More legal headaches for Apple as OPTi sues for patent infringement
A Silicon Valley chip maker is suing Apple for using its patented technology in the Macintosh desktop and notebook computers, adding to Apple´s lawyers already considerable workload.
Happy days for Apple´s lawyers as more work comes in
OPTi has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Apple Inc for infringement of three U.S. patents.
The complaint alleges that Apple has infringed the patents by making, selling, and offering for sale desktop and portable computers and servers incorporating Predictive Snooping.
The three patents in question are US Patent No. 5,710,906, US Patent No. 5,813,036 and U.S. Patent No. 6,405,291, all etitled “Predictive Snooping of Cache Memory for Master-Initiated Accesses”.
OPTi said in a statement that the lawsuit against Apple is a continuing part of the company’s strategy for pursuing its patent infringement claims relating to its Predictive Snooping technology.
AOPTi filed a similar lawsuit against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in November last year.
This is the second lawsuit Apple has faced recently.
Just after the launch of its iPhone, Cisco Systems filed a lawsuit claiming that it had legal rights to the “iPhone” brand.
But before you start feeling too sorry for Apple, Apple has also been quick to use its lawyers when it feels the need to. It recently set its lawyers against bloggers and web sites who had publicised the iPhone skins that were doing the rounds for Windows and Palm mobile phones.
Apple may be finding itself embroiled in all this legal activity simply because it´s become such a successful company, and it´s now considered a good target for these kinds of lawsuit.
Whatever you make of all this legal activity, one´s thing is clear. Apple´s lawyers must be laughing all the way to the bank.
