VIA Sues Apple for Patent Infringement

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VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced it has taken legal action against Apple Inc., filing a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US District Court of Delaware for patent infringement by Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV product lines, and associated software.

"VIA has built up an extensive IP portfolio consisting of over 5,000 patents as a result of significant investments in world class technology research and development," commented Wenchi Chen, CEO, VIA Technologies, Inc. "We are determined to protect our interests and the interests of our stockholders when our patents are infringed upon."

The patents at issue cover microprocessor functionality featured in Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Apple TV devices, namely: US Patent No. 6253312, Method and apparatus for double operand load, US Patent Nos. 6253311 & 6754810, Instruction set for bi-directional conversion and transfer of integer and floating point data.
 
Ahh, good. I was worried, having not seen a patent troll article in the last week or so. :cool:
 
Patent trolling, against apple woo!

I only say that as... it should hella stupid patent.
 
This will never stick.

Patent judges are too stupid to recognize real technology patents (they are real enough for Intel to cross license them). But they will recognize minimalist rectangular tablet designs.
 
i agree. a fucking rectangle with rounded corners is able to clearly be infringed upon, but something as specific as how the processor works will never be able to be enforced by those monkeys
 
I thought HTC bought any and all patents that could be used against Apple from Via when they purchased S3?
 
Awesome, everybody wants a piece of the (apple) pie! :D
 
Apple sued HTC only because HTC purchased the S3 patents, many of which Apple directly use without paying for, because Apple is bigger than HTC and could afford to do it in the face of S3.

Apple had *this* coming, and I hope they end up losing like against Nokia, because that was some blatant crap.


Also see Apple suit against Samsung - The only patent Samsung were hit on was the way you slid to unlock the screensaver - a method used by old WinMo phones for christs sake!
 
These are some very interesting and serious patents. I would imagine that both AMD and Intel licence these from VIA/Centaur as they provide an obvious speed up to loading floating point registers from memory and other registers.

But if Apple's CPUs have violated this patent does that mean that other users/manufacturers of ARM technology chips also violate this patent? Or perhaps everyone else has played nice and licenced the tech while typical Apple tries to use their size to get VIA to go away quietly which has obviously failed..
 
MrLonghair said:
Apple sued HTC only because HTC purchased the S3 patents, many of which Apple directly use without paying for, because Apple is bigger than HTC and could afford to do it in the face of S3.

Apple had *this* coming, and I hope they end up losing like against Nokia, because that was some blatant crap.


Also see Apple suit against Samsung - The only patent Samsung were hit on was the way you slid to unlock the screensaver - a method used by old WinMo phones for christs sake!
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Im in hopes that VIA may win this one. I really hope Apple sucks it for at least one time that they have screwed over other companies.
 
MrGuvernment said:
cant all processors do this?
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The patent is on a specific instruction set for doing so, which I think is perfectly reasonable to patent.

At the same time, I wish companies would just license their technologies to one another rather than playing this ridiculous game of patent, hold, steal, sue.
 
I wish patents were more well known... hard to do when every little application of even similar likeness is another patent.
 
Solidstate89 said:
I thought HTC bought any and all patents that could be used against Apple from Via when they purchased S3?
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Well if you consider that the man running VIA is one of the two founders of HTC things start to make sense. ;)
 
just as a thought I am thinking this might simply be a favor. someone has been nice to VIA and they would like apple taken down a notch. and some of VIA patent are suppose to be pretty big (take with some salt here)
 
I hope they all lose. Then maybe the consumer can win for a change. :D
 
HOCP4ME said:
At the same time, I wish companies would just license their technologies to one another rather than playing this ridiculous game of patent, hold, steal, sue.
Click to expand...

That was more or less what was going on (in terms of technology patents).

If a company thought that their patents were infringed upon, they would usually send a strongly worded letter and get the issue resolved about 90% of the time - either by a licensing agreement or changing the offending product. Very few times it would actually go to court and end up in a multi-million dollar fine. But even then, no company sought for injunctions.

Apple is the first tech company to refuse to license whatever patents they have and the first to actually seek an outright ban on competitor sales.
 
These stupid lawsuits piss me off. I'm not an apple fan by any means. It's just the concept that pisses me off. Who freaken cares if company A uses a technology or concept that company B uses. The patent system is the most stupid thing ever and does nothing but help stop innovation and creates monopolies.

That said, in this case I would like to see VIA win just so Apple can get a taste of it's own medicine. :D
 
dexvx said:
That was more or less what was going on (in terms of technology patents).

If a company thought that their patents were infringed upon, they would usually send a strongly worded letter and get the issue resolved about 90% of the time - either by a licensing agreement or changing the offending product. Very few times it would actually go to court and end up in a multi-million dollar fine. But even then, no company sought for injunctions.

Apple is the first tech company to refuse to license whatever patents they have and the first to actually seek an outright ban on competitor sales.
Click to expand...

The last part is key. Now the other key part is that VIA licenses nothing from Apple, and does not compete directly with them. So Apple has no leverage on them.

Wolfkin said:
Well if you consider that the man running VIA is one of the two founders of HTC things start to make sense. ;)
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This is why VIA has decided to pursue the matter. And I personally hope that this action, combined with Samsung's attempt to ban the iPhone 5 (at least in Korea), will help reign in Apple's Litigious tendencies. Or put them "out of business" altogether. Which might actually be good for consumers... :p
 
Companies suing each other I'm all for, but not go out of business. Apple & Android balance each other, take competition out, it's NEVER good for the consumer.
 
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