Bay Area Restaurateur Sues Apple for Stealing His Distracted-Driving App
The “Do Not Disturb” feature in Apple’s iOS 11 operating system infringes a nearly five-year-old patent for technology to curb distracted driving, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Bay Area restaurateur Nick Bovis,…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
owner of Lefty O’Doul’s and the Broadway Grill, invented a mobile device solution he called “inactive mode” for curbing distracted driving without forcing users to turn off their phones and risk missing important calls or texts, said the complaint. The mode notifies the sender that the recipient is driving and not available to take calls or texts, then generates for the recipient a log of missed communications when the mode is deactivated, it said. Bovis landed a February 2015 patent (8,958,853) and built the technology into an app he called “Off Mode,” available for download at the Google Play store since May 2013, it said. Apple launched Do Not Disturb in iOS in September 2017 with the “same features," said the complaint. It’s “inconceivable that Apple did not know” about the Bovis patent when it launched Do Not Disturb, it said. Instead of licensing the technology from Bovis for a “reasonable royalty,” Apple “helped itself” to the invention and paid him “no compensation,” it said. Apple didn't comment.