“Apple has emerged victorious in yet another legal tussle pertaining to patent infringement,” Anu Passary reports for Tech Times. “The Cupertino company has won the lawsuit filed against it by ContentGuard Holdings, a subsidiary of Pendrell Corp.”
“ContentGuard, the digital rights management business, sued Apple for the infringement of five anti-piracy patents,” Passary reports. “On Friday, Nov. 20, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas jury decreed that Apple did not flout five DRM-related patents which were owned by ContentGuard.”
“In 2013, ContentGuard sued not only Apple but also Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Google Inc. in 2014, claiming that the companies infringed several of its anti-piracy patents, which aid in the restriction of content access only to approved users,” Passary reports. “In a different case in September 2015, a jury ruled that Google Inc. did not infringe the same five patents. Samsung too was given a clean chit in the lawsuit ContentGuard filed against the South Korean company.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If even Google and Samsung are found to have not infringed your patents, especially in the rocket docket, you know you’re trollin’.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
the ol’ “Eastern District of Texas.”
On this, at least, we appear to agree. The patent function of this court ought to be abolished.
ContentGuard’s lawyer Samuel Baxter revealed that the ruling was disappointing. 😥 😿
Do you suppose it’s because he’s not getting paid?
Oh no. He’ll be paid, just not a percentage of any winnings. Boohoo.
I just love Apple’s legal staff. (He says with the strongest sarcasm ever!)
Apple got a ruling in 2015 that Apple did not have to pay any damages or royalties ever to ContentGuard, but rather than dropping it and moving on they kept the thing going for five more years — seemingly with no real benefit to Apple. Way to keep lawyers and legal staff employed for five years! And, it seems it will be continuing.
I could see Apple’s lawyers’ actions for the past five years trying to invalidate the patents if ContentGuard were appealing all three rulings in their actions agains Apple, Google, and Samsung. But, I’ve never read of any such actions. So why are Apple’s lawyers spending all this time and effort on something with no direct benefit to Apple? To keep collecting their salaries, of course!