Entrepreneur’s greedy eye casts at Apple’s pie

Apple Inc. is a company that hardly needs an introduction. Its assortment of iPhones are widely popular in Russia, and Apple holds countless patents to protect its technology.

Entrepreneur Artashes Ikonomov filed and obtained patent No. 141791 in 2013 for a cell phone with an “Emergency Call — SOS” function. Several years later, in 2019, he sued Apple for infringing his patent (Case No. 2-20/2020). His requests were to remove iPhones with emergency call options from the market and destroy them. The claims were dismissed by the court.

In response, Apple attempted to cancel Ikonomov’s patent at the Chamber of Patent Disputes, arguing that it did not meet the requirement of novelty but failed, leaving the patent in force.

Apple appealed the decision in 2020 at the Russian Intellectual Property Court (the IP Court) (Case No. СИП-931/2019) and asked the court to oblige the Chamber of Patent Dispute to revisit its decision. To support its claim, Apple pointed out that Ikonomov’s patent claims describe a computer program but not a device and, therefore, cannot be protected as a utility model. However, the IP Court upheld the decision of the Chamber of Patent Disputes in its judgment of June 17, 2020.

Disgruntled by Apple’s attack and bolstered by the judgment of the IP Court, Ikonomov sued Apple for infringement of his patent at common court, and this time, his claims were different. Ikonomov claimed RUB 294,840,000,000 (more than USD 30 million) because, according to him, his patent was used in iPhone5S, iPhone 7, and other iPhones with the option of emergency calls (Case No. 2-76/2022 at a district court in Moscow).

Apple explained during the hearing that the decision of the Chamber of Patent Disputes and the judgment of the IP Court confirmed that Ikonomov’s utility model is a device, while emergency calls in iPhones are computer software implementing an iOS operation system. Apple also argued that there was another court case (Case No. 2-20/2020 above), according to which judgment Ikonomov’s utility model was not used in iPhones.

Since the case concerned sophisticated technical issues, the IP Court ordered technical expertise with the required specialized knowledge. The experts stripped down several iPhones and found that they do not have features contained in the independent claim of the utility model. They also listed several other features present in iPhones using the software. They further explained that features of the utility model are characterized by the words “connection” and “connected” which means that they describe a device. The modules, according to the utility model patent, are physically connected, which rules out the implementation of the functions by software.

The IP Court recalled that Ikonomov had sued Apple in 2019 and asked the court to forbid sales of iPhones with the emergency calls option. His claims were dismissed. Ikonomov appealed the judgment in higher court instances, but his claims were rejected. Even the Supreme Court established that the solution characterized in the claims of the utility model is not a computer program but a device. Apple engineers further reported that the function of emergency calls in iPhones is carried out by the iOS operation system developed by Apple. This detailed examination resulted in a complete dismissal of Ikonomov’s claims, dated June 30, 2022.

This defeat opened the door for Apple to attack Ikonomov’s patent again at the Chamber of Patent Disputes. The appeal was filed on August 30, 2023. Apple attacked the patent for not meeting the novelty criteria. Apple ultimately succeeded, and the patent was canceled on June 10, 2024.

Undeterred by the setback at the Chamber of Patent Disputes, Ikonomov later sought success at the IP Court. He appealed the decision of the Chamber of Patent Disputes, arguing that its conclusion regarding the novelty of his patent was erroneous and provided arguments that did not convince the court.

The IP Court examined all evidence that had been submitted to the Chamber of Patent Disputes. Among other pieces of evidence, the court cited US patent No. 8385879, examined it in detail, and finally concluded that the device known from the US patent contains all essential features of the claims of the utility model. Ikonomov put forward several objections, but all of them were dismissed by the court. The judgment was published on January 22, 2025.

Finally, a case lasting more than five years may have come to an end, though it is still possible that the judgment may be appealed two months after the judgment date. The details of this case were rehashed so many times in court that it seems unlikely that any new information may surface in defense of the utility model patent. As a result, Apple will save all the money that the inventor wanted to win.