Recently, patents lawsuits involving Apple has been with Samsung and HTC. This week, Apple faces two new lawsuits from smaller companies seeking to assert their intellectual property claims.
On Wednesday, Openwave Systems; a mobile internet communications technology company, announced that it had filed a lawsuit an ITC complaint against Apple and Research in Motion. Openwave Systems claims that both companies are violating five different patents across a broad spectrum of applications.
The complaint, filed at the International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington, DC, requests that the ITC bar the import of smartphones and tablet computers that infringe Openwave patents, including, but not limited to, Apple’s iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch, iPad and iPad 2; and RIM’s Blackberry Curve 9330 and Blackberry PlayBook. Openwave also filed a similar complaint in federal district court in Delaware.
Openwave invented technologies that became foundational to the mobile Internet. We believe that these large companies should pay us for the use of our technologies, particularly in light of the substantial revenue these companies have earned from devices that use our intellectual property,said Ken Denman, Chief Executive Officer of Openwave. Before filing these complaints, we approached both of these companies numerous times in an attempt to negotiate a license of our technology with them and did not receive a substantive response.
AllThingsD reports that Openwave has a small yet strong patent portfolio, suggesting that the company may have a decent chance of winning concessions from Apple and Research in Motion. Also, Openwave Systems could possibly force Apple and RIM into licensing discussions due to their strong patent portfolio.
In addition, Canadian firm Wi-LAN is suing again Apple and eight other major companies alleging infringement of two patents related to CDMA, HSPA, Wi-Fi, and LTE technologies.
MacRumors notes that Wi-LAN is regarded as a patent troll, having given up on product manufacturing and focused its business solely on attempts to license its intellectual property. Wi-LAN has in fact sued Apple several times in the past, the most recent in 2010 for a complaint targeting over two dozen companies for their implementations of Bluetooth communications technology.
