MonkeyMedia Sues Apple – Analyst Blog

Companies and other organizations continue to hurl lawsuits at Apple Inc. (AAPL) as the company’s phenomenal success makes it a major threat to the competition. The latest to sue Apple was Austin-based MonkeyMedia Inc., a patent licensing boutique founded by a former Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) employee.

 

MonkeyMedia claims that Apple has violated three of its “seamless contraction” patents. Apple allegedly uses MonkeyMedia’s patented licensing technology for some of its applications (e.g., RSS Readers and its Video player user interface) for computer systems specially designed to control and display different versions of the same text or audiovisual content.

 

Meanwhile, Apple’s Mac sales continue to grow strongly, according to data published by NPD, whose expectations are even more optimistic than the Wall Street estimates. Although the MonkeyMedia case could be a distraction to management, we do not think there will be any major impact on the company’s business. We expect Mac to continue on the growth path, securing a larger share of the market that is currently dominated by players such as Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ) and Dell (DELL).

 

Macs apart, the company is also seeing an increasing number of lawsuits in the mobile phone market. The MonkeyMedia lawsuit follows on the heels of a counter-suit by HTC against Apple for violating five of its patented technologies related to mobile phones. HTC is asking for a ban on the import, marketing and sale of some of Apple’s mobile devices in the United States, which are currently manufactured outside the country. Apple had earlier sued HTC for the infringement of 20 patents, probably in an attempt to stall the success of its Android-based devices in the U.S.

 

Other companies too have sued Apple in the recent past include Nokia Corp. (NOK).

 

We maintain our Neutral rating on AAPL shares.