Hi, and welcome back to Legal Geek. This week, we cover a newly-filed patent lawsuit against Apple regarding aspects of automatic spellchecking.
It seems like almost as long as we've had computer word processing software, we've had spellchecking capability. As such, you may be surprised to learn that one of the most typical features of spellchecking is still potentially covered by two U.S. Patents, specifically the functionality of identifying spelling errors and potential corrections automatically for a user, which is done on Apple devices with the so-called Red Squiggly line underneath such errors. Apple was sued by a company called Sentius International on these two patents this week.
The history of this case is actually pretty typical for patent disputes. Apple previously partnered with Sentius to help develop a precursor to the modern version of the Red Squiggly line spellchecking functionality. Thus, Apple and Sentius likely had a prior business agreement that sent some royalties or other money to Sentius for this assistance.
However, at some point Apple had further developed their software and functionality to an extent where it was believed Sentius no longer had to be paid for their contribution to the original version of the functionality. When Apple stopped paying Sentius in about 2015, that was the first step that led to the lawsuit eventually filed against Apple. Sentius has likely spent much of the past 4 years negotiating with Apple to try and re-negotiate terms of a license of their patented technology, but Apple refused to enter such a new agreement.
That brings us to this week, where Sentius filed this lawsuit alleging that Apple's Red Squiggly line spellcheck infringes two of its patents. Looking over the claims in these patents, the claims in one of the patents are worded broadly to cover linking of a remote database with several computers and reviewing terms in a document to associate data stored in the remote database with the term and then provide that information to the computer. The other patent has been reissued with more specific claims covering systems for breaking down a text document into discrete pieces and using an external reference material to evaluate those discrete pieces. Both patents are expired or expiring soon, so the primary point of Sentius is to secure damages for the past infringements.
Such patent cases can lead to big damage awards when dealing with very commercially-successful defendants like Apple, so the leverage Sentius has here is to negotiate a favorable deal to gain some royalties or cash flow from Apple to perhaps settle this lawsuit. If the lawsuit proceeds, I expect these patents to be challenged for invalidity, as broader functionality software patents are most ripe under current rules for validity attacks. It's hard to determine at this early stage who has the upper hand, but we will continue to monitor the case in the event that spellcheck, of all things, becomes a very expensive infringement for Apple in this case.
The Bottom Line is: although patents only last for 20 years in most countries, sometimes companies like Apple can be surprised by how technology that seems like it's been around forever like automatic spellcheck can be covered by still-pending, older patents near the end of term. As many of us have been burned by mistakes made by the allegedly smart spellcheck and autocorrect options on our smart devices, seeing Apple be pursued for patent infringement on such technology is perhaps an ironic, enjoyable twist of fate in the tech legal landscape. In any event, don't expect the infamous red squiggly to go away though, as even if covered by these patents, they are expired or expiring soon.
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