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Multi-Touch Tech Firm Seeks iPad Sales Injunction
An anonymous reader writes "Taiwan-based Elan Microelectronics just filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission alleging that Apple is infringing on its patents and violating the Tariff Act, and is seeking a ban on imports of the iPad as well as an order to stop selling the mobile device along with iPhones, iPods, and Macs. The move was taken as a 'continuation of our efforts to enforce our patent rights against Apple's ongoing infringement,' the company said." Considering many iPad pre-orders have tracking #s already, I suspect it might be a little late.
Thus proving that you didn't RTFA
you don't lose patents just by being slow to enforce them(I think they're already suing in any case).
It's trademarks you lose if you fail to enforce them.
copyright patents and trademarks are 3 completely different things even if people like to lump them together under "IP"
The trackpads on the Macbooks are multi-touch.
It's tricky and unless you know more details about the specific case, it's hard to say who actually owns what. This is what I know from the case:
Apple bought a company called Fingerworks in 2005. Fingeworks made multi-touch keyboard and mice. Shortly after bought by Apple, Fingerworks ceased to sell or make any products. The best guess is that Apple bought Fingerworks solely for it's patents and technology. As of August 2008, Fingerworks continued to file patents.
Apple releases the iPhone in 2007. Elan Microelectronics sues them thereafter.
When looking at these patent cases, there has to be certainty about the specific technology involved. Multi-touch is large collection of differing technologies. MS Surface for example relies on cameras whereas the iPhone appears to use capacitance. The devil is in the details and that's what lawyers are for.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Mine started out in SHENZHEN, CN and is now in LOUISVILLE, KY. Hopefully past customs and unstoppable!
I believe that Apple is suing HTC over gestures which use multi-touch.
The patent in this suit is related to sensing multi-touch, and is therefore a prerequisite to doing multi-touch gestures. Here's the patent.
I have no idea of what relationship there is between Elan and Logitech (who was awarded the patent).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Elantech makes the multi-touch trackpads in the eeePC.
I have been following this story since April of 2009. This link http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html is the best explanation of how multi-touch technology was created.
Short answer: No. The statute of limitations on patent infringement is six years. And in the case of ongoing infringement, even if you miss the six year mark from when infringement started, you can still get damages back to six years from when you filed your law suit.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The best guess is that Apple bought Fingerworks solely for it's patents and technology.
There's actually almost zero guessing on this point, although it takes some digging to find all of the facts. Much of the details were posted on the Fingerfans forum back when the purchase happened. Other useful info may exist primarily in the Internet Archive at this point.
Synopsis: Fingerworks as a company was a young venture founded based on Wayne Westerman's Ph.D. work relating to capacitive multi-touch interfaces. Fingerworks was one of the first companies to have useful (awesome, actually) multitouch based products on the open market. These included the GesturePad, a multi-touch pointing device not dissimilar to the recent Wacom Bamboo Touch; and the TouchStream multi-touch keyboard. The TouchStream was pretty cool: max typing speeds were slower than a conventional keyboard, but the whole surface was usable for multitouch pointer input and gestures.
Apple apparently liked what they saw and bought the company up -- its patent portfolio as well as Westerman and their core R&D team. This was not even remotely public knowledge at the time. To outsiders' view, Fingerworks practically vanished. The release of the first iPhone was the coming-out party for this technology at Apple. Westerman and his team have continued to do multi-touch research at Apple, issuing a variety of patents under the auspices of their new company. I recall a few of those being mentioned on Slashdot in the past, specifically one about ongoing work to improve haptics (touch feedback) for multi-touch keyboards.
It didn't expire. Read the erratum here:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/og/2007/week03/paterr3.htm
In the notice of "PATENTS WHICH EXPIRED ON October 20, 2006 DUE TO
FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES" appearing in the Official Gazette of
December 19, 2006, all reference to Patent No. 5,825,352 which issued from
Application No. 08/608,116 should be deleted since the relevant maintenance
fee was timely paid in that patent.