Another day, yet another court ruling against Apple over patent disputes with questionable companies. Or better: today, in this case, there are only two.
The first one comes straight from the city of Tyler, in the American state of Texas. A federal jury for the bands in l has determined that Ma will have to pay $ 22.1 million to a subsidiary of Acacia Research, a research firm, by patent number 8,055,820, related to cellular network technologies.
At the end of the trial that started on September 6, the jury said that Apple was unable to prove that the patent was invalid. THE Reuters, who reports the case, was unable to ascertain whether Cupertino will appeal the decision.
On its side, Acacia has all the characteristics of a Patent troll. Even the company's page on Wikipedia states this euphemistically when informing that the company is a “non-practicing entity” that has its profits derived exclusively from licenses and processes based on intellectual appropriation.
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the United States, a federal Delaware jury also ordered Apple to disburse an amount, this time a little less. Ma having to pay $ 3 million in damage MobileMedia Ideas because of the iPhones' alert sounds.
The court ruled that Apple infringed 3 MobileMedia patents (the original claim would be 14 of them) and the initial claim, of $ 18 million in damages, was reduced to 1/6 of the amount.
Patents are related to operations that produce “unnecessary sounds”, such as notification alerts, during telephone calls, and were initially registered by Sony in 1999. It is worth noting that MobileMedia is controlled by the MPEG-LA group, which has part of its shares in the hands of companies like Nokia and Sony itself.
Apple, apparently, will appeal the decision.
(via Apple World Today, AppleInsider)
