“Kudelski Group has announced that its OpenTV and Nagravision subsidiaries have filed a patent infringement suit against Apple in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California,” Robert Briel reports for Broadband TV News.
“The lawsuit alleges that Apple infringes five US patents owned by OpenTV and Nagravision, and identifies Apple’s infringing products and services as including iOS mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod), Apple TV, App Store, iTunes, iADs [sic], Safari, and OS X-based personal computers,” Briel reports. “The companies are seeking a permanent injunction, attorneys fees, and unspecified financial damages that are ‘in no event less than a reasonable royalty.'”
Briel reports, “Last October, OpenTV also filed a patent suit against Netflix in the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands.”
Read more in the full article here.
“A method and apparatus routes user information including confidential information and other information to a vendor in a secure manner without requiring the user to transmit information in a secure manner. The user provides a user identifier and information including confidential information to a response collector, who relates the user identifier to the user information. The response collector may verify the information to protect against fraud. An information provider provides an application identifier and vendor routing information to a response collector, who relates the vendor routing information to the application identifier. The application identifier corresponding to the vendor is broadcast to the user via an interactive information system application, and the interactive information system sends the application identifier, a user identifier and other response information to a response collector as directed by the user and the interactive information system application. The response collector may then route the user’s information and other response information to the vendor according to the vendor routing information. The user may send anonymous responses in the same manner without sending the user identifier to the response collector.”
This is the abstract of the first patent. I doubt this patent is enforceable. It’s way too generic. However, *if* it is enforceable, virtually 100% of the online systems use some variant of this. Even MDN’s little survey boxes may violate this patent as the patent explicitly mentions user surveys.
I haven’t looked at the other four patents they are claiming Apple violates too.
When Apple has such trouble enforcing its VERY specific and concrete patents, it would be a particular travesty for this vague nonsense to get anywhere.
For those interested, the abstract uses the word ‘information’ 18 times. I found it quite amusing to have my Mac read it to me.
“Method and apparatus for routing confidential information.”
Fedex has been doing that for decades.
All 5 patents are both obvious and vague at the same time.
Nagravision is a French bulldog company. Not one to mess with. However I do not see how this relates to Apple implementation and Netflix.
Nagravision provided encryption technology to Dish Network for their conditional access cards, for satellite TV.
Kudelski Group has announced that its OpenTV and Nagravision subsidiaries…
Who?
identifies Apple’s infringing products and services as including iOS mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod), Apple TV, App Store, iTunes, iADs [sic], Safari, and OS X-based personal computers…
They forgot the kitchen sink.
The companies are seeking a permanent injunction, attorneys fees, and unspecified financial damages that are ‘in no event less than a reasonable royalty…
Their lawyers love them, if no one else. Meanwhile, sounds like classic patent trolling to me. Are ANY of the contested patents even active at Kudelski Group?
I read through these patents and they are all descriptions of general things computers normally do. One, for example is a very simplistic description of displaying multiple layers of drawn images such as boxes and circles on computer screens that overlay and then re-draw. Computers and applications have been doing that since on-screen graphics became important in the 70s. . . but this patent was awarded in the late 90s? Another claims to be a method to display video while also asynchronously playing sound. . . duh! Yet another claims they invented the ability to confirm secure IDs from a third location to assure safe transmission of data between two other locations. . . Huh? Obvious, and done before by many methods including ATM point of sale systems. And yet another seems to claim invention of digital sales over the Internet in large selection stores. Somehow they claim that before their invention such “stores” were limited to ten or fewer items! Absurd.
Perhaps it’s a ploy to promote reform/reexamine of ALL software patents..