Apple Computer Inc says it’s now studied the claims made against it last month by Imatec Ltd, and filed an answer denying the allegations. Imatec, an imaging technology company, filed a $1,1bn patent infringement suit against Apple (CI No 3,376), claiming that Apple had infringed three of its patents in its Apple ColorSync color management system product. Imatec said the patents in question were issued to its president and CEO Hanoch Shalit, who licensed them exclusively to Imatec. But Apple maintains that German printing systems giant holds a previous claim to the technology. Rudolf Hell GmbH, now part of Heidelberg Prepress, developed and used techniques for calibration of color and luminance between images displayed on a video monitor and hardcopy printed images long before the Imatec patents were filed, claimed Jawdatt Mawassii, vice president of Heidelberg. Products which used this color calibration were on the market in the US in 1985. Apple says it used these and other techniques publicly available before the filing of the Imatec patents, to develop ColorSync in 1993.
