Intellect Wireless, a tiny company based in Reston, VA has filed suit against Apple over mobile picture/video messaging technology it claims to have successfully patented years ago.
The patent infringement suit was filed on 28 January in Illinois Northern District Court.
The complaint states that Apple infringed on the company’s patents when it provided wireless portable communication devices (you know, like the iPhone) that “receive and display caller ID information, non-facsimile pictures, video messages and/or Multimedia Messaging Services.”
It was easy to retrieve court documents showing Intellect Wireless is seeking about $10 million in damages from Apple for allegedly infringing on its patent, but it sure was a whole lot harder to track down what this company has effectively produced with the technology it claims to have enriched the planet with. In other words: it’s a non-practicing entity, aka patent troll, hard at work in this case.
And judging from this article on the General Patent Corporation blog, Intellect Wireless is a feisty one at that.
To learn more about the technology Wireless Intellect has invented, try making sense of this magnificent slide deck from self-proclaimed inventor Daniel A. Henderson, the man behind the company.
This isn’t exactly the first time Intellect Wireless has turned to courts over alleged patent infringement: the company sued T-Mobile USA, Virgin Mobile USA, Helio and U.S. Cellular Corp back in February 2008, Motorola, LG Electronics and Sanyo Electric in March 2008, Samsung Electronics in October 2008 and HTC in May 2009.
Ugh.