New Immersion lawsuit adds Apple's iPhone 6s, MacBook to patent infringement row

Immersion Corporation – Prolonged Legal Battle Against Apple

A leader in haptic feedback technology, Immersion Corporation, has prolonged its legal battle against Apple on Thursday with new patent infringement suit directing technology built into iPhone 6s together with numerous MacBook models. The lawsuit that was filed with the United States District Court for the District of Delaware states that Apple had significantly infringed on four owned patents linking to haptic technology defined as physical feedback to user action or UI dealings. Apple had first debuted an accurate haptic engine in Apple Watch and since then had incorporated same technology all through its device line-up. The latest declaration of Immersion comes on the heels of an U.S.

International Trade Commission complaint and the lawsuit that is filed in the same Delaware court in February and all these three case have named AT&T as a co-defendant. In present day’s complaint, Immersion mentions owned U.S. Patent Nos. 8,749,507, 7,808,488, 8,581,710 and 7.336,260, each of which tend to cover a feature of the in-house developed haptic technologies of the company. Three claims seems to go after 3D Touch tech of Apple that combines a force-sensitive display as well as a linear vibratory motor that has been dubbed as the Taptic Engine offering contextual vibratory feedback of z-axis user gestures.

Peek and Pop

Immersion’s 507 and 488 patents, specially covering timing intervals and variable input pressure in haptic systems are being declared against `Peek and Pop’ generation on iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. The most recent flagship smartphone introduced in Apple, `Peep and Pop’, is a function of 3D Touch pressure-sensitive gesture input which tends to permit users to preview cross-linked content without the need of opening a standalone app. For instance, user can start a light press in order to `peek’ a hyperlink included within an email, while a deeper press tends to `pop’ the content into Safari.

The Quick Actions feature of Apple that portrays a list of app shortcuts on the iOS home screen on a deep press event is said to be in infringement of Immersion’s 710 patent for Systems and Methods for Haptic Confirmation of Commands. `Quick Actions tend to enable a main function of 3D Touch. Lastly, Immersion is leveraging its `260 patent for a Method and Apparatus for Providing Tactile Sensations’ against the Force Touch track-pad technology of Apple as included in the 12-inch MacBook, 13-inch MacBook Pro and 15-inch MacBook Pro.

Jury Trial to Resolve the Lawsuit

Force Touch has also been included in the Magic Track-pad 2 that is equally open to examination in the case of Immersion who is in search of compensatory as well as supplemental damages which could be tripled if Apple is found to have deliberately infringed the declared intellectual property. Immersion states that as to why AT&T has been included in the lawsuit, is because the carrier sells Apple products and is thereby encouraging and facilitating infringing use by others.

By that logic, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, together with the other carriers should be included also in the lawsuit. Immersion has stated that it would like a jury trial in an attempt of resolving the lawsuit against Apple and AT&T and would like to receive compensatory damages for the same. In its earnings released recently, the company has also asked that progress be made with regards to United States International Trade Commission Complaint over the same problem which seeks a U.S. sales addition on the aforementioned products.