Federal Circuit clears Apple of infringing three MobileMedia patents

A US appeals court has cleared Apple of infringing three smart phone related patents but has sent back a fourth patent to be reviewed by a district court, in a mixed ruling issued on Tuesday (March 17).

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Apple did not infringe three patents owned by MobileMedia, a licensing company formed by Sony and Nokia in 2010.

MobileMedia’s three patents—6,247,078; 6,070,068; and 6,253,075—protect technology covering the use of a camera on a smart phone, a display menu to handle calls, and a method allowing users to reject an incoming phone call.

At the centre of the dispute were Apple’s iPhone 3 and iPhone 4 products.

The Federal Circuit’s ruling reverses an earlier decision by the US District Court for the District of Delaware in 2012 that stated Apple had infringed the three patents.

Reviewing some of the disputed claims in the patents de novo, the appeals judges presiding over the case said that when patent ‘078 is “correctly construed, no reasonable jury could conclude that Apple’s accused products literally infringe”.

But a fourth patent (RE 39,231) covering technology that enables a user to adjust the volume of a ringtone when somebody is calling has been sent back to the district court to be reviewed again.

According to the district court’s decision, Apple did not infringe that patent.

The request for review concerns the district court’s construction of the claim in patent ‘231 called “to change the volume of the generated alert sound”.

The judges said: “Because the district court’s grant of Apple’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement of claims in the ‘231 patent was based on an erroneous construction, we vacate the district court’s grant of this motion and remand to the district court for further proceedings.”

Neither Apple nor MobileMedia responded to a request for comment.