9 Apple vs. Multimedia Ideas
Between 2010 and 2016, Apple had been silently waging legal warfare against a small, patent-only firm named Multimedia Ideas. The firm, a joint holding of Sony and NOKIA, was originally seeking $18 million from Apple for its alleged “willful infringement” on the firm’s exclusive ringtone patents.
Though Multimedia Ideas hasn’t a single product to its name, the firm holds over a dozen technical patents including one, in particular, which was determined by the court to infringe on iPhone’s ability to silence an incoming call without the caller’s knowledge.
As a result, though the patent-only firm sought a much more substantial sum of $18 million, the Delaware judge presiding over the case ultimately made Apple Pay a paltry $3 million.