Ah, the patent war: in three separate cases, Apple sues, gets sued and wins – all in the same week

That the world of patents and of intellectual properties a mad tangle of confusing and ancient laws, endless legal disputes and rivers of money running everywhere, we all already know. But what about Apple, which appeared in the world news three times this week for three different cases involving patent disputes? So even I begin to understand Bas Erding.

Apple logo on top of a store

In the first case, Ma got into yet another fight with Qualcomm, one of the largest mobile processor manufacturers in the world. The novelty here is that, while disputes already underway in the courts of the United States and China, this new one has been moved to British territory. The process, started today, is related to “registered patents and designs”, according to Bloomberg, but there is no deeper information about what intellectual property companies are disputing or what amount is being discussed in court.

Qualcomm did not comment on the case; Apple, for its part, simply referred to a statement published in January, at the time of the opening of the other lawsuit against the chip maker, where the Cupertino company said Qualcomm “unfairly insists on charging royalties for technologies that they have nothing to do with ”and that they“ insist on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular technology patent licensors with which we have agreements ”.

It is good to remember that Qualcomm, regardless of the fights, remains one of the largest suppliers of Apple in the production chain of iPhones and other mobile devices of the company. In other words, here is an example to reflect on the old saying “friends, friends, part business” under a very different tactic.

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In the second dispute of the day, Apple is on the other side of the court on the Russian side. Ma was sued by Inventergy, Inc., a company specializing in patent holding is a notorious Patent troll. The company accuses Ma of violating six intellectual properties related to cellular communication standards, claiming that it is "prepared to grant Apple a global and non-exclusive license" for a price that is not very friendly, as we can imagine.

Inventergy is part of a group of companies that originally owned Nokia patents and that have previously filed lawsuits against Apple, at the time of the dispute with Acacia Research (which is also part of the group), Cupertino had already accused the Finnish company and adjacent conspiracy.

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The third case of the day, at least, made Tim Cook and his gang breathe a sigh of relief: a process driven by Smartflash LLC in 2013, which accused Apple of infringing patents related to data storage on iTunes and originally forced Ma to pay $ 533 million in company damages, was definitely reversed upon appeal.

Confirming a possibility raised in the middle of last year, the US Court of Appeals unanimously defined that the jury should have defined the patents as invalid, since the US Patent and Trademark Office itself had already defined them as such last year, because they are all "abstract" and do not constitute an invention or true intellectual property.

With this, Apple gets rid of paying more than half a billion dollars company and can use the money for more noble purposes, such as adding new emojis.

(via AppleInsider, Patently Apple, Cult of Mac)