Apple’s Victory Over Phone-Locator Patent Holds Up on Appeal

The Federal Circuit sided with Apple Inc. and an administrative tribunal that invalidated a phone location patent the tech giant had been accused of copying.

BillJCo LLC, a company formed by Texas inventor Bill Johnson, sued Apple in May 2021, alleging it infringed six of his patents, including the 451-page US Patent No. 10,292,011, which describes a location-based exchange network. Apple successfully challenged the validity of each of the patents at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which agreed with Apple that claims in the ‘011 patent were obvious based on a previously published patent application and a a ...