,” Decker reports. “Jobs, Apple’s chief executive officer, is firing back by recruiting lawyers who have fought for and against some of the world’s largest companies, including Microsoft, Intel Corp. and Broadcom Corp… ‘Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel, said in a Dec. 11, 2009, statement on the Nokia case.'”