Apple Sued Over Touch-Screen Patent Claim

It’s not surprising this has happened, but doing the rounds is the report that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is being sued by a company called SP Technologies for allegedly infringing a patent covering a keyboard on a touch screen… Silicon Republic has the basic story. The case is unlikely to go anywhere significant and the phrase “patent troll” is being bandied about. TechDirt notes that the patent in question covers a keyboard on a touchscreen that cannot be resized or minimized, which is very different to the iPhone effort. It also links to Information Week which has a piece detailing the dodgy history of the patent owner, Peter V. Boesen: He is currently convicted of filing false medical claims (free pending an appeal) and he “has filed a number of patent suits in the past, including claims against Canon, LG Electronics, and Kyocera” — there’s no details of the result, but since we haven’t heard anything… I personally doubt this suit will go anywhere, it’s likely to disappear into obscurity but for now it’s making headlines.

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