Apple Facing New China Lawsuit Over Facetime Patent

Having finished paying out $60 million to Proview merely a month back ending the ‘iPad’ trademark patent dispute in China, Apple is now fighting Samsung in-court and will soon be dealing with another lawsuit. This latest dispute comes from China once again and is now over Cupertino’s Facetime patent.

A Taiwanese man claims that Apple’s Facetime service infringes his “voice network personal digital assistant” patent directly. As a result, he has filed a lawsuit with the Zhenjiang Intermediate People’s Court. The Taiwanese man, known as ‘Lee,’ has yet to note compensation, but has asked Apple to cease the violation.

The voice network patent was created by a co-worker of Lee’s, but the patent has since transferred over to his name. The main reason for development was to prevent the high-cost of overseas phone calls. TheNextWeb has more on the situation:

 Lee is a technian of a Taiwanese tech company, he needed to travel aboard to various cities for work, therefore he always made international call to his company, parents and friends. Due to this reason, Lee was inspired and came up with an idea of implementing internet call feature on phones. Subsequently, he applied a patent for this idea in 2003.

According to a Chinese report, the trial is set to begin later this month. Apple is yet to respond to Lee’s case, so we should soon expect an explanation from the Cupertino giant.

At this point, I can’t cut to the conclusion. Lee has provided minimal information on his patent, I would furthermore need pictures and a description. What are your thoughts on this latest lawsuit?

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