MemoryWeb, the developer of a photo organizer app, claims that Apple's Photos and supporting services infringe on patents covering methods of organizing and viewing a photographic archive based on properties like tagged people, location, and other identifiers.
MemoryWeb Sues Apple
Approaching the U.S District Court for the Western District of Texas on May 25, MemoryWeb's suit alleged Apple's Photos app in iOS and macOS infringe on patents that allow people to organize, view, and preserve files with all the memory details captured, connected, and vivified through an interactive interface.
MemoryWeb asserts U.S Patent Nos. 9,552,376, 10,423,658, 10,621,228 and 11,017,020. The patents were respectively granted in 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
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As explained in the filing, personal digital photography has boomed with the rise of smartphones. Users can usually have hundreds or thousands of photos on their device, making manual cataloging and sorting files a burden.
The complaint reads that consumers are seeking to find, view, or display a photo within a bunch of photos would usually need to search through a very complex, and large interface by scrolling through a photo library of thousands of pictures taken over months or years to find a particular photo from a particular time or event.
MemoryWeb's founders, who are also named as the inventors of the patents, patented a system that organizes a photo collection using a variety of intuitive views like Location View and People View.
Location view, for example, displays photo thumbnails on an interactive map, while a Multiple Location Application View arranges photos in a grid. Similary, a grid view is also used to display photos that contain a specific person.
Timelines and sort by date options are also discussed.
Apple's Photo app features identical instrumentalities, according to the complaint filed by MemoryWeb. In both macOS and iOS, users can enter an interactive map view by browsing by location, and are able to search People albums.
Apple introduced geotagged photo collections, and a crude interactive map view, on the iOS 7 back in 2013, borrowing from Mac's iPhone app, according to Apple Insider.
Apple has allowed users to search by face, with automated facial recognition that is powered by machine vision algorithms, since iOS 10 in 2016. It is not clear if the same technology is applied to any MemoryWeb product.
MemoryWeb noted Apple cited certain MemoryWeb patent application publications in the prosecution of its own photo management IP, though the tech giant at the time had already introduced basic location-based browsing functionality in both iOS and Mac OS X.
The plaintiffs now seek damages and court fees.
Apple's Lawsuit
This is not the first time that Apple had a lawsuit due to a patent. According to 9to5Mac, Apple won an appeal in $506 million lawsuit over LTE patent infringement.
In the Eastern District of Texas case, Optis claimed that Apple infringed on its LTE patent and also refused to sign a licensing agreement.
Among other points, Apple said looking inside its hardware proved that it had not infringed said patents. In the end, the jury voted that Apple had not proved the Optis claims were invalid.
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Written by Sophie Webster
