Multi-Touch Tech Firm Seeks iPad Sales Injunction

An anonymous reader writes "Taiwan-based Elan Microelectronics just filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission alleging that Apple is infringing on its patents and violating the Tariff Act, and is seeking a ban on imports of the iPad as well as an order to stop selling the mobile device along with iPhones, iPods, and Macs. The move was taken as a 'continuation of our efforts to enforce our patent rights against Apple's ongoing infringement,' the company said." Considering many iPad pre-orders have tracking #s already, I suspect it might be a little late.

Troll Worthy?

[ircmaxell]

This depends on if they can prove that negotiations have failed. If there were little to no negotiations, then this appears to be nothing more than a Troll looking to strike while the iron's hot (or to hurt when the competitor is weakest). But for all we know, they could have been in negotiations for months/years, which would give them some credibility... But seriously, the iPhone's been out for what, 3 years?

/me is starting to get sick of all the trolls...

HTC buying this company

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who is seeing HTC buying this company?

How do they get these patents?

[Mark19960]

Yes I know that prior art is not a slam dunk defense but with all of the prior art regarding 'multi-touch' I can't understand how these companies
managed to get it patented.
It seems that everyone has patented the idea except for the people that had it first!
And it appears that it was not Apple, Google, HTC, or even these guys....

I should patent something random and start to sue people myself, obviously someone is making money doing it.

Re:Wait...

[rolfwind]

Apple bought fingerworks in 2005. They have their implementation of multitouch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks [wikipedia.org]

That doesn't say who owns the patents, but this shows how stupid America pushing IP is... it's just going to bite us back bigtime when India/China compete on the high end.

Re:Apple being sued for stealing?

[msauve]

Apple on the other hand just keeps infringing those patents, but at the same time itself sues everyone under the sun for infringing their patents.

What's unique about Apple? I thought this was just how the whole (broken) system worked, and everyone did the same.

Re:Wait...

[mea37]

This kind of confusion is what comes of seeing a patent that covers a method of doing something that facilitates X, and calling it "the patent on doing X". It's not. There is no such thing as "the patent on multi-touch".

There can be, and probably are, many patents related to multi-touch. It's quite possible, since there's more than one way to implement multi-touch, that you could own a patent related to mullti-touch and I could make multi-touch devices without licesning or infringing your patent.

Re:How do you say

[SOdhner]

I think that depends on the "fix". I've seen some pretty fantastic ones that are funny, insightful, or both. Of course I also see a lot of stupid ones, but if we stop the "fixed that for ya" replies a new meme will just step in to fill the void because the real problem is people who think something like that takes the place of quality content rather than accenting whatever is (or isn't) there to begin with.

Ugh

[mosb1000]

This is why I don't want to take out patents for my invention. They don't seem to actually protect you from litigation, and they hinder the development and deployment of new technologies. Why should I have to wait until some worthless dipshit company's patent expires to buy an iPad? Why should there be a million lawyers involved in developing new technology (about the only people worse for technology than politicians are lawyers). Patents are a terrible idea. All the most successful technology companies simply ignore them (in a practical sense) and leave the issue for their lawyers to deal with.

Re:Wait...

[rolfwind]

So... the argument against an IP framework is that those dern ferners might benefit from it too when they're the ones doing the innovative work? That soudns a bit nationalistic to say the least...

My argument is, with China graduating 1,000,000+ engineers every year, it will be hard to compete in our own existing framework of vague and broad patents because they can certainly write as many or more as we do. Since they also have the manufacturing base, to get anything made, we'll have to fight in their courts if it ever comes to that.

The competition is welcome, expanding a crappy framework the world over is not. It's bad enough as it is now.

Re:Apple being sued for stealing?

[mikael_j]

I'm taking all of these Company A is suing Company B which is suing Company C messes as a clear sign that the patent system (and in extension the entire Intellectual Property system) is slowly imploding. These days you couldn't invent the wheel without someone suing you since they own patents on "crafting an item out of a material", "objects made of matter" or any other silliness (I'm sure some pro-patent shill is going to start whining about how patents are needed to protect the little guy and whatever but in all honesty, the little guy can't afford patents, and if he is able to afford a patent or two the corporate giants will simply say "that's nice, here are 50 of our patents you're infringing on, now what do you think of our offer to purchase your patents/company for $low_sum?").