Week 13 Blog 26: iMessage and MTel

Apple has received yet another patent lawsuit. Mobile Telecommunications Technologies (MTel) accused Apple of infringing its U.S. Patent No. 5,809,428 with its iMessage feature. This accusation is rather broad and targets all Apple devices, from the iPhone to iPad, any device that provides text messaging and email support. The patent describes a "method and device for processing undelivered data messages in a two-way wireless communications system".

I think this will be another example of a broad patent targeting anything somewhat related, and pretty soon, lawyers will try to clearly define a patent and specify to the very last word to differentiate with a minor difference. If MTel's allegations are true though, it seems like Apple will have to pay up. Now I'm curious as to how other mobile devices with Android platforms handle undelivered messages, as opposed to MTel or Apple.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/messages-lands-apple-in-patent-lawsuit-with-mobile-telecom