“A former Apple engineer testified Monday that some of his ideas are at the heart of a contentious intellectual property case, but stopped short of claiming he’s an inventor on a disputed Qualcomm patent,” Richard Nieva reports for CNET.
“Arjuna Siva, a former Apple engineer, made the statements in testimony during a trial in San Diego over three patents that Qualcomm alleges Apple infringed in some models of its popular iPhone. Apple has argued that Siva should be named as a co-inventor of one of those patents, which covers technology that allows a smartphone to quickly connect to the internet once the device has booted up,” Nieva reports. “On Monday, Siva, who canceled an original appearance at the trial only to later reverse that decision, didn’t ask for credit for the patent in his testimony. ‘I don’t think I’m claiming to be an inventor,’ Siva, who now works at Google, told the court.”
“Siva’s testimony may create a challenge for Apple, which had seen him as a key witness. After Siva backed out of testifying, Apple filed a subpoena for him to appear,” Nieva reports. “Though the engineer didn’t claim to be an inventor, he did say he contributed to several elements of the technology that makes the boot-up process faster. ‘This was my idea,’ he told the court. He also said he was ‘surprised’ and ‘upset’ after Qualcomm filed for the patent. After Siva was dismissed from the stand, Apple reiterated its argument that he was a co-inventor of the technology. ‘I believe Mr. Siva should have been included’ on the patent, said Bill Lin, an Apple expert witness and computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So much for him being a “tainted witness,” we guess.
Regardless, if it was Siva’s idea, he most certainly should have been included on the patent.
SEE ALSO:
Apple loses star witness Arjuna Siva in Qualcomm trial – March 7, 2019
Apple says Qualcomm stole idea for smartphone boot-up tech from engineer – March 5, 2019
The Qualcomm v. Apple patent jury won’t get these simple, brutally honest instructions – March 5, 2019
i just hope all this gets resolved fast enough… so, when Apple releases their own modem… all this litigation will go away.
Siva should have just spoke fact… regardless of how he feels. So you were ‘upset’ and ‘surprised’…
He was a contributing inventor… that QCOM invention does not get off the ground without Siva.
it’s like when artist take a riff or musical part from someone else’s song… that artist can sue for that and have their name listed as one of the writers to that composition.
i still find the software/gesture interface Apple came up with the original iPhone being ripped by Androids should still be patentable. ridiculous…
I will never own an Android phone even though there are some good ones out there. I will forever consider Android the poisoned fruit of intellectual property theft perpetrated by one Eric (the Mole) Schmidt.
Your a fool, Android is the best
And “you’re” a grammatical illiterate, not to mention the comma-splice and missing end punctuation. Proofread much?
“Regardless, if it was Siva’s idea, he most certainly should have been included on the patent.”
No. Absolutely not. You can’t patent an idea. You can only patent specific implementations of that idea.
The legal position on inventor status on a patent is the inventor had to have DIRECT contribution to one or more of the claims in the patent.
This is yet again a failing of Apple’s legal team. The legal team should have gone through the claims and specifically asked Siva which claims contained his original ideas — which ones he told Qualcomm about under NDA.
Then Apple might have a legal basis for their assertion that Siva needs to be listed as an inventor.
Stupid Apple lawyers.
Shadowself, you seem to have forgotten one of the key points of trial advocacy: you never, ever, ask a witness a question unless you are sure how he will answer. When Siva refused to testify voluntarily, any assurance of his cooperation went out the window. So, yes, Apple’s lawyers could have specifically asked him those questions, but the answers might have done their case more harm than good.
By that reasoning then, it may have been imprudent for Apple to subpoena him after he backed out.
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