Anenome
10-31-2010, 10:29 PM
The smartphone market is getting litigious! (Courtroom) Drama!
Apple and Motorola are battling for mobile phone market share, and the war is moving further away from store shelves and into the courtrooms with a new patent infringement lawsuit.
Apple filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Motorola in the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, both mentioning the Droid by name. One lawsuit accuses Motorola of infringing on Apple's multitouch patents. The other targets Motorola's alleged infringement of patents covering smartphone user interface elements.
Motorola launched a courtroom offensive earlier in October. Seeking redress over Apple's alleged infringement of 18 patents, Motorola filed four lawsuits against the iPhone maker and initiated a separate proceeding with the International Trade Commission. Motorola's second move came nine days later, when the company asked a federal judge in Delaware to invalidate Apple's multitouch patents, many of which are central to a lawsuit Apple filed against HTC earlier this year.
Apple currently has lawsuits pending against Nokia and HTC in addition to Motorola. Meanwhile Motorola is facing legal actions initiated by RIM and IP holding company NTP
But, at the end of the day, all the major players in the market will end up signing licensing agreements with one another. Motorola could end up pocketing a couple of bucks from each iPhone sale, while Apple might rake in a small amount each time an HTC Touch is sold. And the increasingly competitive smartphone market will continue to flourish even as the court battles rage on.
(source (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/10/apple-tries-short-circuiting-droid-with-patent-lawsuit.ars))
Reminds me of the CPU industry, where the top companies all share patents as a matter of competitive necessity.
Apple and Motorola are battling for mobile phone market share, and the war is moving further away from store shelves and into the courtrooms with a new patent infringement lawsuit.
Apple filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Motorola in the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, both mentioning the Droid by name. One lawsuit accuses Motorola of infringing on Apple's multitouch patents. The other targets Motorola's alleged infringement of patents covering smartphone user interface elements.
Motorola launched a courtroom offensive earlier in October. Seeking redress over Apple's alleged infringement of 18 patents, Motorola filed four lawsuits against the iPhone maker and initiated a separate proceeding with the International Trade Commission. Motorola's second move came nine days later, when the company asked a federal judge in Delaware to invalidate Apple's multitouch patents, many of which are central to a lawsuit Apple filed against HTC earlier this year.
Apple currently has lawsuits pending against Nokia and HTC in addition to Motorola. Meanwhile Motorola is facing legal actions initiated by RIM and IP holding company NTP
But, at the end of the day, all the major players in the market will end up signing licensing agreements with one another. Motorola could end up pocketing a couple of bucks from each iPhone sale, while Apple might rake in a small amount each time an HTC Touch is sold. And the increasingly competitive smartphone market will continue to flourish even as the court battles rage on.
(source (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/10/apple-tries-short-circuiting-droid-with-patent-lawsuit.ars))
Reminds me of the CPU industry, where the top companies all share patents as a matter of competitive necessity.