Apple to pay MobileMedia Ideas LLC $3 million

It has been another bad week for Apple, with a judgement verdict being secured against them. MobileMedia Ideas LLC won the patent lawsuit against Apple, finding that they should pay $3 million compensation for patent RE39,231 relating to ring-silencing features.

MobileMedia is an unusual example of the kind of pure patent-licensing entity often derided as a “patent troll.” It is majority-owned by MPEG-LA, a patent pool that licenses common digital video technologies like H-264, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. Minority stakes in MobileMedia are owned by Sony and Nokia, which both contributed the patents owned by the company. MobileMedia also has the same CEO as MPEG-LA, Larry Horn.

A $3 million verdict is hardly going to make an impact on Apple, and it doesn’t represent a huge win for MobileMedia, which was reportedly seeking $18 million in royalties from the trial. Still, getting a verdict in its favor does represent some validation of MobileMedia’s business model, which was a striking example of technology corporations using the “patent troll” business model as a kind of proxy war. Nokia and Sony were able to use MobileMedia and the licensing talent at MPEG-LA to wage a patent attack on Apple without engaging directly in court.

The battle has been ongoing since 2010, and the trial has been going since 2012 and has since been going back and forth with appeals and new patent findings that could be used against Apple .  However, after years of back-and-forth, the ring-silencing patent was the one that MobileMedia had left. While Apple didn’t win the case against one of the first “corporate trolls,” it was able to severely pare down the scale of the attack and show that it’s willing to fight a long legal war of attrition to make its point.

The battle is likely not over, either. Most high-stakes tech patent cases are appealed to the Federal Circuit these days, and there’s no reason to think that won’t happen here. MobileMedia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on its win.

A small taste of what happened at trial can be gleaned from a Law360 report covering opening arguments on September 12.

From | The Patent Lawer

Editor | Judy