Posted on 03/01/2017 3:10:10 PM PST by Swordmaker
A federal appeals court has thrown out a jury verdict that had originally required Apple Inc to pay $533 million to Smartflash LLC, a technology developer and licenser that claimed Apple's iTunes software infringed its data storage patents.
The trial judge vacated the large damages award a few months after a Texas federal jury imposed it in February 2015, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said on Wednesday the judge should have ruled Smartflash's patents invalid and set aside the verdict entirely.
A unanimous three-judge appeals panel said Smartflash's patents were too "abstract" and did not go far enough in describing an actual invention to warrant protection. The decision likely ends a case that had attracted wide attention when the verdict was rendered but had gone against the plaintiff ever since.U.S. appeals court tosses patent verdict against Apple
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Well, there goes the patent on selling goods to customers for money...
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Amazon has a patent on selling with one click. . . which they are enforcing because a jury in the east Texas rocket docket thought it was unique and patentable. Apple and others are being forced to pay Amazon royalties on that obvious idea.
Not to mention the patent on storing data in the form of the state of a binary flip-flop, or the charge on a transistor gate...
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