This Wednesday a new complaint forpatent infringementwas filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. The latter was brought by a descendant of the historic telecommunications company Bell. It is Bell Labs, which has recently converted to holding patents, which is leading the legal action.
The BNR (Bell Nothern Research) complaint covers a total of ten patents against Apple's iPhone, iPad and wireless products. One of these patents explains how the iPhone is able to turn its screen on or off when the latter is close to a user's face, generally during a phone call.
BNR, a new “patent troll”?
Former employees of Bell Labs assure that the BNR company decided to “revitalize” itself in 2017. In short, it changed its vision of things and became a firm holding a large number of intellectual property patents, enough to make legal attacks on IT giants. A“patent troll”as there are many in the United States. Holder of numerous patents, these companies are increasing their legal actions against the digital giants, who are often obligedto pay millions of dollars in fines.
BNR is a company descended from the very famous telephone company Bell. The latter was dissolved in 1982 and has existed since then under several names and independent companies. Bell Labs was thus a research division of the Bell Telephone Company of the United States. Bell Northern Research (BNR) was the research arm of Northern Telecom in Canada.
Since its change of direction in 2017, the idea of carrying out a project against Apple has gained ground at BNR. The Canadian firm had in fact already informed Apple of its intention to file a complaint in 2018 during a correspondence with Apple CEO Tim Cook. This letter then designated several Apple devices: the iPhone X, the iPad Pro, the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro and the iMac Pro.
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By : Keleops AG
