“Texas base patent troll Hilltop Technology LLC has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. The patent infringement lawsuit concerns Apple’s iPad Air and other Apple devices using a capacitive touch display,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“Hilltop states in their complaint before the court that ‘On information and belief, Apple has been and now is infringing the ‘503 Patent in the State of Texas, in this judicial district, and elsewhere in the United States by making, using, importing, selling or offering to sell touch panel devices that incorporate the touch panel structure according to the ‘503 Patent,'” Purcher reports. “‘On information and belief, examples of Apple’s products that infringe the ‘503 Patent include, but are not limited to, all Apple products having a capacitive type touch panel, including its iPad Air having capacitive-type Touch-On-Lens (TOL) touch panels,’ [Hilltop states].”
Purcher reports, “The patent infringement case presented in today’s report was filed in the Texas Eastern District Court, Marshall Office.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Texas Eastern District Court, Marshall Office. Otherwise known as Trollville, USA.
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What took you so long if this were legitimate?
Touch capacitive technology invented around 1965/67 in the UK for Air Traffic Control.
Those Trolls are in for hiding in the same way Creative Technology got jammed for trying to claim that they invented the MP3 player, Another British invention.
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Touch-Screen.htm
Interesting. . .
Foreign Application Priority Data
May 11, 2007 [TW] 96116883 A
Taiwan patent application filed a month or so before the first iPhone goes on sale in the US, but five months after Steve Jobs demonstrates the iPhone with a multitouch capacitance screen. . . and other capacitance screens already on the market. Does this troll SERIOUSLY think his generic Johnny-come-lately patent is valid???
Only took him 5 years to figure this out. Does lawsuit include the makers of the gazillion android phones which use the same technology. Somehow, I beleive there is prior art.
Taiwan patent filed in 2008. Gee buy iPhone, deconstruct and do asian patent.
Then sell to us company and sue apple.
Jeez! The hits just keep on coming. There are at least a couple of billion Android devices made by every company in the world and yet it’s always Apple getting sued for some patent infringements.
I have a patent which covers this technique which pre-dates this.
This is total B.S. Just because AAPL has money in the bank and some Ass Wipe of company called Hilltop Technology LLC says they created the Touch Screen. And the lawsuit takes place in the Eastern part of Texas. Like I said before, this is total B.S. Criminal in my opinion!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Opportunistic Parasite Patent Trolls: Yet another DISincentive for companies to be successful. This is NOT capitalism.
Once again, a company no one has ever heard of, and that has shipped absolutely nothing… so predictable.
“Otherwise known as Trollville, USA”
Yea, but look how much the court system is making on the rest of the country. A nice racket for them.
Surely Hilltop can find a patent for using a mobile phone by holding it in close proximity to an ear.
I am pretty sure this action will fail. It relies on a particular conductive bridge structure which is very similar to a design (Fig.2c) in my patent RE40867, which has a priority date of April 5th 1994.