Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents, “Yesterday, S3 Graphics, a company in the process of being acquired by HTC, filed two new complaints against Apple, further escalating the patent dispute between the ‘HTC camp’ and Apple:”
• an ITC complaint (click here for the official notice) over “Electronic Devices with Graphics Data Processing Systems, Components Thereof, and Associated Software”
• a federal lawsuit in the District of Delaware, targeting “certain electronic devices and components, [for example], the Apple iPhone, iPad, an[d] iPod Touch mobile devices, Apple Mac desktop and notebook computers, alone or in combination with associated system and application software sold or distributed by Apple”
Mueller reports, “S3 Graphics asserts the same two patents in either complaint:”
• U.S. Patent No. 5,945,997 on “block- and band-oriented traversal in three-dimensional triangle rendering” (applied for by S3 in 1997)
• U.S. Patent No. 5,581,279 on “VGA controller circuitry” (applied for by Cirrus Logic in November 1993, granted by the USPTO in December 1996 and sold to S3 in 1998; it appears that this patent will expire in late 2013, but an ITC investigation is usually finished within about 18 months, so an import ban could be in effect for roughly eight months if S3 successfully enforced this one)
“If the ITC agrees to investigate the new complaint, the ‘companion lawsuit’ filed in Delaware will be stayed until after the ITC trial, provided that Apple asks for it. Companion lawsuits are filed because the ITC cannot order damages — only federal courts can,” Mueller reports. “Now let’s talk about how those filings fit into the overall dispute between Apple and HTC.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
S3 Graphics deal: Increasingly unlikely to help HTC against Apple – July 27, 2011
U.S. ITC says Apple’s Mac OS X violates S3 patents bought by HTC; clears iOS devices – July 26, 2011
HTC buys control of S3 Graphics from VIA just after patent win over Apple – July 6, 2011
… in 1993, having been “…introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987”. So … what is it that they claimed to have invented? What, that Apple is still using nearly two decades later?
This could be a tough case for them to win, and costly, given the patents they will see declared invalid.
HTC’s innovative technique: spamming lawsuits
Florian Mueller has a knack for making complicated ideas easier to understand. A tip of the hat to Herr Mueller!