On Thursday, Apple filed a counterclaim with the District Court for the Northern District of California, requesting a ruling that Traxcell’s new claim is invalid. The latter is a non-practicing entity headquartered in Texas. In January this year, the company initiated a lawsuit alleging that Apple’s navigation system infringed its two patents, 9,918,196 and 9,549,388.
These patents cover positioning and directional assistance for devices on mobile networks, as well as hardware that facilitates this capability. Subsequently, the company added a third technical patent-No. 10,820,147, with the title of Mobile wireless devices that provide offline and online geographic navigation information.
On Wednesday, Traxcell sent Apple to Apple a draft complaint scheduled to be filed in the West District of Texas. Today, Apple filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, arguing that it did not infringe Patent No. 10,820,147.
Apple said: The court should not allow the threat of future litigation and the uncertainty surrounding Traxcell’s allegations to cause harm and unpredictability to Apple’s business.
In the counterclaim, Apple cited several reasons why Apple Maps did not infringe Patent No. 10,820,147, mainly due to the fact that it does not own or operate the cellular network of its devices to access map tools. Apple believes that this provision is specified in multiple claims of the No. 147 patent.
Interestingly, Traxcell used the same model in another case involving Google. The NPE filed a lawsuit against the search giant using Patent Nos. 196 and 388 in Texas, and later provided a draft of disputes and complaints related to Patent No. 147. Like Apple’s lawsuit, Traxcell sent a communication to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
