Apple is again accused of violating patents. Filed by the company EZ4Media, marketing solutions to distribute multimedia content on a TV, the complaint concerns this time the Apple TV. According to the magazine online Apple Insider, the complainant had filed its complaint after lengthy negotiations out of court with the accused in vain.
EZ4Media accuses Apple of violating four of its patents filed between November 2006 and January 2007 by integrating some of its own technologies to the Apple TV, the Airport Express and its computers, following the hiring of three its former employees in 2005. Three of the patents describe technology to distribute multimedia content from a server (as a Mac) to a playback device (such as an Apple TV).
But Apple TV has been marketed in September 2006, before the publication of patents. EZ4Media will have to convince the American justice that he himself developed such technology and that the three employees hired by Apple used the intellectual property of their former employer. The complainant also attack companies specialized in the field of audio-visual one after another, including Logitech, Netgear, Pioneer, Denon or Samsung. The complaint against the latter was canceled following an amicable agreement which has not been revealed.
