Zeroclick, LLC

Summary: The U.S. 'high court' for patents (Federal Circuit) enables a lawsuit against Apple to go on and Erich Spangenberg's name is mentioned

Spangenberg is no ordinary patent troll; he was allegedly trying to pocket RPX, he has been stockpiling software patents (since last year at least) and he sends me nasty death wishes to my E-mail.

Patent trolls aren't ordinary (nor pleasant) people; they make a living out of constantly threatening people. And last night, in relation to this news about Apple, guess whose name got brought up?

Our report noted that "A Patent troll by the name of Zeroclick, LLC, legally acquired two very interesting patents from inventor Dr. Nes Irvine, a medical doctor who, according to the court filing, "possessed the prescient vision" to develop touch-only user interface technologies that would enable significant benefits to his medical work and any field where users interacted with graphical user interfaces. Dr. Irvine claims to have "faxed" a letter to Apple's then Director of Software Development, Avie Tevanian back in 2002. Apple never formally replied.

Although the case references several Apple patents, the case interestingly makes a big deal out of the "Slide-to-Unlock" patent infringing their Zeroclick patents. When reviewing the case's "Certification of Interested Entities or Persons" filing with the court it was revealed that two other patent trolls were involved in the case: Granicus IP, LLC and Erich Spangenberg.

Whether either of these listed entities has any connection to Samsung in any capacity is unknown. It was also interesting to learn in Zeroclick's filing that Dr. Irvine also sent a letter directly to Judge Koh regarding Apple's alleged infringement of his touch related patents.

We shall keep an eye on this. Zeroclick isn't a patent troll we've come across before; it will be interesting to know who's behind it. Its only online presence seems to be this lawsuit. Quoting Paul Stewart: "Zeroclick sued Apple for patent infringement of claims directed to a method of operating a graphical user interface. In response, Apple asserted invalidity of those claims. The district court held that the challenged claims were invalid for indefiniteness, reasoning that the claim terms “program” and “user interface code” are means-plus-function limitations that fail to disclose sufficient structure. Zeroclick appealed." ⬆