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Patent Licensing Company WiLan Wins $145.1 Million From Apple in Patent Dispute

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A Southern California jury has awarded Canadian patent holding company WiLan $145.1 million in an ongoing patent dispute with Apple, WiLan announced today.

Apple's iPhones were found to infringe on two patents (No. 8,457,145 and No. 8,537,757) related to wireless communications technology.

wilan logo
WiLan, a company owned by Quarterhill, describes itself as "one of the most successful patent licensing companies in the world."

Apple's legal dispute with WiLan has been going on since 2010, when WiLan claimed Apple had violated one of its Bluetooth related patents. In a case separate from today's, WiLan had demanded $248 million in damages from Apple, a battle that it lost in 2013 when a a jury ruled in Apple's favor.

Top Rated Comments

102 months ago


WiLan, a company owned by Quarterhill, describes itself as "one of the most successful patent licensing companies in the world”
Well, don’t they just sound like an upstanding, productive corporate citizen... /s
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
102 months ago
I don't have the same problem others have with patent holding companies since patents are property to be bought and sold. One wonders how many patents they purchase to win the occasional large public jury award. I suspect the rate of return is not crazy big.
Patent holding companies are part of the problem because they are non practicing entities.
AMD makes an x86 chip. intel says “we own the x86 instruction set.”
AMD says “you make chips using x86-64, and we hold the patent.”
An agreement is reached and innovation continues.

Patent holding companies are just lawsuit engines stifling innovation. They would be LESS trouble if bs patents weren’t being awarded, like Amazon’s patent on photographing a subject against a white background (yes, it’s real) in spite of the fact that there is prior art for more than 100 years before Amazon was formed.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Costino1 Avatar
102 months ago
$2 increase per iPhone. Pass it onto the user.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mtneer Avatar
102 months ago
Its interesting that this case came through a court in California - Apple land (albeit Southern California) and not the patent troll district in East Texas. I would have expected the judges to be more receptive to donors and companies who they'd need for reelection in California...
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iLilana Avatar
102 months ago
keeping the lawyers employed
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
102 months ago
More fuel for them to keep lawsuits going.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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