IP Company Goes After Power Management in Smartphones

By Douglas Perry
published

St. Clair Intellectual Properties, a company with a history of suing mobile phone vendors over patents, has expanded a patent infringement lawsuit that has targeted Apple, RIM and HTC to LG, Motorola Mobility and Samsung.

St. Clair alleges that the Android smartphones and tablets made by LG, Motorola Mobility and Samsung violate six of its patents:

5,630,163: Computer having a single bus supporting multiple bus architectures operating with different bus parameters
5,710,929: Multi-state power management for computer systems5,758,175
: Multi-mode power switching for computer systems5,892,959
: Computer activity monitor providing idle thread and other event sensitive clock and power control6,079,025
: System and method of computer operating mode control for power consumption reduction5,822,610
: Mappable functions from single chip/multi-chip processors for computers

The filed patent infringement lawsuits are expansions of a first wave that was filed in November of 2010. St. Clair also sued Apple, RIM and in a camera related patent in 2009. The company has been rather successful with its patent suits and won $25 million in a suit against Sony Electronics and Sony Corporation of America in 2003. In 2004, the company was awarded $34.7 million in a dispute with Canon USA. There was no information on the 2010 suits against Apple, RIM and HTC.

As it is frequently the case, St. Clair has not been the original inventor of any of the patents in question. However, it has been in possession of all patents mentioned in its latest patent infringement suits since June of 2000.

Douglas Perry
22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • N.Broekhuijsen
    GTFO Patent troll
    Reply
  • mauller07
    All of those patents sound like functionality The majority of hardware and O/S's have had since the 80's.

    It is just getting ridiculous how such flimsy patents can be handed out to companies, especially those that do not produce or even research being able to hold onto patents.

    Patents were meant to help protect companies research and development from being exploited by other companies, not to allow people to make money for no work they had done.
    Reply
  • mrmaia
    Ahhhh the patents. Soon someone will patent the use of screens and buttons, and will immediately start sueing all over.
    Reply
  • g-thor
    Cue the legalese mantra - "We will vigorously defend etc., etc., harrumph, blah blah blah ... egregious violations of our IP, gollum, gollum."

    I would love to read follow-ups to these and see if any of these companies have their own IP patents that answer to St. Clair's patents. Companies like them, that exist only to buy and hold IP, have destroyed the concept of shared IP. The only way they can make money is to negotiate deals or to sue. I suspect that their asking prices in negotiation are outrageous, ensuring that they get to sue later - but that's just my opinion.

    I understand that they just want to make a living like all of us, but you can't tell me that you wouldn't make a decent living if you received one or two cents for every IP patent you hold charged on every cell phone made. iOS and Android phones saw around 6.8 million activations on Christmas day. At two cents per IP patent above, that one day would have netted $816,000.00. Charge three cents per IP patent and you make over 1 million for that day. Five cents, anyone? Yes, there is a way to make money and work together.
    Reply
  • ikefu
    Screw the Patent Office for giving out garbage vague patents and screw the patent trolls.

    In my opinion, non-usage companies should not be allowed to buy patents. Patent holding should be available to original inventors only. After that, you have to use the patent in order to buy it. None of this purchasing something you didn't invent and suing without any productive use.
    Reply
  • huron
    For the life of me, I do not understand how this is a business model...how does a company just hold onto IP? They aren't in the business of developing IP, creating anything with the IP that they do have...just suing others that user patents that they happened to have obtained.

    I know it's been said time and again, but the patent system needs some serious help.
    Reply
  • alyoshka
    This is really getting to be good business.... big money making business....
    Reply
  • in_the_loop
    Patents should only apply to the ones that actually manufacture and sell devices that are based on the patent.

    If a Patent-troll company doesn't manufacture and sell these devices, then I can't see how they would be hurt by other manufacturers that acutally does that?

    Anyway, I think that as it is today, the best and the least unfair thing would be to not having ANY patents at all!
    For example look how good the pc-market was where IBM didn't patent the pc-design and had an open architecture.
    The boom that it lead to with a huge it-industry.
    Same thing with open source.
    As it is today, only the big and rich players with patent portfolios have the chanche to make a living in the market, the small and inventive one's are screwed from the get go!

    I'm convinced that scrapping all patents would lead to a much better market as a whole, even if it in some cases would be problematic, but not in any way near how unfair it is today!
    Reply
  • willwayne
    My company was sued over a software patent...turned out that entity didn't even hold the patent in question (the company had split and the other half retained the patent rights)

    Companies like this will stop at nothing to extort money from better companies.
    Reply
  • f-14
    mauller07All of those patents sound like functionality The majority of hardware and O/S's have had since the 80's.It is just getting ridiculous how such flimsy patents can be handed out to companies, especially those that do not produce or even research being able to hold onto patents.Patents were meant to help protect companies research and development from being exploited by other companies, not to allow people to make money for no work they had done.what is the difference between OS and bus chip power management, if you can't answer that your not qualified to talk about this.
    the fact these patents are older then multi core processors speaks volumes esp since they were in 2000 and it is now 11 years after the fact.
    they are not suing intel or amd, so that must mean intel and amd did things the legally right way and licensed this tech.
    i'm getting disgusted with the way certain procommunist toms writers keep attacking capitalism and a practice that was first developed by the british empire during their prime of bringing order to, and civilizing the world.
    i am surprised these toms writers are not advocating the overthrow of all the governments involved with the non proliferation treaty of nuclear weapons and demanding the rest of the world like iran gets to have nuclear weapons and energy. toms writers are after all the rest of the world should get everything else scott free.
    disgusting and deplorable acts imo. i do understand the arguement for advancement, however there are time limits placed on all patents and i see nothing but a bunch of screaming petulant children screaming about how they are so spoiled they can not wait the necessary period of time each patent is given duration.
    we i their editor i would have given them several time outs and even grounded them from such infantile and deplorable behavior again.
    some people just can't grow up and live in a civilized world with civilized rules, i say we dump them in a anarchist or dictatorial regime and let them learn how nice they have things here in the civilized world!
    Reply