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Apple, others sued for patent infringement

Apple and 14 other companies are being sued by a company that claims it owns the patents for technology used to sell products electronically.

Jim Dalrymple Special to CNET News
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop.
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Jim Dalrymple

Apple is among 15 companies that have been slapped with a lawsuit by Actus. The company claims the defendants infringed on four of its patents.

The lawsuit, filed on May 26 in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, describes a method of using electronic tokens for e-commerce that Actus says the companies infringed on with their own systems. For example, the lawsuit claims that the Apple Store, iTunes, and the App Store all infringe on the Actus patents.

Actus claims four counts of infringement for e-commerce patents that were issued between February 2007 and May 2008.

Companies involved in the lawsuit include Amazon.com, Amdocs, American Express, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Cabela's, Citigroup, eBay, FirstView, Marketing Technology Concepts, NetSpend, OfficeMax, U.S. Bancorp, and ViVOtech.

Actus is seeking a permanent injunction against all of the companies preventing them from using the e-commerce technology, as well as monetary payments for damages.