Apple is messing with the Force; Audio pioneers of Star Wars sue Apple over speaker tech
THX Ltd., the audio technology company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, has filed a lawsuit saying that Apple's iPhones, iMacs, and iPads all infringe a patent it owns that covers "narrow-profile speakers."
The three-page lawsuit [PDF], filed in San Jose federal court, is slim on details. It simply says that most Apple products "incorporate narrow-profile speaker units that output sound through a duct or aperture having a narrow dimension." The patent at issue was granted in 2008.
Like most tech companies, Apple gets sued for patent infringement quite regularly. Most of those suits come from "patent trolls" that just sue over patents, while others are a result of the corporate smartphone patent wars that Apple had a hand in starting a few years ago.
The THX lawsuit stands out, having been brought by an operating company with a well-known brand name which has never filed a patent lawsuit before. THX is asking for a "reasonable royalty," as well as lost profits, which are typical demands in a patent case.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/audio-pioneers-of-star-wars-sue-apple-over-speaker-tech/
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