Apple will possibly have another courtroom battle on their hands—particularly concerning digital rights management (DRM). Intellectual property and digital rights management firm Intertrust Technologies is targeting the entire Apple product line: iOS devices, Macs, Apple TVs, iTunes, iCloud, and even the App Store. Intertrust announced on Wednesday that it had filed suit against Apple in the Northern District of California for allegedly violating 15 of Intertrust’s patents on security and “distributed trusted computing,” or, in other words, its DRM technology.
“Apple makes many great products that use Intertrust’s inventions,” Intertrust CEO Talal Shamoon said in a statement. “Our patents are foundational to modern Internet security and trusted computing and result from years of internal research and development. We are proud of our record of peaceful and constructive licensing with industry leaders. We find it regrettable that we are forced to seek Court assistance to resolve this matter.”
What’s interesting here is that Sony and Phillips, two of Apple’s rivals in the tech market, each hold a stake in Intertrust. Intertrust has also signed patent or software licensing deals with Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Adobe, Samsung, Vodafone, HTC, and others. Intertrust is also no stranger to the courtroom—they won a USD$440 million settlement from another one of Apple’s Rivals, Microsoft, in 2004, also concerning the use of Intertrust’s DRM technology.
Source: ArsTechnica