A lawsuit filed filed by a company in – you guessed it – the Eastern District of Texas accuses Apple of infringing no fewer than 16 separate patents. It was filed by Seven Networks …

[Update: It appears from an AppleInsider post that Seven Networks in Finland, which filed most of the patents, then set up an LLC in Texas, transferring the patents to them, for the purpose of filing suit there.]

The Eastern District of Texas is usually chosen by patent trolls as the court has a track-record of favoring claimants in infringement cases. So much so that Apple is tomorrow closing its two retail stores there, so that it will no longer have a legal presence in the district, making such litigation more difficult. Apple is replacing the stores with a new one located outside of the Eastern District, set to open on Saturday.

The lawsuit makes direct reference to the two stores, still open at the time of filing, as part of its argument that the court has jurisdiction.

The alleged infringements cover a wide variety of ground, including both the way that iCloud operates and specific device features.

  • Method and Device for Power Saving for Downloading Files
  • Mobile Device Power Management in Data Synchronization Over a Mobile Network
  • System and Method for Providing a Network Service in a Distributed Fashion to a Mobile Device
  • Intelligent Alarm Manipulator and Resource Tracker
  • Mobile Application Traffic Optimization
  • Connection Architecture for a Mobile  Network
  • System, Method, and Computer-Readable Medium For User Equipment Decision-Making Criteria For Connectivity and Handover
  • Secure End-To-End Transport Through Intermediary Nodes
  • Mobile Device Configured for Communicating with Another Mobile Device Associated with an Associated User
  • Multiple Data Store Authentication
  • Messaging Centre for Forwarding E-mail
  • Predictive Fetching of Mobile Application Traffic
  • Optimizing Mobile Network Traffic Coordination Across Multiple Applications Running On a Mobile Device
  • Connection Architecture for a Mobile  Network
  • Secure End-To-End Transport Through Intermediary Nodes
  • Multiple Data Store Authentication

The titles of most of the patents suggest that they describe broad approaches commonly used by a great many companies. The underlying issue is approval of way too many patent applications for things people already do.

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