Holiday Gift Guide »

Apple, RIM and others hit with patent lawsuit

By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 2:25 PM

We can add another patent lawsuit to the pile because Apple, AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Research In Motion, Samsung, Sanyo have been been sued for infringing on patents from Smartphone Technologies.

Apple is being accused of infringing on six patents that cover Bluetooth, mobile e-mail syncing, bandwidth and power conservation, single-step setup, and personal computers “providing telephone capabilities.” The others were accused of violating a single patent. I can’t say I have much insight to the merit of this lawsuit, but I think it’s safe to say we can expect more of these in the future. The smartphone space is the next, great frontier and patents become a valuable tool for the companies that have them.

The news comes a week after Apple hit HTC with a massive patent lawsuit with an eye on Android. But as you can see from the chart above, Apple is also the target of multiple patent lawsuits and it is currently fighting off 47 cases. Check the via link below for a more extensive breakdown of the patents in question.

[Via AppleInsider]

SPONSORED MESSAGE
Get free domestic and international calls and texts to anyone with the Vonage Mobile app available as an iPhone calling app or Android calling app.

About The Author

Marin Perez

Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype's about. He also has too many tablets.

  • MJ

    So according to your chart of the patent lawsuits, no one is suing RIM? RIM is only suing Motorola and Sharp. Your posting here, who is suing RIM and the others mentioned since your chart doesn’t seem to reflect the latest.

  • Marc

    That chart is from The New York Times. It looks like they didn’t update it.