German Court Dismisses $2 Billion Damage Claim Against Apple

A German court has dismissed a $2 billion damage claim filed against Apple by IPCom, a patent licencing company based in the Munich area, reports Florian Müller of Foss Patents. The decision comes from two different panels of judges of the Mannheim Regional Court.

Two lawsuits against Apple, including one involving a €1.57 billion ($2.2 billion) “partial” damages claim, and one against HTC (a company IPCom has been suing for about six years) were dismissed because the court concluded that Apple and HTC didn’t infringe a certain IPCom patent family by implementing the 3G/UMTS standard.

Patent

The two patents referred to in the filing are European patent EP1841268 and German patent DE19910239, which are related to priority access to channels for emergency responders.

As it turns out, IPCom has been pretty busy lately filing patent infringement cases against multiple parties using the patents its owns. The court documents reveal that the asserted patents originally belonged to Bosch, but IPCom has acquired them and is monetizing them by licencing under FRAND terms or through the courts.

Other parties targeted by IPCom have settled with the patent troll, but it appears that Apple, Nokia, HTC, and others are challenging it in court. Today’s dismissal is just a temporary win, though, as IPCom is expected to appeal against the ruling.

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