“Apple Inc., the world’s most valuable technology company, faces a trial over claims by a California inventor that a patent he holds covers key features of the iPhone,” Edvard Pettersson reports for Bloomberg News.
“Apple maintains the NetAirus Technologies LLC patent is invalid because the technology was known long before the company filed its patent. Cupertino, California-based Apple, which three weeks ago defeated patent holder Wi-Lan Inc. at trial over a $248 million royalty demand for wireless technology used in mobile devices, has won pretrial rulings that cap any recovery NetAirus may win,” Pettersson reports. “The company owned by inventor Richard L. Ditzik filed the patent application in 1997 for a handheld device that combines computer and wireless-communications functions over both a local-area network and a wide-area network. Jury selection started today in Los Angeles federal court in the lawsuit, filed 3 1/2 years ago by NetAirus.”
MacDailyNews Take: Fast-tracked.
Pettersson reports, “Apple said in court filings that its Newton message pad, with add-on hardware, could perform the same functions as those claimed by NetAirus’s patent as early as 1994. ‘The technology at issue was so well known at the time NetAirus filed its patent, that independent patent watchdogs have made NetAirus’s patent a poster child in the movement to limit the proliferation of facially invalid patents,’ Apple said in its July 2011 request to throw out the case… The case is NetAirus Technologies LLC v. Apple Inc., 10-03257, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).”
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NetAirus Technologies sues Apple, says entire iPhone concept infringes on its patent – May 4, 2010