A U.S. District Court has ruled that Apple's iPhone infringes on three patents owned by non-practicing entity MobileMedia Ideas â a company jointly owned in part by smartphone makers Sony and Nokia [updated]
The ruling from U.S. District Court in the District of Delaware was handed down on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Apple attempted to have the case tossed out of court last month citing prior art, but Judge Sue Robinson denied the request.
MobileMedia is jointly owned by Sony, Nokia and MPEG LA. The filing that was originally at the heart of the case, U.S. Patent No. 6,441,828, was filed by Sony in 1999 in relation to technology for a digital picture frame and relates to display orientation on a digital screen.
Update: The initial complaint was eventually narrowed to three patents, and a federal jury ruled on Thursday after four hours of deliberation that Apple was in violation of those inventions. MobileMedia Chief Executive Larry Horn reportedly said that the three patents Apple was found to have infringed were related to camera phones, call handling and call rejection, meaning the initial screen orientation patent was apparently not included in the final decision.
MobileMedia Ideas holds more than 300 patents related to a wide variety of consumer electronics features. The company announced in 2010 it would license patents related to "smartphones, mobile phones, and other portable devices including personal computers, laptops, notebooks, personal media players, e-book readers, cameras, and hand-held game consoles."
Illustration from Sony's '828 patent with "display" orientation button. | Source: USPTO
The '828 patent, which the case was originally based on, broadly defines a method of changing the orientation of an image on a portable device based on a specific set of factors. Most of the patent describes the basic idea of changing a screen's output from portrait mode to landscape, though one claim relates to "determining a direction in which an image of the image signal is to be displayed⦠according to a posture in which the apparatus is placed."
The complaint was first filed in Delaware in 2010. MobileMedia Ideas initially claimed that Apple was in violation of 18 patents owned by the company.
23 Comments
This is funny :)
People must respect "good" patents. If these make sense and are legit, Apple should pay so their patents can be respected too.
Sure hope [I]U know whose Darling[/I] is not gonna post! Ah, MPEG LA. There's that [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA#Criticism]Wiki part[/URL]: ...Criticism MPEG LA has claimed that video codecs such as Theora and VP8 infringe on patents owned by its licensors, without disclosing the affected patent or patents. Currently, they are calling out for “any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the VP8 video codec” [IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/17769/width/500/height/1000[/IMG]
[quote name="pedromartins" url="/t/154999/apples-iphone-found-to-infringe-on-sony-owned-screen-rotation-patents#post_2246075"]This is funny :) People must respect "good" patents. If these make sense and are legit, Apple should pay so their patents can be respected too. [/quote] If this ruling passes the inevitable appeal then Apple will. But remember that patents are detail specific. If this patent describes a particular method for rotation and Apple a using a different method then there's less grounds for crying violation. And Apple might still convince an appeals court on the prior art argument. Or if no method is given then they might pass an appeals court on the notion that they vastly improved the IP by developing a method and thus created a new IP (which is a valid argument under US law)
[quote name="PhilBoogie" url="/t/154999/apples-iphone-found-to-infringe-on-sony-owned-screen-rotation-patents#post_2246077"] MPEG LA has claimed that video codecs such as Theora and VP8 infringe on patents owned by its licensors, without disclosing the affected patent or patents. [/quote] Yeah, that is a bit much to me. If you are going to cry foul you need to say exactly what over.
[quote name="charlituna" url="/t/154999/apples-iphone-found-to-infringe-on-sony-owned-screen-rotation-patents#post_2246087"] If this ruling passes the inevitable appeal then Apple will. But remember that patents are detail specific. If this patent describes a particular method for rotation and Apple a using a different method then there's less grounds for crying violation. And Apple might still convince an appeals court on the prior art argument. Or if no method is given then they might pass an appeals court on the notion that they vastly improved the IP by developing a method and thus created a new IP (which is a valid argument under US law)[/quote] Apple can get a patent on their improvements, but that in no way invalidates the original patent. Having a patent doesn't protect you from earlier patents on pieces of what you do.