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Apple prepares for court battle against California inventor over ‘smartphone patent’ for iPhone

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Following a lawsuit filed three and a half years ago by NetAirus Technologies LLC, Apple is preparing for a legal battle in Los Angeles federal court over a patent regarding the iPhone and smartphone technologies, Bloomberg reports.

California man Richard L. Ditzik filed for a patent in 1997 that describes smartphone technologies and behavior, but Apple believes his claim should be invalidated based alone on capabilities of its Newton message pad three years prior.

“The technology at issue was so well known at the time NetAirus filed its patent, that independent patent watchdogs have made NetAirus’s patent a poster child in the movement to limit the proliferation of facially invalid patents,” Apple said in its July 2011 request to throw out the case.
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