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Jury Tells Apple To Pay $532.9 Million In Patent Suit

Posted by Soulskill on from the or-remit-821,110-iphones dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Smartflash LLC has won a patent lawsuit against Apple over DRM and technology relating to the storage of downloaded songs, games, and videos on iTunes. Apple must now pay $532.9 million in damages. An Apple spokesperson did not hesitate to imply Smartflash is a patent troll: "Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system." The trial happened in the same court that decided Apple owed VirnetX $368 million over FaceTime-related patents back in 2012.

5 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Live by the sword... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... die by the sword. Apple loves abusing patents and is one of the companies behind Rockstar.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Live by the sword... by darkmeridian · · Score: 4, Informative

      Apple files a bunch of crazy patents and design patents (such as for the curves of their phone) but at least they sell products. Trolls that simply buy up patents to sue people with are a much worse problem because they aren't contributing anything to society. They are basically rent-seekers who glom off the efforts of others.

      Just the same, I agree with you 100% that Apple bought into the game, made the game expensive, and then now cannot complain about the game.

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
    2. Re:Live by the sword... by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Informative

      To be fair, two things:

      1) Most of Apple's patents are on hardware, and design patents aren't uncommon at all among big corps that make and sell tangible stuff (see also the Auto industry).

      2) Apple got this way because they were IP-raped pretty hard in their early years (with Microsoft being among the more notable thieves).

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  2. The patents by Art3x · · Score: 4, Informative

    The patents:

    - 7,334,720
    - 7,942,317
    - 8,033,458
    - 8,061,598
    - 8,118,221
    - 8,336,772.

  3. Re:Patent reform will never happen by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unless the big fish start feeling the pain of the current patent regime. If patent trolls get too greedy, they may undo themselves.

    Not likely. Patent trolling has been going on for CENTURIES. It's NOT a new thing. in fact, abusing the patent system has been worse in the past than it is right now. Sure it seems like a lot, but remember, you're on a tech website and tech is where a lot of patent fights are right now in the past 30 years. But since the 19th century, there have been tons of patents and patent wars and patent trolls.

    Way back when, it was sewing machines. There were so many patents filed related to sewing machines that it ended up in a stalemate as no one could actually make a sewing machine without violating someone's patent somewhere.

    And yes, many patents overlapped then as well.

    To counter this, a conglomerate went out and bought up many of the patents (eventually becoming Singer) so people could go to one place to buy licenses for a set of patents and make sewing machines. Probably one of the first patent pools around, and this was an era where FRAND didn't exist. So you ended up with a huge corporate entity that basically holds everything sewing machine related to which you paid license fees for.

    Then there were vehicles... the internal combustion engine was highly patented and the current Otto cycle engines we use today was patented, avoided, etc. Then other aspects of the car were patented, avoided, sued over, etc.

    Then there was the case of intermittent windshield wipers (invented about a half dozen times), but the modern version would be by Robert Kearns who did a fully solid-state version, and offered it to the Ford Motor Company who copied the ideas and made their own, resulting in a massive patent litigation that spanned 26 separate car manufacturers and lasted until the mid 90s through appeals and the Supreme Court.

    Yes, you can imagine that in the 90s when intermittent wipers were basically almost standard, patent litigation was STILL going on about it.