Bloomberg Business:
Apple Inc. was told to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury said the company’s iTunes software used a Texas company’s patented inventions without permission.
Closely held Smartflash LLC, which claimed that Apple infringed three patents, was seeking $852 million in damages, while Apple said it was worth $4.5 million at most. A federal jury in Tyler, Texas, where Smartflash is based, on Tuesday rejected Apple’s arguments that it didn’t use the inventions and that the patents were invalid.
The dispute is over digital rights management and inventions related to data storage and managing access through payment systems. Smartflash claimed that iTunes used the inventions in applications such as Game Circus LLC’s Coin Dozer and 4 Pics 1 Movie. Apple pledged to appeal.
Apple’s response:
“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,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “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.”
This one’s not over.
Ah, East Texas. The home of patent lawsuits.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/
A court needs to rule that county incompetent to have juries.
Someone must’ve bribed the judge 😉
That’s roughly 65 hours of Apple’s profits based on the last earning call’s numbers.
A 100 million here, a 100 million there. After a while it adds up to something.
The law is the law. Until the law changes, the fact that this company is a patent troll is irrelevant.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
And the law in Texas appears to be a bit off…