Graphic Properties Holdings Inc. has continued its crusade to sue large tech companies based on patents the company holds. The defendants involved in the latest suit include Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), HTC Corp (TPE:2498), LG Electronic Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. (LON:BC94). The companies face several counts of infringement on patents that the company holds. The latest in a line of suits by the company was filed in a District Court in Wilmington Delaware.
The infringement case originally began in a filing with the Federal Trade Commission made last November. That complaint was refiled earlier this month and named Research In Motion Limited (TSE:RIM) along with those named in the Delaware suit. The filing centered on technologies used in consumer electronics such as smart phones and tablet devices. In the week before GPH filed that suit Apple filed two against them in Northern California courts.
The patents listed include one that asserts GPH’s rights to “Large Area Wide Aspect Ratio Flat Panel Display Having High Resolution Information Content Display”. It is centered on the use of Liquid Crystal Display. The general nature of the patent means that almost all of the consumer electronic devices available on the market seem to infringe on the intellectual property. The second patent centers on a technical issue, the use of GPU floating point calculations to create images with pixels on a devices screen, and the third deals with a technology that increases the speed at which the processor works. GPH’s representative ask that if the devices are found to infringe on the patent that their sale and importation in the United States be blocked.
Graphic Properties Holdings is a company that manages the Patent portfolio and intellectual property rights amassed by the now defunct Silicon Graphics. The three patents at issue in the case were all filed in the early 90s, two of them by Silicon Graphics and the third by Cray Research Inc. This case is the most recent in a spate of legal action between tech companies in recent years. Some of the largest tech companies are suing each other while at the same time involved in legal action with smaller companies like GPH which hold large amounts of Intellectual property. The most famous example is the war between Google and Apple over vaious OS disputes and Apple’s battle with Samsung over device design.
