DRM Software Development Company Intertrust Files Lawsuit Against Apple for Patent Infringement

Wednesday March 20, 2013 11:31 am PDT by Juli Clover

The Wall Street Journal reports that patent holding company Intertrust Technologies Corp. has filed suit against Apple, accusing the Cupertino-based company of infringing on 15 of Intertrust's patents related to "security and distributed trusted computing."

Intertrust invents and licenses technologies for digital rights management, currently holding more than 150 patents.

As posted on the company's website, the lawsuit involves multiple Apple products, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac computers and laptops, Apple TV and Apple services like iTunes, iCloud, and the App Store.

"Apple makes many great products that use Intertrust's inventions," said Talal Shamoon, Intertrust's chief executive officer. "Our patents are foundational to modern Internet security and trusted computing, and result from years of internal research and development. We are proud of our record of peaceful and constructive licensing with industry leaders. We find it regrettable that we are forced to seek Court assistance to resolve this matter."

Intertrust, which is backed by Sony Corp. and Royal Philips Electronics NV, successfully collected $440 million from Microsoft in 2004 after winning a patent infringement case against the company. On its licensees page, Intertrust lists major tech companies like Adobe, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, HTC, Nokia, and Motorola.

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Top Rated Comments

H2SO4

176 months ago

Karma is a b1tch!

The most predictable crap comment ever.

Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)

rmwebs

176 months ago

Nice logo, intertrust.
Image (http://i.imgur.com/Oyoyjjs.png)

:confused: You are kidding? Looks nothing remotely like it.

Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)

camnchar

176 months ago

This sort of thing really shows the broken nature of the software patent system. If Apple stole code, then they need to pay up. Vastly more probable, though, is that Apple wrote original code that does similar things to what Intertrust claims their code does. That's kind of like inventing a new alternative to the cotton gin, which itself should be patentable, but then getting sued by Eli Whitney because he came up with the idea of a cotton gin.

And around and around we go.

Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)