THX Ltd., the audio technology company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, has filed a lawsuit saying that Apple's iPhones, iMacs, and iPads all infringe a patent it owns that covers "narrow-profile speakers."
The three-page lawsuit [PDF], filed in San Jose federal court, is slim on details. It simply says that most Apple products "incorporate narrow-profile speaker units that output sound through a duct or aperture having a narrow dimension." The patent at issue was granted in 2008.
Like most tech companies, Apple gets sued for patent infringement quite regularly. Most of those suits come from "patent trolls" that just sue over patents, while others are a result of the corporate smartphone patent wars that Apple had a hand in starting a few years ago.
The THX lawsuit stands out, having been brought by an operating company with a well-known brand name which has never filed a patent lawsuit before. THX is asking for a "reasonable royalty," as well as lost profits, which are typical demands in a patent case.
THX Ltd. was founded by George Lucas in 1983, after he was disappointed by the sound quality in theaters that showed the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas hired audio scientist Tomlinson Holman to bring a higher quality of sound into cinemas, and enforced audio standards that allowed movie theaters to become THX "certified." The company's launch coincided with the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi.
The company was originally created as a subsidiary of Lucasfilm, and was spun off in 2002. THX is based in San Rafael, California, about 20 miles north of Lucasfilm's headquarters in San Francisco. The audio company was named after Lucas' first film, THX-1138.
Both THX and Apple representatives declined to respond to an inquiry about the lawsuit by Bloomberg News.
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