The growing problem of Patent Trolls continues, with a new patent infringement lawsuit launched this week against Apple over earbuds. Meanwhile, Apple and Samsung continue to cram each other's products into lawsuits, with the iPad mini now the latest victim. No holiday spirit this week among tech company lawyers, just more Grinch-ing.
Gigamon is reporting on what they describe as "the stupidest patent lawsuit of the year," as the California based Intelligent Smart Phones Concepts LLC has decided to sue Apple for including earbuds with the iPhone. Oh, and they want $3 million in damages from Cupertino for that idea, as well as an injunction on future iPhone sales that include earbuds.
Smart Phones Concepts LLC does not make or design anything. It is apparently a shell company whose business model is to acquire patents and then use them to extort money from other companies. According to Gigamon, there is evidence to suggest that this company is a spin-off from the legendary patent troll Intellectual Ventures. Regardless, a troll by any other names stinks just as badly.
In this new case, the patent in question (Patent No. 7,373,182) is titled "Wireless mobile phone including a headset" and is based on this drawing:
Now that's innovation!
Apparently, the patent was issued for a new idea that involving a detachable headset that can "receive at least telephony audio signals from the phone, and to provide audio signals to the phone." The patent was issued in 2008. Seems pretty clear to us that this was long after wireless mobile phones included headphones.
We've been whining about the U.S. patent system in this space for a while, and it is because of cases like this one. Despite outgoing USPTO director David Kappos' claim that everything is just fine, that critics of the patent system should "give it a rest" and that the "our patent system is the envy of the world," clearly it is not. When a company like Smart Phones Concepts LLC can appear out of nowhere demanding millions of dollars for technology that it appears it had absolutely nothing to do with, something is shamefully broken.
Despite all of the peace-on-earth-goodwill-to-everyone springing up on every street corner, Apple and Samsung continue to bicker in court. We've covered the first lawsuit that Apple launched against Samsung, the one that concluded this past summer with a $1 billion award to Apple and whose appeal hearings begin next week. But there was a second lawsuit, filed by Apple against Samsung in April 2011, that hasn't even started yet. Before that one gets underway in March of 2014, Apple is busy as elves making a list of allegedly infringing Samsung products, and Cupertino lawyers are checking it twice.
This past week, Apple added six additional Samsung products to the suit, including Note II, S III mini and Galaxy Tab 2. As Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents points out, none of these products will likely even be relevant by the time this case goes to trial, but they do provide a "broader revenue base against which to seek damages."
Not to be outdone, Samsung has its own lawsuit against Apple, and just asked to the court to include the new iPad mini and iPod touch to the case.
You have a smartphone, we have a smartphone. You have a lawsuit, we have a lawsuit.
Even as these two technology giants — who are also billion-dollar business partners — ratchet up their lawsuits against each other, it is our hope that the new year brings some resolution to their disputes. Perhaps even a peace settlement, like the one reached by Apple and HTC, that can end these patent wars.
Then, both companies can get back to doing what is important: making great products and then defending them against do-nothing patent trolls.
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