{"id":341608,"date":"2017-05-23T00:35:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T16:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/05\/22\/supreme-court-apple-east-texas\/"},"modified":"2017-05-23T00:35:30","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T16:35:30","slug":"supreme-court-ruling-should-spell-the-end-of-apples-patent-troll-battles-in-east-texas-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/supreme-court-ruling-should-spell-the-end-of-apples-patent-troll-battles-in-east-texas-updated\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Ruling Should Spell the End of Apple&#8217;s Patent Troll Battles in East Texas [Updated]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[unable to retrieve full-text content]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court of the United States today <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/16pdf\/16-341_8n59.pdf\">decided<\/a> that U.S. companies may only face patent infringement lawsuits in the jurisdiction in which they are incorporated, which in Apple&#8217;s case would be California.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.macrumors.com\/article-new\/2017\/05\/apple-tyler-texas-logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"691\" height=\"356\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-566722\" \/><br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe decision is significant for Apple, as the iPhone maker faces several patent infringement lawsuits in a single district court in Eastern Texas that is considered friendly to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Patent_holding_company\">patent holding entities<\/a>, or so-called &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Patent_troll\">patent trolls<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That very court in Tyler, Texas has, for example, ordered Apple to pay <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2015\/02\/25\/apple-vs-smartflash-lawsuit\/\">&#36;532.9 million to patent licensing firm Smartflash LLC<\/a> in 2015, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2016\/09\/16\/apple-ordered-to-pay-22-million-acacia\/\">&#36;22.1 million to Acacia Research<\/a> last September for infringing upon patents it acquired from Nokia.<\/p>\n<p>By limiting where patent infringement lawsuits can be filed, the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision means that Apple will likely be able to battle patent infringement lawsuits in Northern California, and finally put East Texas behind it.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court&#8217;s decision today relates to a Delaware-based lawsuit between Heartland Food Products Group and The Kraft Heinz Company, but it extends to all domestic companies across the United States.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update<\/b>: The appears to be considerable confusion throughout media coverage of this ruling. The ruling narrowly limited a company&#8217;s &#8220;residence&#8221; to the place of incorporation, but patent lawsuits may still be filed anywhere &#8220;the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.&#8221; As a result, it appears patent lawsuits can still be filed against Apple in many jurisdictions, including the Eastern District of Texas.<\/p>\n<div class=\"linkback\">Tags: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/roundup\/patent-trials\/\">patent trials<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/roundup\/supreme-court\/\">Supreme Court<\/a> <\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/forums.macrumors.com\/threads\/supreme-court-apple-east-texas.2046737\/\">Discuss this article<\/a> in our forums<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.macrumors.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?a=TY5PHbA_00U:2059kSfibIU:6W8y8wAjSf4\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?d=6W8y8wAjSf4\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.macrumors.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?a=TY5PHbA_00U:2059kSfibIU:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/MacRumors-All\/~4\/TY5PHbA_00U\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\"\/> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[68,69,59,26],"class_list":["post-341608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-macrumors","tag-media","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}