Kindle Fire due to sell millions, hit with patent suit

The run-up to the release of Amazon’s Kindle Fire was going so well, with 50,000 pre-orders a day and a total of 2.5 mn pre-orders expected before it is made available on November 15. But the shine has come off it somewhat after patent troll Smartphone Technologies LLC slapped Amazon with a lawsuit claiming patent infringement.

Smartphone Technologies LLC has already gone after Apple, Research in Motion and HTC for alleged patent infringement. In this case, it claims that Amazon have infringed five patents related to hand-held computing devices.

Bloomberg says that some of the patents were originally granted to Palm Inc, which was bought by HP last year and which Amazon has, reportedly,been contemplating buying.

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The patents seem to cover activities that are crucial to normal smartphone use, such as tapping an icon:

According to the method, a graphical feature having a surface area is displayed on a touch-sensitive screen. ..To control software executing on the processor, a user-supplied writing on the surface area is received and the software is controlled responsive to the writing.

Or organising your diary by using a:

“System And Method For Displaying And Manipulating Multiple Calendars On A Personal Digital Assistant.”

Smartphone Technologies LLC of Frisco, Texas is one of a number of litigious subsidiaries owned by patent troll Acacia Research Corp. In early 2010, Business Week said:

For a company that makes no products, Acacia Research (ACTG) spends a lot of time fighting over patents in court. Acacia has filed at least 337 patent-related lawsuits in its 18 years. To make money-sales are expected to rise to $68.8 million this year, from $34.8 million in 2006-Acacia acquires patents from inventors and then seeks fees from companies that it says infringe on those patents.

[…] Acacia says it reaches out-of-court settlements in roughly 95% of the lawsuits it files, such as that on Jan. 25, when Microsoft (MSFT) agreed to license an Acacia subsidiary’s technology used to provide geographical information for Internet maps. In cases that go to trial, Acacia wins about half the time, says Acacia CEO Paul Ryan.

IPWatchdog reported in August last year that Acacia Research had become a part of the Acacia Intellectual Property Fund, raising a total of $27 mn to bankroll its litigation. The Fund is “authorised to raise up to $250 million, which should strike fear in the hearts of all of the likely targets of patent infringement lawsuits, namely those that make high tech products.”

But, according to PaidContent, Acacia shouldn’t expect an easy ride with its latest round of litigation:

A review of the lawsuits filed by Acacia in March and October of last year shows that Apple and the other defendants have so far refused to settle and are instead digging in for a drawn-out court battle.

We can only hope that Amazon, too, gird their loins for battle, and that the courts give Acacia the slapdown they deserve. Of course, given the parlous state of the US patents system, the chances of that happening are slim.