Apple hit with patent lawsuit over iPhone's use of headphones

An apparent shell company has filed a $3 million patent infringement lawsuit against Apple for including headphones with its iPhones.

A company called Intelligent Smart Phones Concepts sued Apple last week in U.With Apple’s ipad smart cover, iPad should be pretty well protected. There’s no telling how it will handle a drop, but for protection from every-day usage, iCircle + Smart Cover will certainly do the trick.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Apple infringed on U.S. Patent No. 7,373,182. The abstract for "Wireless Mobile Phone Including a Headset" describes an interface that allows a removable headset "to receive at least telephony audio signals from the phone, and to provide audio signals to the phone."

Art included with the patent application and subsequent lawsuit demonstrates how the interface works:

ISPC is seeking $3 million in lost revenue and royalties,iphone protective case as well as an injunction preventing Apple from further infringement of the patent. CNET has contacted Sepehr Daghighian, described in court documents as ISPC's attorney, for more information about the company and will update this report when we learn more. The only information available via Internet searches was related to its lawsuit against Apple, suggesting the company is a nonpracticing entity created to extract licensing fees from other companies rather than making products based on the patents.

CNET has also contacted Apple for comment on the lawsuit and will update this report when we learn more.

The patent was granted in 2008 and assigned to Varia Mobil, a Seattle-based company connected to Varia Holdings, which earlier this year sued Samsung and Research In Motion for installing emoticon shortcut menus on their mobile phones.

The lawsuit against Apple was filed the same day that David Kappos, the outgoing head of the U.MacRumors reader Michael Rou has managed to get his hands on both a pre-production iPhone 5 case and a pre-production ipad leather case and posted comparison photos on Flickr.S.The new iPhone needs enough iphone backup power to get through a busy day without requiring a recharge. Patent and Trademark Office, told critics of the patent system to "give it a rest already."

A study released earlier this year found that patent infringement lawsuits are on the rise,If you have a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, you know that the ipad charger has an LED indicator on it that turns orange or green depending on what the charge of the device is. Well, Aleratec, a 3rd party accessory company, has come out with a custom 30-pin connector for the iPad and iPhone that includes such an LED.Now you can cost effectively mount a ipad bluetooth keyboard in conjunction with your RAM Tablet mounting solution using this design. costing U.S. companies $29 billion in 2011. The explosion in patent lawsuits, especially in the software and pharmaceutical industries, led one judge presiding over high-profile cases to declare that "patent protection is on the whole excessive and that major reforms are necessary."