“Apple Inc. said the patent claims of a 70-year-old electrical engineer who maintains he invented the smartphone don’t add up, as the case goes before a jury to decide whether Apple is liable for infringement,” Edvard Pettersson reports for Bloomberg. “‘His invention was using your computer as your cell phone,’ Mark Scarsi, Apple’s lawyer, told the jurors in his closing statement today in federal court in Los Angeles. ‘That’s not an iPhone.'”
“NetAirus Technologies LLC, a company owned by inventor Richard L. Ditzik, alleged that Apple infringes a patent for a handheld device that combines computer and wireless-communications functions over both a Wi-Fi and a cellular network,” Pettersson reports. “Damages he can win in the trial are limited to sales of Apple’s iPhone 4 in the past 13 months.”
“Scarsi asked the jury to find that the patent was invalid and not infringed by Apple’s iPhone,” Pettersson reports. “Apple ‘shamelessly’ stole Ditzik’s invention, NetAirus’s lawyer, Ray Niro, said in his closing statement. ‘Apple somewhere along the line lost their way,’ Niro told the jurors. ‘They lost their sense of responsibility.’ Niro said a royalty of $500,000 would be reasonable for Apple’s use of the patented technology.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ray should lay off the hot sauce on trial days. Try ketchup instead.
Related articles:
Apple heads to trial against man claiming to have invented iPhone – November 12, 2013
NetAirus Technologies sues Apple, says entire iPhone concept infringes on its patent – May 4, 2010
“You didn’t build that.”
Pretty sure the Apple community will be able to dig up an interview with Steve Jobs, that occurred before this patent, that lays out either the iPhone or this patent.
How does this crap get to court? You could say that who ever came up with talking into a speaker and hearing on another speaker invented the iPhone. Or maybe two cans and a string.
Sci-Fi stories writers imagine things like nuclear submarines, Star Trek PADD (iPads) , transporters, time travel, … Unless you can make one or design one, you did not invent anything. Dreams are not inventing!!!
Also didn’t the smart phones that came out before iPhone also fit this fellow’s infringement claim? Why’d you take so long old fella. You must have been counting on this for your retirement. Sorry Charlie.
I invented the iPhone. It was an honest mistake. I was just trying to create self-replicating pizza.
Now THAT would be a valuable invention!
This will be thrown out. Amirite?
‘His invention was using your computer as your cell phone…”
Apple’s invention was using your cell phone as your computer. See the difference Ray?
“His invention was using your computer as your cell phone”… I’m about that age and i remember computers, they filed buildings then rooms, we walked inside to flip the ones and zeros in the memory to change the programme, how would that fit in a shirt pocket?
Ridiculous.
Richard Dick forgot the iPhone is also an iPod…
It’s clear by the very size of the requested settlement that the plaintiff knows he doesn’t have a case. If he did, Apple would owe him much more. The plaintiff’s attorney knows it will cost Apple more to defend it than settle it for that amount, which is what he’s hoping for. Fortunately, Apple can afford to piss gold on to their own in-house counsel to bury this guy and make sure he gets nothing. Sure, Apple loses, but it’s important to not give in to this kind of extortion, or you open the floodgates.
I have to, as ever, divert the finger pointing back to the SOURCE of the problem: Our idiotic (to put it kindly) US Patent and Trademark Office. /mini-rant
So… Where is the product? Or is this one of those patent trolling companies?
I am putting a patent out on transparent mindreader that will automatically do what I think!