Bose, maker of high-end sound system and headphones, picked on Beats. The said company filed a lawsuit against the soon-to-be-Apple-owned company due to several patent issues.
Apple obtained Beats for $3 million a few months ago. The California-based computer company didn’t foresee this patent battleground. Bose believes that Beats has, in the process of the headphones development, infringed at least 36 US patents and applications.
According to Bose, the headgear designed by Beats allegedly violated five of its patents, which are claimed to be used by Beats in its Studio and Studio Wireless line of headphones. Moreover, the plaintiff claims that the noise-cancelling headphones infringed on 50 years’ worth of research, development and engineering. The Massachussetts-based company said it had lost profits and sales as a result.
The patents Bose complained about are: US 6,717,537 called “Method and Apparatus for Minimizing Latency in Digital Signal Processing Systems, US 6,073,150: “Dynamically Configurable ANR Signal Processing Topology,” US 6,073,151: “Dynamically Configurable ANR Filter Block Topology, US 8,054,992, the “High Frequency Compensating Topology,” and US 8,345,888, the “Digital High Frequency Phase Compensation.”
The lawyers of Bose explained in the filing, “To protect its investments, Bose has sought protection and owns many patents and patent applications.” The lawsuit was filed Friday in Delaware’s federal court.
Bose’s complaints against Beats could cost Apple more than $3million, more than what they spent to buy the headphones company. The fact that patent lawsuits are slide slow-paced through the courts is, by far, the only good thing for Apple.
In such situations, Apple is not exactly inexperienced for it has battled with both Samsung and Google over patent issues, too.
However, Bose also filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission. This is under the grounds of preventing Beats allegedly infringed-patents headphones from being imported to the United States from China.