Durham Holdings' motion patent may threaten iPhone
Thursday, 25 March 2010, 15:22 IST   |    3 Comments
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Durham Holdings' motion patent may threaten iPhone
Bangalore: The rights granted to Durham Holdings to a "method and apparatus for controlling a computer system" that would use motion sensors to steer the interface on a handheld, such as a PDA or smartphone, could pose trouble for high end phones. In a blog written for Electronista mentioned that Apple has motion patents of its own but didn't file them until October 2007, more than a year before the July 2006 filing for the Durham Holdings patent. Experts also say that not many of the people are aware of Durham Holdings, as it has no real public presence, including either online or in government records. An original patent holder, Ygomi, also said it knows nothing about the company that obtained rights to the patent. Such deliberately low-key firms can sometimes be "patent trolls", or particular varieties of intellectual property holding companies that exist solely to find overly broad patents and then sue others, making a living off of royalties without actually producing goods based on those patents. Among the techniques would be picking icons by tilting left or right, or moving the device up and down to scroll.

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