“A group of limited liability companies under the Optis Wireless Technology, LLC umbrella filed suit against Apple on Monday in East Texas, accusing the company of infringing on a portfolio of seven patents related to LTE standards,” Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors.
“Optis Wireless and the other plaintiffs named in the complaint appear to be non-practicing entities that aim to generate revenue through patent litigation,” Rossignol reports. “These type of companies are commonly referred to as patent trolls.”
“The complaint, seen by MacRumors, alleges that all LTE-enabled Apple products, including various iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch models, infringe on the LTE patents,” Rossignol reports. “Last August, in the same court, a jury decided that Huawei willfully infringed many of the same LTE patents being asserted against Apple. The Chinese smartphone maker was ordered to pay $10.6 million in damages.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is why rocket dockets can’t have nice things.
SEE ALSO:
Apple plans to close all retail stores in Eastern District of Texas in fight against patent trolls – February 22, 2019
Federal jury rules Apple must pay $502.6 million to VirnetX – April 10, 2018
Patent troll Soverain Software targets Apple in new lawsuit – March 17, 2017
Apple hit with lawsuit claiming patent infringement over iPhone’s battery technologies – July 12, 2016
Apple sued over iPhones making calls, sending email – May 23, 2016
Patent lawsuit targets Apple’s Siri voice recognition technology – January 21, 2016
Apple sued for alleged patent infringement over all capacitive touchscreen products – January 30, 2014
Eastern Texas court orders Apple to pay $8 million in patent trial over iPod playlists – July 9, 2011
As noted earlier in the week, there are 94 Federal Judicial Districts. The average for plaintiff-friendly jury verdicts in patent cases across 93 of the districts is 58%. The percentage in the Eastern District of Texas is 88%, which is why a third of all US patent cases are filed there, mostly in the Marshall Division.
Just get everyone to upgrade to the next release of iOS and BAM not LTE devices anymore 5GE… at least for AT&T 🙂
Every one of these patents are alternative methods of accomplishing things that are done by other patented methods in the 3G, 4G and LTE standards which are licensed to all cellular phone makers who must use those standard patents in their devices. These alternates were developed by companies such as Samsung, LG, Panasonic, etc, but were not accepted to be used among those in the standards so were sold off to a NPE who is suing companies hoping they can convince a jury to award them a decision because their patents DO actually do the things the accepted Standard Essential Patents (SEP) do, just they aren’t really part of the SEP STANDARD. That’s why they’ve been sold off by the companies that developed them. Real SEPs are NEVER sold off as they are money making cows to be milked as all the companies in the industry MUST license them from the developer. . . the developer is NOT going to sell such a patent they’ve gotten accepted into the standard to a non-practicing entity (NPE), a company which doesn’t make the product and only exists to license patents.