Patent Law

Davids Against Goliaths

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Digital media, digital imaging, and wireless communications are the patented technologies owned by three small inventors who have recently filed lawsuits against major corporations.

Atlanta-based ZapMedia is targeting Apple in the Eastern District of Texas for infringing parent 7,020,704 & continuation 7,343,414. claiming methods for managing access to digital media assets. iTunes is the accused product. ZapMedia claims that Apple, a prospective client in the late 1990s, liked what it saw at a marketing demo. ZapMedia struggled to bring its products to market, liquidated, and is left with its intellectual property.

FlashPoint Technology, a 1996 Apple spinoff, has a bevy of digital camera patents asserted against Motorola, Spring, Palm, Research in Motion, Nokia, AT&T Mobility, Kyocera, LG Electronics, Verizon Wireless, and others: 6,118,480; 6,177,956; 6,222,538; 6,223,190; 6,249,316; 6,486,914; and 6,504,575. FlashPoint filed suit last Friday in Delaware. FlashPoint has had considerable licensing success, naming: Canon, Casio, Seiko Epson, Fuji Photo, HP, Eastman Kodak, Matsushita, Minolta, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, and others.

Daniel Henderson has had his inventions exhibited in the Smithsonian. Now, under his patent-holding company Intellect Wireless, he's going to show them off in court, if need be, to wrestle licenses from the likes of Motorola, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, Sanyo, and others. Henderson, with offices in Forth Worth, Texas and Reston, Virginia, filed two complaints in the Northern District of Illinois. The asserted patents are: 7,266,186; 7,310,416; 7,257,210; 7,305,076; and 7,266,186; going to wireless communications features, such as paging and caller ID.

If Senators Leahy & Hatch, with the House of Representatives riding shotgun, could muscle their way, these small inventors would have next to no chance to profit from their intellectual property.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on March 13, 2008 (boomark / email).