Apple Found to Infringe on 3 MobileMedia Patents

A federal jury has found that Apple's iPhone is infringing on three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas, according to FOSS Patents. The verdict is likely to result in Apple being required to pay a licensing fee for the patents.

Patent Infringement

MobileMedia Ideas is a patent licensing entity, a term most often associated with so-called "patent trolls." Patent-trolls are typically non-practicing entities that don't ship products based on their technology patents, but that term doesn't apply in this case.

MobileMedia Ideas was set up by Sony and Nokia—two definitely-practicing entities—as well as MPEG LA—the company that controls the MPEG standard—to monetize some of the patents developed by those companies.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents noted that Apple's infringement verdict is likely to lead to more smartphone makers being willing to buy a license for the patents.

The three patents are:

  • U.S. Patent No. 6,070,068, which describes a "communication terminal device and method for controlling a connecting state of a call into a desired connection state upon a predetermined operation by a user." It was filed by Sony in 1997.

    Apple was found to infringe on claims 23 and 24.
     
  • U.S. Patent No. 6,253,075, which describes a "method and apparatus for incoming call rejection." It was filed by Nokia in 1998.

    Apple was found to infringe on claims 5, 6 and 10.
     
  • U.S. Patent No. 6,427,078, which describe a "device for personal communications, data collection and data processing, and a circuit card." It was filed by Nokia in 1997.

    Apple was found to infringe on claim 73.

That's a total of six claims on three patents, a fairly convincing victory for MobileMedia Ideas.