Apple sued over 'predictive snooping' patents

Chip supplier OPTi is suing Apple over 'predictive snooping,' which the company claims infringes upon three of its patents. The suit, which was filed January 16th in a federal court located in Marshall, Texas, follows a similar suit filed against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) over the same patents and in the same court, according to Bloomberg. The patents cited in the suits describe methods of efficiently transferring information between a computer's CPU (central processing unit), memory, and other devices, according to another court ruling in another suit OPTi filed which was later settled. The Cupertino-based company is already defending itself against another newly-filed lawsuit from Cisco over the 'iPhone' trademark, following CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech at Macworld earlier this month.

Jobs unveiled the iPod, cellular handset, and internet communication device under the name 'iPhone' despite his company failing to settle with Cisco -- the acclaimed owner of the trademark -- prior to the keynote speech. Cisco in turn filed suit the same day, and said it was willing to share the name with Apple but that finalized documents were never received. One columnist claims to have revealed evidence suggesting that Cisco does not in fact own the iPhone name, but the company flatly denied these claims shortly after the report was published. Cisco said it did what was necessary for the iPhone trademark, saying that it has been very direct about its Linksys-branded 'iPhone' which shipped during the spring of 2006.

Filed under: Apple