“ClassCo sought to profit off of the cellphone industry Thursday with a lawsuit accusing larger smartphone makers of allegedly violating patents for caller ID,” Electronista reports.
“The suit claims that Apple, HP (as Palm), HTC, Huawei, LG, RIM, Samsung, and ZTE all supposedly violate two patents for a “calling party announcement apparatus,'” Electronista reports. “Just having a phone like the BlackBerry or iPhone that identifies who’s calling is an infringement on the patents, ClassCo argues.”
Electronista reports, “ClassCo asks about a possible injunction banning anything infringing but is primarily in court to seek a “reasonable” royalty on the patents.”
Read more in the full article here.
This is insane. What next? Sue because your tissue paper is softer than mine. The courts needs to stop this because this is really getting stupid. The iPhone has been out since 2007 and you just now want to sue over caller id? Man who can I sue. What let me sue Burget King and MacDonalds they use the hamburger buns that I use .
If they invented caller I’d and were granted a patent then they are due a royalty. If not it should get thrown out pretty fast.
Should there even be a patent(s) allowed for caller ID. I can understand reasons why there shouldn’t be and I would tend to agree with them.
There shouldn’t be patents for a ton of things that are patented currently!
We’ve had caller ID for years; why sue now? Oh yeah, Apple with their deep pockets and media cachet. There should be a limit on how long you can wait before you sue so you can’t strong-arm dozens of companies who would have come up with other ideas if they knew about the patent in the first place.
I’m going to wait for a couple more years before going after everyone who is violating my patent for “Communication via Auditory and/or Visual Stimuli”. The only country that would even grant me the patent was the US. I’m planning on heading down to Texas to file my suit.
Hmmm…seems some are all for Apple protecting it’s IP, but get fed up when Apple gets sued for violating others’ IP. Can’t have it both ways. All IP should be protected and if a company violates it they should have to pay a penalty beyond basic licensing to make the violation hurt.
David
While none of us knows the details of the allegations, my 6 year old dumb phone IDs callers and it isn’t being sued. The issues that Apple is suing over are unique characteristics that were non-existent prior to the iPhone. The presumption is, that if a technology was patented prior to this, then Apple has done due diligence and licensed it. Most of these companies that are trying to sue Apple are trying to sue for features that have been a common part of systems for much longer. The applicability of the patents are probably suspect from the beginning, thus no one has tried to profit from them until they saw a tidal wave of suits being filed and they figured to try and make a buck while no one was paying close attention.
I agree with you that if Apple is indeed using a patented technology, then they should license it, but Apple has been pretty consistent about licensing what it needed to. An assertion at this point that they are not, and for a rather suspect technical patent, fall into the realm of frivolous patents, a far cry from Apple defending years of confidential and proprietary research.
Most of us that observe these antics from the sidelines know from Apple’s public statements that a significant amount of research was done on the UI and other features of iOS. Many have trotted out the troupe that Apple can’t have it both ways, but you rarely see Apple making assertions of IP prior to its research for the iOS line. The very assertion that Apple is violating others’ IP by necessity validates the idea that other people are violating Apple’s IP.
Apple is being very systematic to sue on grounds of IP that came out of their iPhone and iOS research, while everyone else (GOOGLE) is trying their best to shake the filing cabinets to find some moldy old, tangentially (ir)relevant IP patent to try and convince supposedly reasonable people that they should be rewarded for something that they bought from someone else and had no relevant part in creating.
Most responders here are going to be far more critical of suing Apple for this very reason; it is becoming increasingly evident that NO ONE is doing research any more, except Apple; they are all dusting off obsolete patent filings and trying to generate income for no effort.
Apple innovates for innovation’s sake, not to be, or remain, competitive. And the IP it generates should remain its property for the legally defined period. Everyone else is trying to profit off someone else’s coattails.
Agree!
“non-existent” ??? Yeah right.
Here is one: “‘Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data'” – this is the one that claims Apple invented scanning text and creating hyperlinks from phone numbers and other data. Yeah no one was doing that before the iPhone on any kind of device. lol.
Another one: “‘unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image'”
This one we were just discussing on this site a few weeks back, its “slide to unlock”. Samsung already showed a lot of previous art on this one.
Apple has some great patents I’m sure and some well deserved ones. They also have a lot of questionable ones in their pocket… kind of like every other company out there.
That data detectors patent that you talk about in your first paragraph was actually filed in 1997 relating to the nascent OS X – way before any cell phone was doing it.
The issues that Apple is suing over are unique characteristics that were non-existent prior to the iPhone.
Yeah right.
One of Apple’s Patents they are trying to enforce on HTC is for hyperlinks of phone numbers and other data within text. That wasn’t done before the iphone? I’ve used that ‘feature’ on every computer and OS I’ve used going back several years. Its a standard ‘boiler plate’ type of problem that most programmers have within their toolboxes.
Another one is for “Slide to Unlock” which Samsung already showed a lot of prior art in relation to.
Apple has good patents and some crap ones just like everyone else.
Considering the name, ClassCo, it’s unlikely that they invented this technology. They are trolls. I’m pretty sure that they have built no product that uses this ‘invention’. Apple has done both. And Apple probably has created their own routines for this process and will be found innocent unless, of course, the thing is going to Texas!
So ClassCo makes a product: http://www.voiceannounce.com/catalog.html
It does may actually use caller ID. Besides that, they are patent trolls.
Hold on…
So why don’t they sue ringtone software also, and the carriers.. It’s not the phone makers.
I have multiple ringtones, one for a different person.. Which AT&T tells me what number is calling. Not apple… Apple just allows ME to choose the ringtone for each person.
“Want to know who’s calling? Hear the caller’s name or number announced before your answer!”
So where is this feature on the iPhone exactly? They make a physical patented electronic device that audibly announces the caller ID. That’s nothing at all like a visual indication of caller ID on a screen. They should be told to shove it.
oh yeah – just pay us for the royalties – i think they’d settle for a buy out
According to Wikipedia, “In 1968, Theodore George “Ted” Paraskevakos, while working in Athens, Greece as a communications engineer for SITA,[1] began developing a system to automatically identify a telephone caller to a call recipient. After several attempts and experiments, he developed the method in which the caller’s number is transmitted to the called receiver’s device. This method was the basis for modern-day Caller ID technology.
From 1969 through 1975, Paraskevakos was issued 20 separate patents related to automatic telephone line identification; ….”