Apple’s latest addition to iOS 6, Passbook, may lead the company into another lawsuit as a tech company claims four of its patents have been infringed upon in the product. This San Diego gaming and software company, Ameranth, is apparently suing Apple over these patent infringements. While it certainly isn’t a surprise, it is drop-dead humorous when you realize Apple cannot escape an upgrade without any acquisitions.
Passbook, Apple’s entry into a mobile-wallet solution, currently allows users to store tickets to sporting events, movies, flights and much more. The application even has capabilities to hold gift cards to outlets such as Starbucks and Target. If NFC technology is ever equipped to the iPhone, then Passbook may be capable of making payments with credit cards and bank accounts.
Although two major competing companies, Google & Microsoft, have recently presented their mobile-wallet solutions; they currently lack grounds of suing Apple directly, over patent infringement. Instead, the job was done by Ameranth, which has received large strategic investments from Motorola and Microsoft.
The patents being in question include 6,384,850, 6,871,325, 6,982,733, and 8,146,077. All of the patents are fairly generic being that they describe data synchronization and data display.
More than anything, this patent infringement case can be considered humorous. Apple’s Passbook application provides a digital-way of holding passes while Ameranth offers actual products. For now this is all the information available.
Source: Venturebeat
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