Apple Ruled by Court to Have Infringed Patents

[Maura]

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A very interesting story on Cult of Mac today on how a court in the US has just ruled that Apple’s iPhone infringes three patents that are owned by MobileMedia Ideas, which is owned by Nokia, Sony and MPEG LA, and which, Cult of Mac says, is known as a “patent troll.” MobileMedia Ideas is the owner of 300 patents, the majority of these being originally owned by Sony and Nokia. In this instance, MobileMedia Ideas says that Apple infringed its screen rotation patent, whereby the display automatically rotates when you turn the phone. Apple countered by saying that this was protected by “prior art,” but today the court found that Apple is in fact guilty of patent infringement. Interestingly, Cult of Mac says that while MobileMedia Ideas refers to itself as a “patent portfolio licensor of inventions adopted by manufacturers of smart phones, mobile phones and other portable devices…”, others hold the point of view that MobileMedia Ideas is in fact Nokia and Sony banding together to target the iPhone, and hiding behind MMI while they do so. [/FONT]

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[FONT=&quot]Source:[/FONT] http://www.cultofmac.com/205873/cou...nfringing-patents-owned-by-mobilemedia-ideas/

 

[Skull One]

What makes this even more interesting to me is the fact that this case was done in one week and only took 4 hours to come to a guilty verdict against Apple. This is the first time I have seen Apple slam dunked like this. Which means their lawyers couldn't drag it out nor show proper prior art.

Maybe we, the consumers, will get lucky out of this situation. Apple might learn that it is better to negotiate then litigate. Because I don't see them getting off cheap on this one.