166
British inventor seeks to take $18bn bite out of Apple in bitter patent war
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Does anyone have the link to the patent?
Edit: here are the US patents
U.S. Patent Nos. 7,334,720 ('720 Patent); 8,033,458 ('458 Patent); 8,061,598 ('598 Patent); 8,118,221 ('221 Patent); 8,336,772 ('772 Patent); and 7,942,317 ('317 Patent)
You can look up Smartflash v. Apple to find plenty of coverage. There's a lot more to this story than just a patent fight.
Racz made his fortune inventing a method of mixing hot and cold water - he created a global company selling taps all over the world and eventually sold it (the patent expired a long time ago, and AFAIK it's now the standard technology used by all tap companies). Perfect example of patents actually working as intended. His next invention and business was supposed to be in the music industry, and he partnered with a company called Gemplus to fill in gaps in his expertise - especially software R&D.
The head of R&D at Gemplus left the company and started working for Apple. Where he built all of the same stuff that he had been working on with Racz. We're talking really fundamental technology here - such as DRM to keep the record labels happy which was obviously required otherwise the whole business wouldn't work at all. Racz had lined up partnerships with major record labels and some of the biggest pop stars in the world and it all collapsed when iTunes came along with all the same stuff.
Short on time but they’re identified early on in this decision:
https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Smartflash_LLC_v_Apple_Inc_No_20161059_2017_BL_62739_Fed_Cir_Mar_
Paywalled
Sorry, it loaded without a paywall when I originally found it.