Apple was recently sued by patent trolls. Its Secure Enclave was accused of infringing HP’s patent 7779267 and was required to pay a “mandatory continuing license fee.”
Lionra Technologies Ltd, a company under Atlantic IP, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a well-known patent troll in the industry.
Lionra sued Apple with a patent titled “Method And Apparatus For using a Secret in a Distributed Computing System” (a method and device for using Secret in a distributed computing system).
According to the lawsuit documents, including but not limited to the following Apple products:
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 plus
iPhone 6S
iPhone 6S Plus
iPhone SE (both original and second generation)
iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 8
iPhone 8 Plus
iPhone X
iPhone XR
iPhone XS
iPhone XS Max
iPhone 11
iPhone 11 Pro
iPhone 11 Pro Max
iPhone 12
iPhone 12mini
iPhone 12 Pro
iPhone 12 Pro Max
iPhone 13
iPhone 13mini
iPhone 13 Pro
iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhone 14 Plus
iPhone 14 Pro
iPhone 14 Pro Max
Apple Watch Series 1
Apple Watch Series 2
Apple Watch Series 3
Apple Watch Series 4
Apple Watch Series 5
Apple WatchSE
Apple Watch Series 6
Apple Watch Series 7
Apple Watch Series 8
Apple Watch Ultra
Apple Watch SE (2nd generation)
iPad Air (and later)
MacBook Pro models with Touch Bar and Apple's T1 chip (2016 and 2017)
Intel Mac devices with the Apple T2 chip
Mac devices with Apple siliconLionra’s complaint further adds: “Apple continues to actively encourage and instruct its customers and end users (eg, through its user manuals and online instructional materials on its website and the materials referenced in Exhibit 6) in ways that directly infringe the ‘267 Patent’ Using the accused product. For example, Apple advertises the security features of Apple Pay”.
Note: Secure Enclave, the Chinese name is the security compartment, which is a dedicated security subsystem integrated into Apple’s system-on-chip (SoC).
The Secure Enclave is independent of the main processor and provides additional security to keep sensitive user data safe even if the application processor core is compromised. It follows the same design principles as the SoC: Boot ROM is used to establish a hardware root of trust, AES engine is used for efficient and secure cryptographic operations, and memory is protected.
