“A Massachusetts inventor is suing Apple Inc., saying the company is illegally using his caller identification technology in the popular iPhone,” Hiawatha Bray reports for The Boston Globe Staff.
“The lawsuit, filed last Friday in US District Court in Boston, pits one of the world’s leading technology companies against an independent inventor whose patent is already licensed by many of Apple’s biggest competitors in the cellphone business, Bray reports.
“Romek Figa of Hanover, a 1971 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, operates Abraham & Son, an electronics consulting business. During the 1980s, Figa teamed up with two other inventors on a personalized caller ID system,” Bray reports.
“Lawyer Lisa Tittemore of Bromberg & Sunstein LLP in Boston, the firm representing Figa, said many of the world’s wireless phone makers have licensed the patent, including the three biggest – Motorola Inc., Samsung Group, and Nokia Corp.,” Bray reports.
“‘Apple was contacted about a license, but the parties were not able to agree on acceptable terms,’ Tittemore said,” Bray reports.
“Figa’s lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and asks that the damage amount be tripled because of Apple’s ‘willful and deliberate’ patent infringement,” Bray reports.
More in the full article here.
blood suckers
“Lawyer Lisa Tittemore of Bromberg & Sunstein…”
I’m sure Bart would have fun with that one.
Patent infringement??? Are you telling me that Apple is the new Microsoft, and ID tech is the new Apple?
If you want to hold your patent, you must defend it. While I am not privy to the terms requested, I would expect them to be similar to what everyone else was asked to pay … thus making it a “fair and reasonable” price. Of course, Apple has had a way with bargaining “standard prices” down. Music, movies, TV shows … all the same. “We can deliver this for less” so, “let’s deal”.
Dave
One of these days I promise you I am going to make Hiawatha do some Braying . . . a-thankyouverymuch.
@ Dick,
Dumb is the new black. Congratulations. You’re a fashion icon!
MW: “small” Your mussell.
Anyone want to bet on how long until they fold and settle once Apple starts demonstrating prior art?
Did someone patent on how you answer a phone call? “hello” patent # 554546465465464564646. Or “Whats up” patent #56456465465465464646464 or .. Did someone also patent how many rings a phone must make before it goes into voicemail? That would be cool.
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@Think
I wonder if Tittemore does a lot of pro bono work? I bet she graduated cum laude.
“It’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission.”
Let me educate you patent neophytes: All this fellow has to do is demonstrate that Apple infringes just ONE of the claims of the patent for Apple to be in trouble. My guess is they will pay him something to go away.
I agree altivec guru LOL
I wonder how true some of these accusations are? Didn’t someone try to sue them over the tough screen function or something along that matter? I haven’t heard anything about that since…..
Maybe it’s just another get rich quick scheme.. I mean seriously… who would ask to tripple the cost of damages. It’s just a license, it’s not like they would be losing anything really. How many companies right now can you actually pick what voicemail you want to choose? Ive had a phone from every provider and the iphone is the only one I know of so far that does it. I have had blackberry’s and treo’s along with small nonsmart phones. I’d really like to see how this rolls over.
Maybe the guy forgot to see that apple has 18.5 billion dollars they could use a little of for court costs.
just my 2 cents
Q: What’s black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?
A: A doberman pinscher
Is there a phone that does not have “Caller ID”? even that Motorola and nokia already licensed it, what about the hundreds more that have that technology?
I’m suing MDN for using the letter M, which happens to be the first letter in middle name.
Other peoples got patents too!
Didn’t need two hundred neither.
My middle name, I mean. Sheesh!!! Gin this early in the day makes me quite goofy.
MDN headline is misleading. The issue is not caller ID, but the phone’s matching up the calling number to a name in the phone’s addresses and displaying the name. I mean, all phones do that, and I haven’t seen anything about Nokia, Motorola etc paying any licensing fees for something so obvious. This does seem like another frivolous lawsuit from the firm Dewey, Cheatam and Howe.
“It’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission.”
If Microsoft did something like this, you’d be screaming for Gates’ head.
It’s sad that so many Mac users are HYPOCRITES!
Apple has learned very much from dealing with people who want to try and take their money, i.e. Apple Records.
I suspect after trying to negotiate a deal with this “inventor” and finding he would not budge on his demands, Apple said, “Ok, you want to play hard ball, let’s play”.
Apple could drag this on for a very long time if they choose the legal fees alone will make him change his tune,
Without making a comment on the validity on this one way or t’other, surely this guy would also have to sue the vendors of any number of CRM software that do a reverse-resolution of a customer’s records dependant on CLI data.
Caller ID on Cell Phones suck…I loved Name and Number caller ID on my land line when I had one.
I really do believe it is time to rewrite the patent, copyright, and trademark laws of this land.
The Public Domain is all but gone and fair use has been trampled on so many times it is not even funny.
One more example of how innovation gets stifled in this country. Easily fixed by changing laws so that the litigant must pay legal costs for the defense if the claims are not substantiated. That would free up civil court dockets, save firms that make real contributions from having to protect themselves with a stable of lawyers and generally relegate these patent trollers back down to the mud at the bottom of the pond where they belong.
I’d love to see his patent get dismissed as being obvious and unenforceable (I mean looking up someone’s info in a phone book by their phone number… who would’ve thought?!). There goes that cyber squatter’s gravy train.
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I use my iPhone primarily as an iPod, so I’m listening to music a lot. I like that the music fades out when a call comes in, but then I have to pull out my iPhone to see who’s calling. If the iPhone is based on Mac OS X, then text-to-speech would allow my iPhone to tell me, “Call from <first name>.” A friend visited me who has MetroPCS, and his phone says, “Call from <last four digits>,” so it’s possible.
The other cool/killer ability I want is to be able to print from my iPhone. If I’m on WiFi, in Safari or Maps or whatever app, and there’s also a printer on the same WiFi network, like at home or at work, I want to be able to print whatever’s on my screen. How cool would *that* be? What other phone can/could say it can do that? Can any Blackberries, Treos or Windows phones print, wirelessly? Lemme know if I’m wrong.