Sonrai Memory, an Irish non-practicing entity (NPE), filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on Friday. The company accuses Apple of infringing on two patents owned by them. Apple is a common target of patent infringement, but in the same way, it’s one of the companies that always sue others for violating its own patents.
Apple reports that one of the patents, 6,874,014, is titled “Chip Multiprocessor with Multiple Operating Systems, dating back to 2005. The other, 6,724,241, is called “Variable Charge Pump with Dynamic Loading Circuit”, first licensed in 2004. The infringement involves numerous Apple products, dating back to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, fifth-generation iPads, all iPad Pro generations, and various MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models.
Apple’s M, A, and T-series infringes several patents belonging to Sonrai Memory
Sonrai Memory alleges that Apple’s A-series, M-series, and T-series chipsets use technology that infringes its 6,874,014 patents. Meanwhile, 6,724,241 involves SK Hynix Nand flash memory chips. The company seeks damages, costs, expenses, interest, and judgment on continuing license fees. They also seek “reasonable attorneys’ fees”.
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According to reports, Sonrai Memory acquired these patents from HP and Atmel. Worth noting, that it also had similar lawsuits against Western Digital, Google, Samsung, LG, Lenovo, and others since July 2021.
Apparently, this is just another case of “patent trolls”. Sonrai Memory does not actually make anything. They simply sue large companies with a lot of money. Patently Apple states that there is a huge list of lawsuits involving big companies such as the abovementioned. Unfortunately, while these lawsuits are annoying, Apple needs to take them seriously. After all, the court does not consider this “trolling” and evaluates everything in the standard way. Occasionally, some of these patent trolls defeat the big companies in their allegations. Apple, for example, lost the battery for Optis Wireless.
For now, we don’t know if Apple will have a chance against Sonrai Memory. We won’t be surprised to see the patent troll getting the upper hand in this legal battle. Of course, this case may take several months. Considering the new economical adjustments, Apple does not want to lose this lawsuit.
