Boston, MA 02/06/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has itself move to file patent protection for a multitouch detection to a technology. Yet the company is facing a slap of $2 billion claim in a patent infringement related case against German firm called IPCom.
The said patent breach for which Apple Inc is required to pay $2 billion in damage involves wireless standard-essential patent, which in the eyes of the European Patent Office (EPO), Apple Inc breached. The company had February 11, to defend itself in court.
As these and many other patent lawsuits hang over its neck, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is assembling a team of likeminded companies, many or all of which have had frequent run-ins which firms out to monetize intellectual properties. In this regard, the company has teamed up with Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) to eradicate patent lawsuits which are at best, unnecessary.
The two companies have reportedly asked the U.S. Supreme Court to make it such that companies which lose out in patent infringement lawsuits are made to pay legal fee to the winning companies. This move is aimed to limit time-wasting and resource-draining legal sideshows.
Mouthful of patent lawsuits
According to available data, Apple Inc and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) have each been sued in patent related cases, more than 190 times over the last five years. These cases are fronted by companies which generate their revenue from patent licensing and enforcement. Usually, the victims have very little to do to avoid the embarrassment and sometime the legal resource drain that are incurred in following up with the unnecessary lawsuits.
Last year, a detailed report prepared by the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Adviser in collaboration with other entities, noted that in 2012, patent trolls (the companies generating revenue from patent enforcement) brought up patent issues with more than 100,000 companies. And many of the cases brought against the purported violators lack specific evidence, the report said.
As of February last year, President Obama, reacting to the said reported, called on stakeholders to see to it that smarter patent laws are put in place. Perhaps this explains why Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) are rallying peers to act before they hard-earned money can be consumed by patent trolls through fringe patent cases.
Others in the mix
Victims of patent trolls are many and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO), Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and Cisco Systems, Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO) are just some of the tech companies that are rally alongside Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to put sanity in patent lawsuits.
