Time for a look at the Apple Watch patent dispute
Apple is no stranger to being named as either a plaintiff or a defendant in patent infringement lawsuits. It is believed that Apple is sued for infringement several times every year.
Among those who have brought patent suits against Apple are the following: Eastman Kodak Company, Qualcomm Technologies, Samsung Electronics, THX, VirnetX Holding Corporation (in April a Texas jury awarded VirnetX $502.6 million in patent infringement damages against Apple), Nokia Technologies, GPNE, ITUS Corporation, Israeli-based Corephotonics, MEC Resources (wholly owned by Native American tribes Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation), Prowire, Universal Secure Registry (a small Massachusetts-based tech company), and most recently, Michigan-based Omni MedSci.
Of course, as can be expected, when Apple is sued it usually rightfully defends itself with all the power and might of a company with the largest market capitalisation of any publicly traded company in the US.
At last count, Apple’s market cap was twice as large as that of number two, Exxon Mobil. This makes the company a formidable opponent with the resources to drive up the costs of litigation. While the median costs associated with a party’s prosecuting or defending a patent infringement lawsuit has risen to $5 million, one would expect these costs to reach far more than that figure when opposed by Apple.
On April 6 Apple’s attorneys Thomas Lewry, John LeRoy, Robert Tuttle, John Halan, and Christopher Smith of the Southfield Michigan-based Brooks Kushman law firm, together with Longview Texas-based attorney John Ward, Jr of the Ward, Smith & Hill firm, executed and filed a complaint for patent infringement on behalf of Ann Arbor Michigan-based Omni MedSci against Apple.
This complaint alleges that Apple’s various watch products infringe four patents owned by Omni MedSci, all of which name Mohammed Islam as inventor. These four patents-in-suit include US numbers 9,651,533, granted on May 16, 2017; 9,757,040, granted on September 12, 2017; 9,861,286, granted on January 9, 2018; and 9,885,698, granted on February 6, 2018.
Inventor Islam is a tenured professor of optics and photonics in the electric and computer engineering department and a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering. Islam’s goal has been to create, develop and commercialise optical technologies to the US defence community and other fields.
