Apple Hit With $2.8 Billion Patent Lawsuit Over VoIP Technology

[oneMadRssn]

This is pretty much the textbook definition of a patent troll - company acquires other company for patents, does not make a product, and then starts suing others for patent infringement.

So what? If company shouldn't be able to sue in such a scenario, then what is the value of the first company that wants to be acquired? What is the value of the inventions it came up with? Why would an investor invest in a future similar company if it knows the IP will be worthless should the venture fail and asserts need to be liquidated?

People hate on trolls all the time, but the fact is the U.S. economy would grind to a half if anti-troll rules such as "you have to use the patent in the market in order to have the right to enforce it" or "you have to be a successful and profitable company to enforce your patent rights" are made into law.

The real trolls are the small companies that sue for low-dollar cost-of-litigation damages and have no resources nor will to actually go all the way to court, and prey on small unsophisticated defendants. This here is not a troll: it's not going for low-dollar cost-of-litigation damages, it has the resources to go all the way, and it's targeting a very large and very sophisticated defendant.

 

[RaggieSoft]

In the actual filing, it says --

PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, VPLM prays for relief, as follows:

So they must know that they will be up against some serious lawyer if they are praying for relief. LOL

Seriously, the language of this pleading is strange, but what happens in Vegas......

Washington state courts have a similar Prayer for Relief, so it's not just Vegas.

 

[Popeye206]

While I do agree and believe the amount of patent trolls are a joke, I also believe  does infringe upon a lot of patents. USA patent laws are a joke none-the-less.

Just as a comment about this... the company I work for owns several companies. All in technology... we're about a $3B a year company. Our lawyers have been pushing like nuts to review any of our developments because it seems that just about everything we do has risk in impeding on someone patent because so many simple things are patented these days... and this is not about Apple.... this is about everyone in the high-tech industry. In fact, if you want to blow an hour and be amused, just go to the US patent office and do a search on something you'd think is normal or common... more than likely there's a patent.

The bottom line... it's very tough not to infringe on a patent unintentionally and it's becoming a problem. In my eyes, it should be the responsibility of the patent owner to promote and police their IP... however, policing should be to propose fair and reasonable royalties.... not sue the big fish for billions and hope you walk away with millions.

 

[Norbs12]

The idea is not the hard part, the execution is the hard part. I could understand if they had some code that Apple copied but this is not the case. If the idea is the hard part I think scifi movie industry needs to start sueing the entire tech industry because most these ideas existed in movies long ago.

 

[samcraig]

The patent system is broken. But if people are going to maintain that Apple has the right to go after people with their patents and internet-scream at those that companies that violate them - then turnabout has to be fair play. It really doesn't matter if they make products or not right now. They did. They also spent time and resources on the patents when they were filed. Using logic that they just swiped up a company so aren't entitled would then open Apple to lose rights to things involved with Touch ID, Siri, and a slew of other things...

Hate on the system - not the companies who are using it to their advantage. Just like tax loopholes.

 

[Shasterball]

The entire patent system needs to be reviewed. The things some companies have been awarded patents for is ridiculous.

And your experience in this area is...

 

[dannyyankou]

Everyone seems to want money from Apple.

 

[Rocketman]

The company's market cap is $31,000,000. Pocket change for Apple.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=VPLM&ei=ugQyV_L4EYmVeeynhNAJ

$0.10 per share as I write this.

http://www.voip-pal.com

This could be a pump and dump lawsuit. Volume is in hundreds of thousands of shares per day.

 

[thespacekid]

Sending iMessages is Voice over IP?

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Not much better than Apple patenting slide to unlock, page turning, and pinch to zoom...

Those were functions never conceived of before Apple introduced them, and did not exist in any other commercial products. Detecting whether a device is registered with a server is a pretty abstract thing to patent. I'm confident Apple will have those patents invalidated.

 

[MagMan1979]

The entire patent system is so broken, it's not even funny! Patent troll companies like these are ruining the technology world by being allowed to patent ridiculous "ideas" without actually having physical products based on them, or having any intention of creating one, and holding the "patents" strictly for the purpose of being financial extortion tools / weapons.

BS!!!

 

[jumanji]

The entire patent system needs to be reviewed. The things some companies have been awarded patents for is ridiculous.

this is the big problem. i think it's crappy that patent trolls exist. people complain about Apple patenting slide lock....well, they have to. they know from experience that if they didn't, someone would. the system has some 60yr old in charge of granting patents and they have no knowledge of technology.

personally, if i'm apple, i just buy them outright. then i fire them all and sue everyone else who uses these so called "patents"

 

[jayducharme]

The company does not currently generate income

Thus the need to sue. So if VOIP-Pal doesn't generate income, exactly what does it do?

 

[crsh1976]

they say they're not, but they most definately sound like patent trolls

They all are, including Apple when it sues others over the position of the home button on a cellphone.

 

[hugogogo2003]

he's tried to sue Cameron over the Avatar script for $100M before. he's cuckoo

 

[_mdavenport]

Not patent trolls?

Oh please.

 

[Tiger8]

So 40+ responses on how bad those guys are, but why are we blindly siding with Apple? Are you saying a multi-billion corporation has never infringed on a small, hard-on-it's-luck company, ever?

 

[Shasterball]

the system has some 60yr old in charge of granting patents and they have no knowledge of technology.

Who is this 60 year old/they that you speak of?

 

[GenesisST]

Patenting generic software concepts or lawsuits over them is like hitting on a hot girl in a bar... Should probably not work, but you never know...

All these companies (Apple included) are playing the game, which should be changed.

How? I have no clue!

 

[now i see it]

"The company does not currently generate income, but insists it is "absolutely not" a patent troll.

Or in other words...
The animal eats other mammals but it insists it is "absolutely not" a carnivore.

 

[wheelhot]

Patent law should just add this clause "if the patent is not put into a working order before its infringed, then the usage of this patent to sue the infringement client is nullified"

 

[ApfelKuchen]

In particular, devices running the iMessage application initiate a communication between a caller and a callee. The callee may be an Apple subscriber or a non-subscriber. In the case that the callee is an Apple subscriber, the communication is sent using iMessage. On the other hand, if the user is not an Apple subscriber or if iMessage is not available, the communication is sent using SMS/MMS. Apple's messaging system directly and/or indirectly practices certain claims of the '815 patent in order to determine the classification of a user, and, subsequently, how the call should be routed.

Now, there's a lot missing here - there can conceivably be a novel method of identifying the "callee" that deserves protection. However, the basic function - "should this be sent as SMS or iMessage?"/"If not signed into iMessage, send as SMS" seems too basic to me. Can someone patent the notion that a communications app/device might send its messages over more than one network, and would therefore need a method of determining which network?

 

[MH01]

Smell a patent troll here....

 

[Mr Fusion]

The entire patent system is so broken, it's not even funny! Patent troll companies like these are ruining the technology world by being allowed to patent ridiculous "ideas" without actually having physical products based on them, or having any intention of creating one, and holding the "patents" strictly for the purpose of being financial extortion tools / weapons.

BS!!!

Don't like it? Vote someone in that'll make patent reform happen.

I see an awful lot of complaining here about a broken system... Last I checked we live in a democracy. You want to blame someone? Go look in a mirror.

 

[1 iron]

Done and done.