Apple Sued Over Touch-Screen Patents
6:35 am, April 9th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
Taiwanese company Elan Microelectronics has sued Apple for the unauthorized use of two of Elan’s patents in Apple’s MacBook, iPhone and iPod Touch products.
“We couldn’t find a common viewpoint with Apple, so we decided we had to take action,” Elan spokesman Dennis Liu told the New York Times, adding that the companies had been in licensing talks for about two years.
A statement published on Elan’s website says the patents cover innovations in touch-sensitive input devices incorporated into smartphones and computer touchpads.
“The first patent at issue, U.S. Patent 5,825,352 (”the ‘352 patent”), relates to touch-sensitive input devices with the ability to detect the simultaneous presence of two or more fingers. Multi-finger applications are becoming popular in smartphone and computer applications. The ‘352 patent is a fundamental patent to the detection of multi-fingers that allows for any subsequent multi-finger applications to be implemented. The second patent, U.S. Patent No. 7,274,353 (”the ‘353 patent”), is directed to touchpads capable of switching between keyboard and handwriting input modes.”
Elan said it won a preliminary court injunction against a U.S.-based rival, Synaptics, in a dispute over one of the patents mentioned in the Apple lawsuit, after a suit was filed in 2006 by a unit that was a subsidiary at the time. Synaptics countersued.
Both actions were dismissed last year after the two companies reached a cross-licensing agreement. That result likely emboldened the company to take legal action against Apple, an analyst who follows Elan told the NYT.
Image used with a CC license, courtesy dnorman
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News | Comment on this article
I’m getting so sick of these lawsuits based on vague patents. Elan may have imagined being able to put more than one finger on a touchpad (seriously? who couldn’t have seen that coming), but Apple made it work and has their own patents specific to the technology they developed.
You know those lawyer commercials you start to see anytime a medication begins to show adverse side effects? I think we have the same thing here. Apple’s making a killing in the market, and I can just see patent lawyers combing over every patent filed in the last 100 years looking for something that remotely qualifies as infringement.
It’s really pretty ridiculous at this point too. Apple files a patent everytime the wind blows; they’re pretty much covered every which way to Sunday, and these lawsuits always end up going nowhere fast.
Chris Pratt, on April 9th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
The suites seem to go nowhere but the lawyers certainly get paid! I have been amused by all of the hot air companies are spewing over multi-touch. I remember seeing multi-touch demonstrated on “Beyond Tomorrow” in the mid 90’s. If I recall correctly it was developed by a team at MIT and they had some basic gestures defined too including pinching. So I suspect that someone beat Elan to the punch.
The root of this problem is the existing Patent system. I was working at a company and we were told to NEVER see if someone might have a patent on whatever we were developing. The reasoning the lawyer gave was that if we never searched the we could rightly claim ignorance and in doing so we could avoid a claim of malice.
I have spoken to people who have been granted the most ridiculous patents that I have ever heard of. The patent office approves everything and let’s the courts straighten it out. A great policy that only enriches the lawyers. It almost forces companies to file for patents on everything from multi-touch to wiping your ass. They do this figuring that if they ever did get in a bind they could always cut a cross license deal.
At some point Apple is going to have to expend some of it’s cash on hand to publicly crush one of the companies that bring these ultimately fruitless patent infringement cases. Only by doing this will they discourage others from trying to make a sleazy grab at some of Apple’s hard earned profits.
Shawen Donnellan, on April 11th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Can I just say Newton.
David, on April 11th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
first of all…apple bought the company that had the multi-touch patents and put them to work for them
anyone remember “TOUCHSTREAM FINGERWORKS”…
hell their keyboards still go for pushing a GRAND or more on ebay…
that is where Apple got the Multi-touch from…not some asian assholes…
so I’m sure Apple will fight this one till the end because there is no way they were wrong in what they have done…they bought the rights to what they are using years ago from Touchstream
that’s all I have to say on this matter
scott, on April 13th, 2009 at 8:51 pm