Court Dismisses Lawsuit Claiming Apple Infringed Patent Held by Blix
A court has dismissed a lawsuit claiming that the Sign In With Apple feature launched as part of iOS 13 infringed a patent held by BlueMail developer Blix.
The court also rejected a second claim that the App Store suppresses competition with Apple’s own iPhone apps…
Bloomberg Law reports.
Stark also dismissed patent infringement claims related to a single claim in Blix’s patent for BlueMail that was central to the parties’ briefings. A two-step process set out in 2012 by the US Supreme Court in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. should be used to determine whether an idea is patent-eligible, Stark said.
The challenged claim relies on the abstract idea of using a proxy to facilitate anonymous communications, Stark said. The claim doesn’t fall under an exception to patent eligibility that allows for abstract ideas to be patented if they describe a unique and inventive concept, he wrote.
Stark declined to decide the eligibility of other claims in the BlueMail patent and directed the parties to confer before informing the court whether additional motions regarding other claims will be filed.
