Motorola Bites Apple for Infringement of Smartphone Patents

Not to be outdone by the high-profile spat between Oracle and Google (see our prior articles here and here), Motorola Mobility, Inc has filed not one, nor even two or three, but four separate complaints against Apple, Inc, alleging infringement of a total of 18 Motorola patents by various Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod, MacBook, iMac and Mac products.

Two of the complaints have been filed in the US District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, one in the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida, and one with the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

Motorola announced its actions in a media release dated 6 October 2010, quoting Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, as saying:

Motorola has innovated and patented throughout every cycle of the telecommunications industry evolution, from Motorola’s invention of the cell phone to its development of premier smartphone products.  We have extensively licensed our industry-leading intellectual property portfolio, consisting of tens of thousands of patents in the U.S. and worldwide.  After Apple’s late entry into the telecommunications market, we engaged in lengthy negotiations, but Apple has refused to take a license.  We had no choice but to file these complaints to halt Apple’s continued infringement.  Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the company’s business.

The media release further states that:

The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.

The patents identified in the first Illinois complaint are:

1. US 5,311,516, entitled “Paging System Using Message Fragmentation to Redistribute Traffic”;
2. US 5,319,712, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Providing Cryptographic Protection of Data Stream in a Communication System”;
3. US 5,490,230, entitled “Digital Speech Coder Having Optimized Signal Energy Parameters”;
4. US 5,572,193, entitled “Method for Authentication and Protection of Subscribers in Telecommunications Systems”;
5. US 6,175,559, entitled “Method for Generating Preamble Sequences in a Code Division Multiple Access System”; and
6. US 6,359,898, entitled “Method for Performing a Countdown Function During a Mobile-Originated Transfer for a Packet Radio System”.

The patents identified in the second Illinois complaint, and in the ITC complaint, are:

1. US 5,359,317, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Selectively Storing a Portion of a Received Message in a Selective Call Receiver”;
2. US 5,636,223, entitled “Methods of Adaptive Channel Access Attempts”;
3. US 6,246,697, entitled “Method and System for Generating a Complex Pseudonoise Sequence for Processing a Code Division Multiple Access Signal”;
4. US 6,246,862, entitled “Sensor Controlled User Interface for Portable Communication Device”;
5. US 6,272,333, entitled “Method and Apparatus in a Wireless Communication System for Controlling a Delivery of Data”; and
6. US 7,751,826, entitled “System and Method for E911 Location Privacy Protection”.

The patents identified in the Florida complaint are:

1. US 5,710,987, entitled “Receiver having concealed external antenna”;
2. US 5,754,119, entitled “Multiple pager status synchronization system and method”;
3. US 5,958,006, entitled “Method and apparatus for communicating summarized data”;
4. US 6,008,737, entitled “Apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device”;
5. US 6,101,531, entitled “System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data transferred from host to said wireless client”; and
6. US 6,377,161, entitled “Method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information”.

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Before You Go…

Thank you for reading this article to the end – I hope you enjoyed it, and found it useful.  Almost every article I post here takes a few hours of my time to research and write, and I have never felt the need to ask for anything in return.

But now – for the first, and perhaps only, time – I am asking for a favour.  If you are a patent attorney, examiner, or other professional who is experienced in reading and interpreting patent claims, I could really use your help with my PhD research.  My project involves applying artificial intelligence to analyse patent claim scope systematically, with the goal of better understanding how different legal and regulatory choices influence the boundaries of patent protection.  But I need data to train my models, and that is where you can potentially assist me.  If every qualified person who reads this request could spare just a couple of hours over the next few weeks, I could gather all the data I need.

The task itself is straightforward and web-based – I am asking participants to compare pairs of patent claims and evaluate their relative scope, using an online application that I have designed and implemented over the past few months.  No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to read and understand patent claims in technical fields with which you are familiar.  You might even find it to be fun!

There is more information on the project website, at claimscopeproject.net.  In particular, you can read:

1. a detailed description of the study, its goals and benefits; and
2. instructions for the use of the online claim comparison application.

Thank you for considering this request!

Mark Summerfield

Tags: Infringement, Patent litigation, US