Katie Marsal
A small Nevada company has added Apple and a slew of other PC makers to a lawsuit it hopes will give up royalties for an allegedly valid touchscreen patent that may affect the iPhone.
The patents superficially refer to any device with a touchscreen capable of collecting information and, while meant for in-field situations such as police stops, are allegedly so broadly worded and illustrated that virtually every company making a tablet-like device or a touch smartphone has violated some parts of both patents, which are exclusively the rights of a little-known tablet PC maker referred to in the 13-page document as Nova Mobility.
In sync with the broad reach of the patents, Typhoon plans to implicate as many major touchscreen device manufactturers as it can and includes Apple along with Fujitsu, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Nokia, Panasonic, Palm, Samsung, and Toshiba as new defendants in a suit that had started primarily with Dell, whose Latitude XT tablet PC the plaintiff says was the primary reason for the initial lawsuit.
Typhoon is also exiting settlement talks with Sand Dune Ventures, which makes the Tabletkiosk line of ultra-mobile PCs, and is drawing the company back into the much larger lawsuit.
Illustrations describing Typhoon's touchscreen computing patents.
Among the more notable devices that Typhoon says tread on its patent are the HTC Touch smartphone, Lenovo's ThinkPad X-series notebooks, Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet and Palm's Treo handset line.
It's unclear as to how well the lawsuit and the requested jury trial will succeed. While some aspects of the patents appear relevant, others are references to outmoded technology; in one instance, a patent refers to storage over floppy and SCSI drives, neither of which are used by the named devices.
However valid the case, Typhoon believes it can generate a steady revenue stream from all of the affected companies. It wants not just financial damages but an injunction against the products involved until the companies agree to pay a "reasonable royalty" every three months.
As is nearly always true for these lawsuits, Apple hasn't commented on its involvement in the matter.
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25 Comments
Owp. No Floppy Drive or Ram Pack in the iPhone. FAIL.But seriously. They should change the law so that only people or entities who actually have products on the market or are aggressively trying to get products on the market have a chance at lawsuits like this. These patent squatting trolls serve no good to the human race.
It's completely ridiculous that courts have to waste their time on what seems to be so many superfluous patent suits. If there isn't already, there should be clear statutes of limitations for a reasonable period for the patent holder to productize the patent, say 5-10 years, along with requirements for patents to clearly define their intended market. A patent really shouldn't be so vague as to cover applications that the inventor never imagined or intended (ie. didn't invent).
They should change the law so that only people or entities who actually have products on the market...
The IBM Simon from 1992 and with a full touch display seems to qualify as prior art, a working product, and was most likely patented.
Isn't Apple's own Newton, whose manufacture and availability predates these patents, a prominent instance of prior art?
I'm surprised they haven't also named Nintendo, with respect to the DS cash-cow.
I love how parasitic companies like Typhoon Touch Technologies sit on these patents for years, clearly lacking anything even remotely resembling the initiative or ingenuity to act constructively on their own, and wait until companies such as Apple et al have ripened the market with successful products, and then attempt to extort money from them. I realize I'm lamenting the obvious here -- if they were actually intent on protecting their supposed intellectual property, they would have pounced years ago. They're just interested in blackmailing companies once they've effectively "monetized" the relevant technologies.
Barf.
Besides the prior art there are aspects of this patent that make it the least plausible lawsuit that we have ever seen. The patent diagram specifically states the kind of battery and the power outage. Why would they do that? They should have just said battery. There are many other similar issues.
NOTE: The Patent specifically states LCD so there is no need to post that ATMs had CRT touchscreens before that or that the touchscreen was invented 25 years earlier in 1971.
@ AppleInsider Staff.
Do you have the patent numbers. I'd like to look at them in detail?