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In March, Apple was ordered by an east Texas district court to pay Personalized Media Communications (PMC) just over $ 300 million after a multi-year trial over alleged DRM violations. Today, Apple won a ruling overturning the March verdict, with a judge essentially finding Personalized Media guilty of patent trolling.
Reported by Bloomberg, the patent underlying the $ 308 million March judgment has now been ruled “unenforceable” after Apple appealed the earlier ruling.
Personalized Media Communications LLC’s patent for digital rights management is unenforceable because the company intentionally delayed its application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office so it could get more money later, the judge said. United States District Rodney Gilstrap in Texas.
PMC’s patent application dates back to the 1980s, but none were granted until 2010 and beyond. This strategy has proven to constitute “unreasonable delay and an abuse of the legal patent system,” Gilstrap wrote. Another name for the strategy is “submarine patents”.
Gilstrap relied on a June ruling from the country’s highest patent court that made it easier to challenge so-called submarine patents, where applicants would delay the issuance of a patent until an industry passed the technology and infringement lawsuits would be more profitable.
The court even saw internal PMC documents naming Apple as one of the “natural candidates” to target in 1991.
The company pursued a strategy to ensure that this patent and others would not be granted until “infringement becomes widespread in an industry,” according to internal documents cited by the judge. Apple, according to a 1991 document, would be one of the “natural candidates” for such a program, along with Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
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