Apple Sued Over Touchscreen Patent Violation

Apple has been once again sued for patent infringement, and this time by a Taiwan-based company Elan Microelectronics over the claims that Apple used two of its touchscreen technology patents. 

The lawsuit, which was filed with the US District Court in San Francisco, alleged that Apple’s iPhone, MacBook, as well as iPod Touch, all violated the touchscreen patent held by Elan Microelectronics, and urged the court to instruct Apple to pay a reasonable royalty and an amount three times of the actual damages to the company. 

Dennis Liu, a spokesperson for Elan, said in a statement, “We could not find a common viewpoint with Apple, so we decided we had to take action”. 

He further notified that the company had been in discussions with the Mac maker for last couple of years over the matter, but it had been unable to come up with a plausible solution.   

The company was awarded patent for its Multi-Finger Touchscreen technology back in 1998, and now appears to target Apple over the use of this technology. 

The complaint notified that Apple’s MacBooks, iBooks, PowerBooks, as well as iPhone and iPod Touch, having multitouch trackpad, all infringed its patent, no. 5,825,352.

Along with this, the company also claimed that the iPod Touch and iPhone devices also infringed its patent, no. 7,024,353, for “Capacitive touchpad integrated with key and handwriting functions” 

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