Verizon’s “Map for That” ad was witty and kicked AT&T right where it hurt most — right in the network. AT&T, naturally, didn’t find it so amusing and has now decided to take Verizon to court. Engadget has been covering (and updating the coverage) today, and here’s where it stands:
AT&T complained that the original ad was misleading, saying customers could still use iPhones outside of 3G coverage (on EDGE).
Verizon has apparently already changed the ad once, adding some small print to disclaim the above.
AT&T still isn’t happy, thinks Verizon is confusing customers, and thus is sicking the lawyers on them.
What do you think? Were you confused, or were you too busy laughing (or crying, if you live in SF or NYC).
As usual, the race to hype this dispute as a bitter standoff between two tech giants desperate to destroy one another has all but ignored the reality of how patents — especially wireless patents — are licensed, what Nokia’s actually asking for, and how it might go about getting it. And as you know, we just don’t do things that way, so we’ve asked our old friend Mathew Gavronski, a patent attorney in the Chicago office of Michael Best & Friedrich, to help us sort things out and figure out what’s really going on here — read on for more.
In a nutshell, Nokia believes Apple is infringing on 10 patents that are core to GSM/UTMS/Wi-Fi. All the other major players have paid up. Apple hasn’t. Apple may believe the patent fees are already paid by the manufacturer of the components they bought for the iPhone, or they may just be using the legal system as way to negotiate a lower ultimate licensing fee from Nokia.
If the area interests you, check out the whole analysis and then let us know what you think!
Out sibling site NokiaExperts.com brings word that Nokia is suing Apple in Delaware court. Why-for?
ten patents related to GSM, UMTS, and WLAN standards that Nokia states they established after investing more than EUR 40 billion in R&D over the last 20 years. Nokia stated that they have successfully entered into license agreements including these patents with approximately 40 companies, including virtually all the leading mobile device vendors, allowing the industry to benefit from Nokia’s innovation.
Seems other companies have coughed up the cash to use them, but Apple’s waiting for a court to force their hand. With $35 billion in the bank, they can obviously afford to give a fortune away to the lawyers, but why go to the effort? Do they really think a court will somehow dismiss the patents as invalid?
Pass the popcorn, get ready for some patent pugilism, and let us know what you think!
Apple and AT&T are being sued in Louisiana over the lack of MMS available for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users running iPhone 3.0 software. Now, it’s gotten to the point where TiPb doesn’t pay too much attention to Apple lawsuits anymore just because they’re so frequent we’d need to get the blog roomier pants, and while we’re not lawyers and can’t comment as to the merits of this case, it’s yet another (painful) reminder that AT&T has dropped the ball when it comes to MMS on the iPhone and especially when it comes to communicating what’s happening — and keeping updated — their long suffering user base.
Apple, says the filings, has revealed that AT&T has never upgraded its towers so as to support MMS functionality. “The only excuse offered by AT&T and Apple is a mouseprint disclaimer on the website, in barely readable font, which reads ‘MMS Support from AT&T coming in late summer’”.
That’s the part where it kind of falls down for us, however. Now, I’m not on AT&T, but several of our readers are and as part of beta tests and carrier tests, some of them have indeed sent MMS messages on AT&T, and AT&T’s website seems to show it working for other phones, so… huh?
Is this once again an absurd claim distracting from the real issue — that summer grows later and later, and there’s still no word on iPhone MMS from AT&T? What are they waiting for, a Special Music Event?!
Another week, another iPhone lawsuit or three. If it isn’t American’s complaining about AT&T’s 3G “network” (so bad, it’s made (Giga)Om Malik abandon his iPhone), it’s owners of white iPhones complaining about cracks in their plastic casings (which is effecting other, non-iPhones as well, making us suspect someone spike a plastic factory somewhere in China). This time, however, it’s a patent dispute, and it’s not Apple going after Palm, but Picsel Technologies taking it to Apple. According to Apple Insider:
By using particular techniques to speed up panning and zooming for images and other documents, Apple is effectively borrowing Picsel’s own acceleration to make the iPhone work as smoothly as it does, the complaint reads. [..]Unlike many of these suits, the plaintiff already has major customers for its software that primarily include Japanese firms like KDDI and Sharp but also include American phone manufacturers such as Motorola and Palm.
So even though Apple now owns multi-touch(ish), they may not be allowed to show it working on screen? Gotta love patent poker…
What’s the one thing worse than bloggers offering opinions about the likelihood of an Apple vs. Palm patent fight? That’s right! Analysts! (Where’s our magic 8 ball for a dissenting view when we need it?!)
PreCentral.net picks up just such a story on how one analyst thinks Apple’s IP claims against Palm just might be — wait for it! — fruitless:
Though the review of granted and filed patents shows that Apple has a “formidable arsenal of capacitive, multi-touch patents that constitute a nearly impenetrable barrier to entry for companies hoping to commercialize capacitive, multi-touch devices,” Perez-Fernandez also noted that Apple’s key patents may be “invalidated based on prior art considerations if subjected to a review by the USPTO.”
Prior art can trump all, unless Apple’s own early patents, or the ones it acquired from Fingerworks, are the most “prior” of relevant art in question.
Of course, Apple has $30 billion reasons more than Palm for just why it might press its case anyway, even if it’s ultimately unsuccessful…
A spokeswoman at Palm said Thursday that the company has not been contacted by Apple’s legal team, to her knowledge. “Palm has a long history of innovation, obviously reflected in our own products and our own robust apps portfolio,” she said. “We have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If we’re faced with legal action, we’re confident that we have the tools to defend ourselves.”
When asked whether gestures like “pinching” were universal, or belonged to Apple, the Palm spokeswoman said that “our position is that multitouch has been around a long, long, long time before Apple introduced it.”
We learned that Apple first began patenting multi-touch in 2004 and acquired additional patents when they bought Fingerworks in 2005, but is Palm hinting that — as PreCentral.net pointed out — they may have some patents of their own to fight back with?
Apple Insider is reporting (via CNet) that Apple has hired away Mark Papermaster, IBM’s VP of Microprocessor Technology Development.
When Apple bought Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi), and reportedly signed licensing agreements with ARM and PowerVR, we kinda sorta suspected Steve Jobs was getting serious about spinning his own custom systems-on-a-chip for the iPhone and the greater iPod platform.
Hey, if they can switch from Intel integrated to Nvidia chipsets to support their Core 2 Duos on the Macbook line, they can certainly role their own mobile brains, right?
IBM is suing on the grounds of a no-compete clause, which has historically been worthless in California (which is likely why IBM is suing in New York!)
TiPb, of course, doesn’t really care about no frivolous lawsuit. We just want to see what kind of “screaming” fast new iPhones we can has next year!
Yet another iPhone related lawsuit only this time it does not involve Apple… shocking isn’t it?
Coors beer company is being sued by Hottrix, creators of the strangely popular iBeer app for a cool 12.5 million for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that Coors copied its iPhone application iBeer. Both Hottrix’s App and Coors’ iPint simply create the illusion of beer being poured out when a user tilts the handset as if the user is drinking it. The only major difference between the two apps is that iBeer costs $3 and iPint was free – it has been pulled from the App Store by Apple.
More or less, the lawsuit claims that iBeer was a success until iPint quickly stole it’s thunder by being offered for free. Stop and think about this, both Apps were released on July 11th so how is one to determine who really came up with the idea? Hottrix answer, this youtube video that was released back in August of 2007.
Why someone would spend 3 bucks on such a App, I have no clue. But Coors… come on, talk about a blatant rip off. Hottrix, 12.5 million? Seriously?
Apple (along with Palm, RIM, and the usual suspects) are all being sued by litigation happy patent-portfolio’er, WiAV Solutions, about whom Engadget Mobile says:
The company that doesn’t make anything or even have a web site, but files so many patent lawsuits that some companies have taken to pre-emptively filing suits for declaratory judgment against it.
Must be something super-non-obvious, remarkably novel, spankingly applicable, and about which there couldn’t possibly be any prior “art”, right? Turns out not so much:
Detecting the difference between silence and voices, mobile device power management, and altering music to accommodate voices.
Congratulations on officially joining my all-time favorite patent suits like “tabs in a GUI”, “display of a URL adjacent to window displaying contents of URL”, and “transfer of file over network”. But wait, could it get any more ludicrous? You betcha! Not only is WiAV suing, but it sounds like its forcibly asking the court to join its licensor, Mindspeed, into the suit as well.
