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Apple Beefs Up Legal Team for Patent War

Apple Beefs Up Legal Team for Patent War

Apple is recruiting top patent lawyers who have fought for, and against, some of the world’s largest tech companies, including Microsoft, Intel and Broadcom, as the iPhone maker prepares for its intellectual property war against deep-pocketed rivals Nokia, Motorola and HTC.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has hired William Lee, who argued Broadcom’s $891 million case against Qualcomm, Robert Krupka, who helped Apple settle a $100 million dispute with Creative Technology, as well as Matt Powers, who defended Merck’s patent for Singulair, an asthma drug that generates $4.7 billion in sales each year.

“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel and senior vice president. Sewell, who came from Intel, will continue to lead Apple’s legal team.

Apple, which has been the most-sued tech company since 2008, a year after its hugely-popular iPhone was released, is squaring off with Nokia, the world’s largest handset maker, before the International Trade Commission, or ITC, later this week.

Nokia fired the first shot by suing Apple in October last year, alleged that Apple violated its patents related to smartphones, prompting Apple filed its own patent-infringement claim against Nokia on intellectual property infringement. Apple’s case was dismissed earlier this month.

At stake is royalties, and more importantly, power, in the highly-lucrative smartphone market. Apple is in the midst of a two-front war — trying to fend off attacks to its high-profile iPhone, while slowing out rivals, particularly smartphones that run on Google’s Android operating system.

In March, Apple filed a complaint with the ITC against Taiwan-based HTC, the world’s largest maker of Android devices. That hearing is scheduled to start in February. Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola, meanwhile, claimed that Apple violated its intellectual property. In response, Apple countersued, alleging the Droid and Motorola’s other devices were using Apple’s patents without permission.

[Thanks: http://www.mobiledia.com]

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