St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, a Michigan based organization has filed a lawsuit against Apple in the United States District Court in Delaware accusing the company of infringing on four of its patents.
These patents relate to some of the widely used elementary technologies available in present day digital cameras.
In the lawsuit, the company has sought for a jury trial and damages caused to them as a result of Apple's use of these technologies on the iPhone. The four patents in question are
- 459: Take image contained within lens and store in some type of memory
- 219: Display the picture that will be taken in some type of display window
- 010: Push button in order to capture image
- 899: Make images contained within some type of memory and make them viewable in some sort of digital camera roll
This is not the first time St. Clair IPC is suing a company over these patents. The organization has a long list of court trials filed in the past against a number of major digital camera manufacturers. In 2001, the company filed a lawsuit against Sony for infringing the same set of patents and won $25 million in damages. This was followed by another successful trial against Canon where they won $34 million in damages.
The organization has since then sued virtually every other company in the industry including Fuji, Kyocera, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Casio, Samsung, Panasonic, Nokia, HP, Kodak, LG, Motorola, RIM and Palm. Most of these companies are now into licensing agreements with St. Clair IPC.
Looking at this history of damage suits, it appears to be an open and shut case in favor of St. Clair. Apple is yet to respond to the lawsuit. We will keep you updated on the developments as they happen.
[via The Loop]
what an easy way to make money, out of someone elses pocket, so sad that it has come to this point
@CristV77
This has been common practice for (so called) patent trolls, since the early seventies…
haha whoah,
and man those patents are so FREAKIN basic eh
like EVERY digital camera goes by one or more of those ah
The patent system is broken and has been for years. The patents they are being sued for should have never been granted. I'm surprised there hasn't been patents granted for breathing and these trolls are trying to sue every living thing on earth. Opps! Better hadn't give them any ideas!
Go ahead sue them!
No matter how basic these patents are they still belong to them.
Apple shouldn't have been so greedy and should have gotten licensing agreements from the start, they would have saved the embarresment.
Bullshit !! Is like making a patent on a keyboard or a mouse is a basic thing.
But i guess there in need of some easy cash.
iphonehacks warap brother what about the 2010 iphone? no news
So how can we, as consumers, put our foot down and start taking the money back out of the hands of these good-for-nothing patent trolls?
if u could make 25 mill that way by next month u would too.
"they won $34 million in damages. " Those are pretty big numbers. I guess they know what they are doing.. Good info – thanks for this .
"Opps!" WTF is that can't you spell correctly trying to sound all smart and shit?
One little typing error! F off!
Apple may be able to show prior art with its QuickTake camera (1994)