After just one day, the Qualcomm came up with more lawsuits for patent infringement against the Apple.
In addition to the previous process, two more complaints have now been made by the chip maker: the first, which comprises six more patents (8,971,861, 7,834,591, 8,768,865, 8,229,043, 8,447,132 and 9,024,418) , passes through several technologies, from energy management to automatic learning. The second goes after five more patents, among which four are credited to Palm (8,683,362, 8,497,928, 7,844,037 and 9,203,940).
If you’re wondering why Qualcomm cites Palm, the answer is easy: in 2014, the manufacturer bought several Palm patents previously owned by HP. Some of them were related to the design options of the webOS company and the device itself.
In the process, Qualcomm claimed that Apple copied the design interface “cards” of the operating system, in addition to citing patent infringement of features such as answering calls with a text message, the possibility of resuming the camera’s focus when touching on the screen and the idea of ​​assigning countless uses to the on / off button.
All of these Palm inventions, owned by Qualcomm, have considerably improved the functionality of mobile devices and the user experience, all of which are widely found in Apple products without a license or permission.
In a matter of TechCrunch, as soon as the iPhone X was announced, Natasha Lomas commented that the new device looked like a «little ghost» of the Palm Pre. If you are not convinced, take a look at the video below:
Believe it or not, Lomas’ text was used as an argument in the chipmaker’s lawsuit to reaffirm that, in fact, the breach occurred. At the time the Palm Pre was launched in 2009, Tim Cook (until then COO, but acting as CEO on an interim basis) made the following statement at one of Apple’s financial results conferences: “We don’t care about the competition, but if others steal our intellectual property, we’ll go after them. ”
In addition to Qualcomm initiating these processes, it also filed an application with the United States International Trade Commission (International Trade Commission, or ITC) to ban imports of iPhones equipped with the processors of its rival, Intel. The same had already happened in July, when the manufacturer asked that only iPhones and iPads equipped with its chips arrived in American lands.
It seems that everything was premeditated, since it is already the third day in a row that companies are suing. However, as much as everything seems orchestrated, Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s attorney general, said that this type of case takes time to prepare:
You cannot react so quickly to initiate lawsuits. We were developing a presentation of three new district court cases in San Diego today, and a new case from ITC in Washington. These involve a group of 16 patents that are additional that we have already processed, and 5 of these 16 are those that we are processing at ITC, seeking an exclusion order.
The fight is old, but with the number of lawsuits that the two are facing simultaneously, this novel should not end anytime soon …
via TechCrunch
