Apple Gets Sued by Motorola Over Phone Patents
War of the phone patents.
Motorola's experienced a revitalization thanks to its recent Android handsets, and with some fight now flowing through the company's veins, it is going on the legal offensive against Apple.
Specifically, it's Motorola Mobility that filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iTouch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents. Motorola Mobility also filed patent infringement complaints against Apple in the Northern District of Illinois and the Southern District of Florida.
Overall, Motorola Mobility’s three complaints include 18 patents, which relate to "early-stage innovations" developed by Motorola found on many of Apple’s core products and associated services, including:
- MobileMe
- App Store
- WCDMA (3G)
- GPRS
- 802.11
- antenna design
- wireless email
- proximity sensing
- software application management
- location-based services
- multi-device synchronization
Motorola Mobility has requested that the ITC commence an investigation into Apple’s use of Motorola’s patents and, among other things, issue an Exclusion Order barring Apple’s importation of infringing products, prohibiting further sales of infringing products that have already been imported, and halting the marketing, advertising, demonstration and warehousing of inventory for distribution and use of such imported products in the United States. In court, Motorola Mobility has requested that Apple cease using the technology and provide compensation for past infringement.
Given that we're already in the fourth generation of iPhone, what took Motorola so long before it sprang into action? According to Motorola, it tried to come to terms with Apple and this latest move was the last straw.
Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, explained, “After Apple’s late entry into the telecommunications market, we engaged in lengthy negotiations, but Apple has refused to take a license. We had no choice but to file these complaints to halt Apple’s continued infringement. Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the company’s business.”
Apple has yet to respond.
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good and I hope they win
In your face, Apple! Although those so called patents look like common stuff we have on most smart phones, I still think that it's good that Apple is getting a taste of its own medicine.
Apple innovation at its best - Abuse others without paying up.
Only surprice was that the "antenna design" in the list, Motorola usualy has quite good reception levels while Ip4 has the worst in most tests.
MS sues HTC, Moto sues Apple, Apple sues MS, MS sues google...
Its all some sort of perverted circle jerk, really.
Tag, you're sued!
Copyright and Patenting at it's best. Slowing human progress since 1709 and 1790, in favor of personal gain. A big hoppedi whop for civilization.
Copyright and Patenting at it's best. Slowing human progress since 1709 and 1790, in favor of personal gain. A big hoppedi whop for civilization.
patents aren't to bad, i believe that after so many years they go public and free for everyone to use.
but because of mikey mouse, we have a 75 year wait on copyright, which use to be 25 years.
... antenna design??? then motorola is to blame for iPhone's antenagate? LOL...
Motorola should have made a patent for bad signal when holding a phone normally.
Patent trolling lol.
Then apple can sue Moto for the bad antenna design!
... i think, patents should be open... when you do modifications, do it, but recognize the source... but, if you sit on a patent and don't evolve... this stops progress... and common... now all of touchscreen phones look like iPhone now? before there waz some PDA's but nothing, like now...
Wanna sue Apple, there is an app for that
motorola is jealous because they did not have enough know how to implement these technologies on their devices before the small apple did
Day 1) Microsoft sues Motorola over smartphone patents
Day 2) Motorola sues Apple over smartphone patents
So what's the big story going to be for tomorrow?
Day 3) Apple sues Microsoft over smartphone patents
Everyone declares victory, all hand money around in a cirle and everyone agrees it was a big waste of time
I never had an opinion more than "meh" about Motorola, specially since i never wanted a phone of theirs ( used to be really bad in phones back in the days and now here in Greece they arent all that supported with any of their best models so .. u know ) even though now with the whole Adriod thinking im doing in case I dont get a Windows Phone 7, just for them suing Apple over patterns I love them as a company. They simply won me over.
Never expected to hear about another patern, Apple or sueing related article and not feel the leas irritated. Let alone have them all in one article and actually enjoy reading about it! Yeah I know it sounds messed up but still.. Im honest
It's not a big news. It doesn't qualify to put on CNN, but news will be on every channel if other country did that, like the Chinese company etc... More exciting to drive up everyone's blood float.
Have the lawyers families been getting hungry over M$ Moto and Apple these days
Anyone else think they should have gone to law school to be a patent lawyer? Somehow I don't think the recession is affecting them to much right now.
Company A: Man, sales are down and we need to report good profits to the share holders. What can we do?
Patent Lawyer: LOLZ, go write a bunch of generic patents that vaguely describe every invention ever and then SUE EVERYONE
Company A: Anyone got any better ideas? ... Won't they just sue us back the same way?
Patent Lawyer: Who cares, its the American way as endorsed by the political morons who call a government. Oh and by the way my legal fees are 110% of whatever you get.
Go get em Moto, lol.
Day 1) Microsoft sues Motorola over smartphone patentsDay 2) Motorola sues Apple over smartphone patentsSo what's the big story going to be for tomorrow?Day 3) Apple sues Microsoft over smartphone patentsEveryone declares victory, all hand money around in a cirle and everyone agrees it was a big waste of time
Its not a total waste.. Some lawyers made some major cash on that deal..
A taste of their own medicine for once, best of luck Moto.
we really need to do something about all this patent trolling. this is out of hand.
Go Motorola!
Go Nokia!
Go HTC!
The law is BAD
As much as Apple needs a taste of karma... It's sad to see another technology patent infringement on the internet. If we had one of those "Days since last" signs, it'd never get past 0.
I didn't know you could patent 802.11
kind of makes the open standard a joke doesn't it? lol
And how many damn companies have a wireless email patent? It seems like they all use that as an excuse to sue other people.
Honestly, if I had the patent on that antenna design, I'm not sure I'd want anyone to know it was me that designed that horrible creature.
Day 1) Microsoft sues Motorola over smartphone patentsDay 2) Motorola sues Apple over smartphone patentsSo what's the big story going to be for tomorrow?Day 3) Apple sues Microsoft over smartphone patentsEveryone declares victory, all hand money around in a cirle and everyone agrees it was a big waste of time
Well, MS is suing over software patents relating to Android implementation. It's like when both MS and Apple sued HTC over Andorid but HTC struck a deal with MS that gave them patent access that shut out Apple.
So it's not so much a circle as a direct line of money pulled away from Apple and going to MS.
And Apple tried suing MS once, it didn't go so well for them.
I can't stand the law. This is so stupid. What ever happened to developing the best product for all at the time? Who cares who came up with the name of something, or design. Does it work? Is it the best? Perfect, then let everyone use it.
Money has completely FUCKED this world to hell. I can't stand it.
apples only response is for his royal Jobsness to personally cut a check for fifty percent of the revenue apple has recieved for the last 4 years. personally, if i was motorola, i wouldn't claim anything to do with the antenna, but i guess motorola figures even bad publicity is good.
can we get a caption contest of mr.jobs freaking out in some photo upon recieiving the cease and desist order from motorola?!
kudos to motorola waiting until they have all off apple by the bal....erm stem.
just watch apple bribe their way out of this one with the FTC just like microsoft did with the DOJ.still pisses me off i can't remove liability prone outlook and netmeeting from my computer.
I don't undersatnd the people saying Apple is getting a taste of their own medicine... Many people seems to embrace the thinking that Apple copies some other manufacturer and is succesfull becouse of pure mind manipulation... Do you think that Apple have a secret mind controll recepi that every other company lacks???
All this suing i think is the same case as with Nokia, Motorola is trying to get some kind of excesive leverage out of some standard technology becouse they don't have good numbers to show their shareholders, Apple don't accept their terms and so they go to legal battleground, in the mean time Motorola's leadership gets some time to try to make something from company.