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Apple loses a patent battle over Skytel's two-way pager tech
The greatest patent battle Apple ever waged... was with Samsung. The funniest, probably, is with Skytel, a company, kids, that made makes pagers. A jury has found that the iPhone and other Apple devices used Skytel technology without permission. Mobile Telecommunication Technologies, which owns the patents (and the most insipid name in tech), only got a tenth of what it hoped to get out of Apple. However, the patents in this case were issued in the middle to late-90s, meaning they either recently expired or will do soon. As Bloomberg puts it, SkyTel's 2-Way pager was "the smartphone of its day." Apple denied infringing the patents, adding that MTel was looking trying to take credit for emoji and calendar invites. Apple's lawyer, Brian Ferguson, told the jury that its opponent was entitled to $1 million, at most. [Image credit: Marty Katz via Getty Images]
