Another day, another lawsuit. A company named Unwired Planet is seeking $8 billion from Apple over standard-essential patents, according to FOSS Patents.
This isn’t the first legal brouhaha involving Apple and Unwired Planet. In April 2017, Unwired Planet announced that it had settled its patent infringement suit with Apple, ending more than four years of litigation that Apple said was frivolous and Unwired said was worth an estimated $33 million.
In July 2016, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down an opinion vacating in part a 2015 summary judgment that found Apple not in infringement of certain cellular and voice recognition patents by Unwired Planet. The company sued Apple in 2012, claiming a variety of Apple products infringed 10 of its patents for cellular data transmission, voice recognition systems, device provisioning and other related technologies. Apple’s iPhone, iPad, App Store, iTunes, iCloud, iOS and a selection of first-party apps were targeted in the suit.
Unwired Planet, formerly known as Openwave, started in 1996 as Libris, Inc. and focused on developing mobile client software for “pull” services while the general mobile market was rapidly growing “push” services based on SMS. In 1996, it changed and launched its proprietary end-to-end mobile network solution for Internet access and web browsing, known as up.link.
