Word has just been received that Apple’s iPhone has been found to infringe on three patents held by MobileMedia, according to Bloomberg. It’s not clear which patents are in question, but three months ago, Mobile Media, a company owned by Sony, Nokia and a company that licenses MPEG patents, took Apple to court over patents dealing with screen rotation and call rejection.
MobileMedia is structured to “defend” the patents of Sony and Nokia without exposing the companies to counterclaims within the same suit — like in the Apple vs Samsung case earlier this year. The screen rotation in question seems to be Sony’s, filed in 1999, includes language like “by pressing the rotate button a maximum of three times for one image, the user can rotate the image clockwise”.
Unconfirmed reports are saying that the affected patents involve incoming calls, as well as transmitting camera data from a phone to another location. We’ll update with more details as we have them. [Bloomberg]