Apple Sued for Alleged iPad 4 Patent Infringement

A so-called “patent troll” has filed a lawsuit against Apple for allegedly infringing on one of their patents.

The company, which goes by the name of Prowire, LLC, apparently acquired a Taiwanese patent for a certain kind of inductor technology for the sole purpose of suing tech giants like Apple, according to Patently Apple. As that site points out, Apple owns its own intellectual property concerning inductors used in their various devices — but that apparently hasn’t stopped Prowire from claiming that Apple willfully infringed on their patent.

The patent in question, 6,137,390, is titled “inductors with minimized EMI effect and the method of manufacturing the same” and was first published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on October 24, 2000. It was originally credited to two Taiwanese inventors, and granted to the Industrial Technology Research Institute. For their case, Prowire claims that Apple’s iPad 4 infringed on at least claim 1 of the patent, and are asking for damages sustained.

“The inductors used in Defendant’s consumer electronics products including, for example and without limitation, its line of iPad 4 tablet computers, meet each and every element of at least claim 1 of the patent-in-suit,” Prowire’s filing reads.

In addition, Prowire’s lawsuit alleges that Apple infringed on claim 11 of the patent — which describes a method for making inductors by winding a conducting oil around a magnetic core. Specifically, Prowire said that Apple’s iPad 4 lineup is being manufactured “using a method that practices each and every step of claim 11 of the patent-in-suit.”

Prowire’s lawsuit was filed on March 2, 2017 in a Delaware District Court. As of the writing of this article, no judge has been assigned to the case.