Apple, Intel file antitrust lawsuit against SoftBank-backed firm over alleged patent practices

Apple and Intel have filed an antitrust lawsuit against SoftBank-owned Fortress Investment Group. The firm has been alleged of stockpiling patents to hold up technology companies with lawsuits, demanding as much as $5.1 billion from Apple.

Intel has also filed another case against Fortress in October, which it withdrew later before filing a new version in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday. Interestingly Apple has also joined Intel as a plaintiff.

In the filing on Wednesday, Apple said that a group of firms connected to Fortress had filed at least 25 lawsuits against the iPhone maker, asking for between $2.6 billion and $5.1 billion in damages from the iPhone maker. One of the suits, Apple wrote in its filing, alleged that Apple violated a step-counting patent in its devices with health-tracking apps.

Two Fortress-connected firms, Uniloc USA and Uniloc Luxembourg, “have disclosed that they believe they are entitled to damages of between $1.41 and $2.75 per Apple product, for total damages in the range of $375 to $732 million,” Apple wrote in its complaint. “The apparent precision of the per-unit damages request is a facade; Uniloc USA and Uniloc Luxembourg simply adopted the amounts that Apple sought from Samsung in litigation for Apple’s patents.”