Apple on hook for $308.5M in DRM patent suit
A federal jury in Texas on Friday decided Apple owes $308.5 million in royalties to Personalized Media Communications for infringing a digital rights management patent.
Following deliberations, a jury in the patent holder-friendly Marshall, Texas, district found Apple technology, including FairPlay, in infringement of a patent held by non-practicing entity Personalized Media, reports Bloomberg. FairPlay is used to distribute encrypted content on iTunes, the App Store and Apple Music.
Personalized Media first sued Apple in 2015, but the case took years to make its way to trial. Apple successfully challenged the patent-in-suit with an appeal to the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which subsequently invalidated certain claims of the IP. That ruling was ultimately reversed by an appeals court in 2020, sending the case to trial.
According to the report, an expert called by Personalized Media calculated Apple's owed royalties to be $240 million, but jurors decided to apply a running royalty rate that
ran the figure up to $308.5 million. Running royalties are typically calculated with a basis in unit sales or service engagement.
Apple in a statement said it was disappointed in the ruling and intends to appeal.
"Cases like this, brought by companies that don't make or sell any products, stifle innovation and ultimately harm consumers," the company said.
Following deliberations, a jury in the patent holder-friendly Marshall, Texas, district found Apple technology, including FairPlay, in infringement of a patent held by non-practicing entity Personalized Media, reports Bloomberg. FairPlay is used to distribute encrypted content on iTunes, the App Store and Apple Music.
Personalized Media first sued Apple in 2015, but the case took years to make its way to trial. Apple successfully challenged the patent-in-suit with an appeal to the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which subsequently invalidated certain claims of the IP. That ruling was ultimately reversed by an appeals court in 2020, sending the case to trial.
According to the report, an expert called by Personalized Media calculated Apple's owed royalties to be $240 million, but jurors decided to apply a running royalty rate that
ran the figure up to $308.5 million. Running royalties are typically calculated with a basis in unit sales or service engagement.
Apple in a statement said it was disappointed in the ruling and intends to appeal.
"Cases like this, brought by companies that don't make or sell any products, stifle innovation and ultimately harm consumers," the company said.
Comments
Between don't with my internal policies Texas trying to get elections overturned in other states (which had already gone through two or three recounts), their reluctance to hook up with national power grids and their failure to winterize their power production facilities (it don't get that cold that often), and their reluctance to implement any infection control protocols one wonders what will next be coming from that state.
Certainly it's the home turf of the patent troll courts - and every time I see them mentioned in the news it just seems like the state is just stuffed full of fatheads.
Methinks if Texans want to regain the respect of the nation the first step they must take is to vote out the riff-raff they have running the state and elect some decent non-Trumpian reality-based local government - then again, maybe there's a reason that the state is run by such a pathetic collection of bozos.
By the way, Personalized Media also sued Google using the same patents and in Texas patent courts in front of Texas jurors, so Apple wasn't singled out. Noteworthy is that Google won their case. Perhaps Apple's arguments were different and not as effective/pertinent.
https://ncjolt.org/blogs/google-wins-infringement-case-at-trial-over-video-streaming-patent-covering-1980s-inventions/
Patent reform in the country is well overdue. It’s unfair to claim damages when neither producing a product, nor even possessing the ability to produce such a product due to having insufficient complementary IP or technical know-how. What damage has truly been done?
What we have right now is just a silly trap for anyone who does create products. It needlessly elevates the cost to consumers while providing no alternative options in the market place.
The other side issue: it effectively funnels money from a large number of consumers into an entity which contributes nothing to society. Because these suits happen retrospectively those consumers were additionally denied a choice in who they spent their money with.
As for patent reform, an inventor will always be allowed to monetize his invention. Otherwise, why have patents at all? Are you advocating that only the more wealthy who can afford to actually build a product using them should be allowed to have one? The guy in his garage who comes up with that unique thing but has no funds to build a factory can't protect what he's invented, if nothing else sell his idea to someone who can afford to put it to use? Should that be allowed?
BTW, wealthy techs such as Apple file a whole lotta patents to protect "inventions" they have no plans of using in a shipping product. What it does accomplish is blocking some other person or company from creating a products that can be deemed to read on the claims of an "Apple invention" and compete with them in at least some minor way. That stifles innovation rather than encourages it. Should that be allowed?
You might forget that Apple themselves sued Samsung in a billion dollar trial using in part patent claims they themselves did not use for an actual Apple product. That sounds like a non-practicing entity, someone not building a product using a patent claim they sue someone else over. Should that have been allowed?
Anyway, a short article about those Texas patent courts:
https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/publications/item/2021-03-10/a-race-between-west-texas-and-delaware-for-the-patent-venue-of-choice
- Software needs to be the same. Allow protection for your design with a relational database with these tables designed this way and the other code specified. What would happen if you gave a “build a shopping cart app” in a computer science class? Would you argue that someone could get a generic patent that covers all variations of design and that this simple concept could never be developed independent of knowledge of the original IP.
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/11/17/protecting-idea-can-ideas-be-patented/
"The moral of the story is that mere ideas cannot be protected, so inventors need to think in terms of an invention. Inventions can be patented. Ideas cannot be patented."
Or is it another of the bogus patents that espouses an idea wrapped up in impressive sounding patent lingo, rather than any genuine technique for implementing it?
Texas' economy is heavily dependent upon oil, and Florida's upon tourism. The economic impact, and the recovery, has been bifurcated and has disproportionately impacted people on the lower end of the economic spectrum and those in industries hardest hit. Census survey data indicated a three-fold increase in people experiencing food insecurity as a result of the pandemic. So yeah, it hasn't impacted my relatively recession-proof white collar household much, but I can't say the same for numerous people I know. Is Texas doing so well when THOUSANDS of people turn out for food distribution?
Texas should winterize their GD power grid because this is now the second time in 10 years that cold weather has caused large-scale power outages. Texas, in their Wild West wisdom, ignored the recommendations that came out of their post mortem on the 2011 freeze and blackouts. I guess that's what you get when you elect an attorney general who's been under indictment his entire term.
Nope. Every court found it was within those states’ right to offer COVID19 safety measures to their voters. And again, that isn’t any of Texas’ business, and has zero bearing on Texas voters. No one was disenfranchised. Texas stooges just tried to steal the election, and failed. Just like the other 60+ cases — all lost, several heard by Republican judges, some even appointed by the last guy.
Nope. Ex-energy guy here in Louisiana (Shell). The Texas power failed has zilch to do w/ renewable energy, of which only around 10% was wind (which works fine in artic regions btw). The vast majority of TX power was natural gas, and their pipes froze — despite warnings 10 years ago about this very issue after the last freeze. TX power companies simply failed to insulate because it was unregulated and thus optional. They chose not to. And because TX also chose not to hook their grid up to the regional and national grids to avoid regulation, they couldn’t import power. Oops. Texas failures all the way.
As for CA people moving to TX, sure, lots are — because CA is the most populous state in the country, and expensive due to high demand. Your suggestion amounts to the classic joke, “Nobody eats there anymore, it’s too crowded!”
Nah. You’re a fake expert with zero expertise in anything relevant to these topics.
Like those pirates haven't made enough money by stealing other people's ideas ...