Apple sued by patent trolls over iPhone camera

John Brownlee ()

camera corner

In America, filing for a patent is simple, and a patent is often approved by clerks with no actual knowledge of the technology in question. That makes it all too easy to file for frivolous, overly broad patents… then sue other companies for massive pay outs when they unknowingly infringe.

You don’t need any more information to recognize that the entire patent system is completely broken than to just mull over the fact that Apple is being sued over the iPhone’s camera by a small company made up of exactly two lawyers and six staff members whose entire business is patent infringement. And Apple is likely to pay.

The firm, St. Clair Intellectual Consultants, Inc. (or SCIPC), doesn’t actually manufacture hardware: instead, they purchased the rights to the patents of a small digital camera start-up, and now sue people who infringe. The patents SCIPC purchased were ridiculously broad: they cover technology that allows digital cameras to store images in different formats.

That’s right: any digital camera in which you are capable of changing the format of the stored image violates SCIPIC’s patents. That means every digital camera infringes SCIPIC’s patents. Right now, though, they’ve got the iPhone squarely in their sights.

In a patent system that wasn’t hopelessly broken, a patent like this — even if approved — would quickly be overturned for being overly broad. But SCIPC has won a series of heavy payouts from leading manufacturers in the past, including $3M from Fujifilm, $25M from Sony and $34.7M from Canon. It doesn’t end there: six other companies have also settled with SCIPC for a total of more than one hundred and twenty million dollars, with SCIPC’s two layers taking home 35% of each payout.

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It would be nice to see Apple throw all of their legal weight at these patent trolls, but my guess is that they will settle. Their past success in getting judgments from companies like Canon and Sony has got to be worrying to Apple, and on their part, SCIPC seems to choose the amount for which they are suing to be digestible by big companies. Paying $21.5 million to SCIPC is more than they should get, but it’s a mere drop in the pool of Apple’s iPhone profits. Apple can afford to pay to make the headache just go away.

[via Macworld]

9 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Hardware, iPhone, News |

  • http://www.spongeinside.nl Sponge

    Well.. that’s an easy way to make some quick cash..

  • Jamie

    Eventually, there comes a time when Apple is losing way too much money to these patent con-artists. And then what? Apple could have used all that money (paid out to patent trolls) to well… you know…. improve their products? Roll out new and improved features that customers want in future products? Or maybe putting it into software R&D research for things that customers really want… like something better than Adobe Flash working on the iPhone?

    If the patent law system doesn’t rectify itself soon, then the future is grim…. THE DEMOCRATS will soon target and then enforce regulation and draconian Nanny-State federal oversight of the entire patent/copyright/trademark system…. exactly like pro-Fed Democrats have taken over Wall Street, taken over the Banking industry, and taken over the US Auto Industry, and now trying to socialize health care.

    That will be a lose-lose outcome for everyone. My hope is that the US Courts (Superior Courts, Supreme Court) will make “corrections” to the broken system soon, rather than having the problem become so outrageously tempting that the Obama Administration will eventually be tempted to take things into their own hands.

  • staff1

    “In America, filing for a patent is simple, and a patent is often approved by clerks with no actual knowledge of the technology in question. That makes it all too easy to file for frivolous, overly broad patents… then sue other companies for massive pay outs when they unknowingly infringe.”

    Obviously, you are not a patent attorney, have never invented anything, nor have you ever filed or prosecuted a patent application. Write about things you know something about.

    Patent reform is a fraud on America. For the truth about trolls, please see http://truereform.piausa.org.

  • mat

    doesn’t apple seem like a perfect company to throw everything they have to bring down these a-hole lawyers and maybe set a precedent? don’t settle, fight for what’s right.

  • michaeld

    This is an indication of what is wrong with this country: Greed, manipulation, thievery and deception.

  • george

    And yet, when Apple sues companies for patent infringement (e.g., the power adapter), this is a good and justified action?

    As staff1 points out, all the complaints about this probably come from people who have never had a patent or a copyright.

    think about the flip side. I am a small inventor, not a lot of money, and I file a patent. Some multi-billion dollar company comes along and uses the information without paying.

    They make a lot of money, and throw lots of lawyers at me so that I cannot afford to sue them for patent infringement.

    If you don’t think happens, a lot of people are saying that Apple bought Lala streaming music to kill it because it is a threat.

    The simple fact is, the lawyers own the patent, and if they can prove that companies are using the patent without permission, they have the right to sue.

    Even if it means suing Apple.

    And yes I am an iphone, MB, MBP and iMac owner

  • Jamie

    >>And yet, when Apple sues companies for patent infringement
    >>(e.g., the power adapter), this is a good and justified action?

    Yes, when Apple defends their patents, they are justified. Duh.

    Apple actually has a multi-billion-dollar R&D department, and they work hard to research and develop new technologies, or to improve existing ones. In other cases, they work with other companies to co-develop new technologies (just like Apple is credited with being a co-developer of WiFi in its early days). So yes, they come up with inventions… which turn into patents. Duh. When they defend their own inventions/patents, they are doing the right thing.

    When some little worthless company (which exists only as a patent troll) goes around suing companies like Apple…. it is a disgrace, and it brings down the entire tech industry.

  • vexel

    These patent trolls remind me of a well-known earlier plague: the Web Domain squatters. Anyone remember those guys?

  • PulSamsara

    Apple IS the Patent Troll.

    Multi-Touch …. ahahahahhahahahhahahahhahaaaa… what a joke.