AmNav Goes After Apple over GPS Patent

Case Filed: May 12, 2014

Court: Florida Middle District Court

Judge: James S. Moody, Jr.

Case Summary:

Hillsborough County, Florida-based American Navigation Systems, Inc. (AmNav) brings this case against Apple Inc. for infringing a global positioning system (GPS) patent that enables the most popular applications on iPhone, iPad and other devices – Google Maps and Apple Maps.

Google Maps and Apple Maps use global positioning to provide a visual report of the user’s location on a map to within three to five feet of the user’s actual location.

Patent-in-suit:

The patent at issue is US5902347 entitled ‘Hand-held GPS-mapping device,’ originally issued to Doug Backman, DeFalco, Roe and Michalson on May 11, 1999 and expiring[i] by Mar 27, 2017. AmNav is the current assignee[ii] of the patent (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database), which relates to providing real-time positioning on a map image.

Apple’s Infringement:

The complaint alleged that Apple included maps application – either Google Maps or Apple Maps – on all its smartphones (iPhones, iPads, etc.) Apple has sold many millions of iPhones, iPads, iPad Minis and other devices that used Google Maps or Apple Maps, earning billions of dollars in profit as a result of the immense popularity of maps applications.

AmNav’s Claim:

Apple infringed the ‘347 patent by making, selling and using devices that embody the inventions that the patent covers, including: iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S, 5, 5C and 5S, iPad 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Generation and iPad Mini 1^st and 2^nd Generation and  iPad Air.

AmNav demands trial by jury and requests the court to award AmNav (a) reasonable royalty (b) interest and costs and (c) other appropriate relief.

Other Cases by AmNav:

Since 2014, AmNav has filed a case against Samsung, asserting the same patent citing a few of the Samsung Galaxy series devices including smartphones, phablets, tablets and chromebooks.

See 8:14-cv-01130 for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our Litigation Alerts.

Max-Insight enables you to access all of our patent tools such as Patent Term Estimator, Patent Family Tree, Has This Patent Been Litigated, etc. in one location. Max-Insight is available in 4 different subscriptions: Free, Bronze, Silver and Gold with varying usage levels. To learn more about Max-Insight, click here.

---

[i] Expected expiration date. Patent Term Estimator is a free web-based tool that automatically calculates patent terms and expiration dates for U.S. utility patents.

[ii] MaxVal offers Patent Assignment Alert service where subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.