Motorola’s patent war against Apple doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon, as the former has filed a new lawsuit which targets the Apple’s iPhone and iCloud service, both of which have contributed majorly to Apple’s revenue last year. The new lawsuit, which has been filed in the US District Court of Southern Florida, has accused Apple of using six Motorola patents in the iPhone 4S and four in the iCloud service. This lawsuit come months after two other federal lawsuits were filed by Motorola against Apple. This new lawsuit will add to the list of Apple products that Motorola is targeting with its array of patents.
Of the four patents that Motorola claims the iCloud has misused, one is for ‘multiple pager status sync’, another is for a ‘method and apparatus for communicating summarized data’, a third is for a ‘system for communicating user selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to client communication server for filtering data transferred from host to a particular wireless client’ and finally a ‘method and an apparatus in a wireless messaging system which facilitates exchange of address information’.
Two additional patent claims are being argued against the iPhone 4S along with the four already mentioned earlier. One of these is a patent that involves the use of a ‘receiver having a concealed antenna’ and another that uses an ‘apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device’. In totality, it looks like Motorola is targeting the iCloud and the iPhone 4S on grounds that both are able to sync the data stored on the phone wirelessly (i.e. via the concealed external antenna).
Motorola had originally planned to add these claims to its ongoing lawsuit against Apple from 2010. The original lawsuit targeted Apple’s App Store and iOS. The judge in charge of the original lawsuit had asked Motorola to file the alleged infringements in a new lawsuit and Motorola seems to have obliged.
The filing of this suit is no surprise as Android supporting companies like Motorola, HTC and Samsung are engaged in a patent battle against Apple in many parts of the world. In the recent past, Apple hasn’t had many lawsuits in its favour; the latest reversal was when Motorola won an injunction against Apple in Germany in December 2011, which could potentially prevent Apple from selling iPhone or iPads with 3G capabilities. Added to this, earlier this month the ITC (International Trade commission) handed Motorola some respite by stating that Motorola hadn’t violated any of Apple’s smartphone patents. Only time will tell if the courts in the USA have the same opinion as those in Germany or the ITC for that matter.