Apple Inc. has been ordered to pay US$ 532.9 Mn after a federal jury in Texas found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by patent licensing firm Smartflash LLC.<\/p>\n
Patrick Racz established Smartflash in the early 2000s to market and commercialise his patents. As a non-practicing entity, the firm operates solely through patent licensing and litigation. Smartflash, a Texas-based patent licensing company, filed suit against Apple in May 2013, alleging that iTunes software infringed its patents relating to accessing and storing downloaded songs, videos, and games. After eight hours of deliberation, the jury determined that Apple had used Smartflash’s patents without permission, and that it had done so wilfully. The trial was held in Tyler, a venue that Apple had sought to avoid by applying to have the lawsuit dismissed.<\/p>\n
Smartflash had demanded US$ 852 Mn in damages from Apple, a portion of which was calculated as a percentage of iPhone, iPad, and Mac device sales. Apple’s counsel, Eric Albritton, argued against the award of hardware royalties for a single device feature. Apple contended that the patents were worth US$ 4.5 Mn at most, characterising the royalty demands as excessive and unsupportable.<\/p>\n
Following the verdict against Apple, Smartflash announced its intention to pursue patent infringement suits against Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., HTC Corp, and Google Inc.<\/p>\n
This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Texas jury has ordered Apple to pay USD 532.9 million to Smartflash after finding iTunes infringed three patents. The case illustrates the complexities of patent litigation involving non-practicing entities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":40,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,22,14],"tags":[225,7047,5899,7049,3436,16,7046,7048],"class_list":["post-21123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-ip-commercialization-licensing","category-patents","tag-apple","tag-itunes","tag-litigation","tag-non-practicing-entity","tag-patent-damages","tag-patent-infringement-2","tag-smartflash","tag-texas-jury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21123"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149848,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21123\/revisions\/149848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}