A Delaware federal jury has ruled that Apple’s iPhone violated three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas, a patent-licensing firm owned by MPEG-LA that acquired patents from Sony and Nokia. After four hours of deliberation, the jury ruled the patents were not invalid, as Apple had claimed.
Damages will be set at a later trial, though MobileMedia’s CEO Larry Horn told Bloomberg they will likely be “substantial.”
“We’re very pleased,” Horn told Bloomberg in a courtroom interview after the trial. “We think it’s justified.”
Filed in 2010, the original claim included 14 total patents, but that number was narrowed down to three as the case went to trial this year. Centered around camera phone technology and how the phone handled calls, the three patents include one for transmitting pictures from one camera to another, one that handled how a phone would reject a call, and another that dealt with the hold status pm the phone. MobileMedia claimed it would suffer “irreparable injury” if Apple was allowed to use the patented technology without royalty payments.
Apple had argued in court filings that MobileMedia’s patents are legally invalid and lacked “legally sufficient” evidence to prove infringement.
MobileMedia owns about 300 patents. While some would be quick to dub the company a “patent troll,” the company does monetize payments on behalf of Nokia and Sony, which owns about 10 percent of the company.
The case required the jury to examine technology from the mid to late ‘90s when it was first invented, Bloomberg reported.
Apple has been fighting its own patent battles and appears to be winning them. Last August, the company was awarded $1 billion when a jury ruled Samsung had violated six out of seven patents, a decision that is being appealed.