But CNET has learned that a federal judge in Delaware yesterday rejected Apple's make an attempt to get rid of case over screen rotation brought by a holding company, MobileMedia Ideas, which is dubbed "a Louis vuitton ipad case classic patent troll."
U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson said the suit could proceed, ruling that this question of whether iOS devices infringed about the patent, No. 6,441,828, was "suitable for determination from their jury."
MobileMedia Ideas could be an unusual company: it's jointlyowned by Apple competitors Sony and Nokia, which aid smartphones, in conjunction with a Denver-based company called MPEG LA that licenses patents on your MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standard. The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly been probing MPEG LA over antitrust violations, as well as was the marked connected with an antitrust lawsuit, now settled, in some Chicago court. MobileMedia and MPEG LA share the exact same us president, Larry Horn.
MobileMedia has a hoard greater than 300 patents, drawn largely from the filing cabinets of Sony and Nokia, that hot weather sayscan be triggered by makers of "smartphones, touch screen phones, together with other portable devices including computer systems,Chanel ipad case laptops, netbooks, personal media players, e-book readers, cameras, and handheld game consoles" -- or in other words, all company making whatever computer. The screen rotation patent was originally granted to Sony.
That innovative, trollish corporate structure gives Sony and Nokia a layer of insulation from countersuits by Apple or other targets MobileMedia might choose. If Sony had sued directly over screen rotation, it could are hit by immediate counterclaims over whether products most notably its Vaio laptops or Xperia mobile phones violate Cupertino's sizable patent stash (that wasthat's Samsung's strategy when Apple named it getting defendant).
Sony's screen rotation patent filed in 1999 doesn't may actually anticipate iOS devices, that use internal sensors to detect movement and dispatch events to applications, which unfortunately could take appropriate actions. The patent says, for example, "by pressing the rotate button just around 3 times for starters image, you can rotate the style clockwise."
Apple argues your Sony patent was invalid by virtue of prior art, including previously issued patent No. 6,563,535, which tackles displaying images right-side-up "regardless from the orientation belonging to the image also known as the physical orientation" through the device.
MobileMedia filed the lawsuit against Apple in July 2010, alleging that 18 of the company's patents were violated. Several of the others it says Apple infringed include:
- Sony patent No. RE39231, which helps owners learn "call incoming control method" cover up tapping the screen or pressing a control button to mute incoming calls or modify the level of incoming calls.
- Nokia patent No. 6,253,075, which handles "rejecting incoming calls." MobileMedia says the iPhone infringes this patent because, to decline an incoming second call during your time period call, the person can tap "decline" or "ignore."
- Sony patent No. 6,725,155, which manages transmitting GPS coordinates and "route search conditions" for your remote server, as well as return "receiving guidance data transmitted among the server." MobileMedia claims the iPhone's mapping features infringe this patent; Judge Robinson ruled that Apple hadn't demonstrated "obviousness" in order that the case can continue.
MobileMedia didn't be affected by queries from CNET today.
A study released in June pegs the price patent troll lawsuits -- the authors used the saying "nonpracticing entities" -- at $29 billion in 2010. It determined that clearly there was little evidence that trolls promote innovation. Louis Vuitton iPhone 4 Case(A patent troll will likely be understood to be an agency that primarily exists to submit lawsuits and doesn't manufacture anything.)
Earlier soon, a federal judge in Wisconsin threw out Apple's patent lawsuit against Motorola Mobility, that is certainly now element of Google. This too week, a Texas court slapped Apple with $368 million in damages due to Facetime-related patents owned by VirnetX.
In a complaint from the European Commission early this year, Google blasted Microsoft and Nokia for hiding behind patent trolls in filing lawsuits used to discourage device makers from usingAndroid. Nokia and Microsoft denied the allegations.
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