A firm named Elia Data has filed a lawsuit in every patent troll’s favorite venue, Federal Court in the Eastern District in Texas, against Apple alleging that the company’s iTunes, iCloud, the App Store, OS X Server, and Remote Desktop all infringe on a patent it holds. Or at least a patent it purchased, just for an occasion like this!
Elia Data claims to be the owner of assignment for the patent, but isn’t listed on the granted patent document, which is a hint that the company purchased the patent for the sole purpose of suing companies to make money, according to Patently Apple. The patent was granted to Sandy Craig Kronenberg in September 2006, and originally filed in July 2001.
The patent being used in the suit is number 7,113,996, which describes a system where data is shuttled securely between network nodes and forwarded to other network nodes. So basically, the process that Apple, or any company that needs to transmit data securely, uses when doing client/server communication.
There is no evidence that Elia Data actually produces any products, as a quick Google search returns only information on various patent lawsuits it has filed. Mac Observer reports that the company was founded as an LLC in Allen, Texas on January 20, 2012, and in April filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, and followed up in June of that year with one against IBM for infringing on the same patent.
No comment as yet from Apple regarding the lawsuit.
Trolling… Trolling… Trolling… Get those lawyers trolling!
