“VoIP-Pal announced today that it has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, Nevada, seeking over $2.8 billion in damages for alleged infringement of its patented internet communication technologies,” Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors.
“The Bellevue-based company calculated its $2,836,710,031 figure using a 1.25-percent royalty rate based on an apportionment of Apple’s estimated historical profit from iPhone (55-percent), iPad (35-percent), and Mac (10-percent),” Rossignol reports. “VoIP-Pal (VPLM) has over a dozen issued or pending patents, primarily related to VoIP technologies, a few of which it accuses Apple of infringing upon with services like FaceTime and iMessage on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.”
“The lawsuit was originally initiated on February 9, but VoIP-Pal delayed pursuing legal action until Monday as the company says it remains engaged in discussions with Apple outside the courtroom regarding an amicable resolution. The company appears to be open to a sale or licensing of its patent portfolio,” Rossignol reports. “‘We are confident the current good will on both sides will result in a favorable outcome for all parties involved,’ said Emil Malak, CEO of VoIP-Pal.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like a case of lawsuit as negotiating tactic.
Vegas, baby! What an appropriate venue.
Oh, for some legal reforms mitigating frivolous lawsuits which, of course, the largely lawyer-composed government would never allow.
Another sh*tbag outfit with no real products beyond a few patents.
Sounds like a fishy patent to me, based on a quick review of the linked article. The methods and madness behind issuing patents is beyond me, but it seems very possible that this is one of many patents that are issued, but later found invalid when challenged in court.
In the 1990s at Sun Micro the engineers used to have competitions to see who could get the goofiest patent through the USPTO.
James Gosling, the inventor of Java, was able to patent a light switch.
🙂
OMFG! That is hysterical! If that’s not an inditement of the patent system I don’t know what is.
The sad thing is that at the USPTO the examiners have way too many filings to review to go into depth on prior art and similar patent applications already filed. The examiners rely way too heavily on the applicant to do that searching — and a lot of applicants either don’t know how to do an in depth search or don’t want to do so for fear of finding something that would invalidate their application.
We’d need to quadruple the number of patent examiners AND train them much better (or hire people with advanced degrees in their specific specialty areas) in order to cure this problem or even start to cure it.
A real cure will require a change (legal and regulatory) in the things that can make a patent application specific and unique. Too many applications are using limited specifics to get the patent through and issued, but then also contain generic wording in order to expand that specificity to allow the patent to be used offensively.
Holy sh*t, that’s a lot of money. Hope Apple has good lawyers on retainer. Also, it helps if Apple is not guilty, too.
Troll boy alert. You are a boy aren’t you?
Do you like boys?
Sure he’s just a wee lad suffering from an inferiority complex (richly deserved). Hah! I look for any headline that can be abused by Joe for a little Apple/Tim bashing and there he always is!! Troll once, Troll twice, SOLD!