Find My iPhone helps tens or even hundreds of thousands of people annually to find their lost or stolen iDevices, but the service is in the center a new lawsuit filed against the company Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),. A Texas company has sued Apple, Google, Verizon and other big companies, claiming that their services are similar Find My iPhone, creates a monopoly on the market and prevents the launch of similar ones. The company invokes a patent that seems to describe part of the functionality of the Find My iPhone service, and Apple could have a big problem because of it.
In response to a telephone caller's inquiry, a computer-based locating system determines the whereabouts of a person (or object) of interest and generates a message for the caller which describes that location. Then, if prompted by the caller, the locating system automatically places the call to the telephone extension nearest that location. An important technical advantage of the invention is that no telephone operator or PBX switchboard attendant is needed to place a call directly to an individual, which decreases the connection time and overall expense of the system.
Remote Locator Services LLC, the plaintiff in the lawsuits, is presented as a phantom company to which this patent was assigned, but it is not known who finances it and who assigned it, the company not running business at the moment. Although no one knows who is behind this campaign against the big IT companies, the problem could be an important one if the courts decide that the patent is infringed.
