Apple sued over Apple TV, Airport Express and Mac

EZ4Media, a Bannockburn, IL maker of wireless entertainment devices, filed a lawsuit against Apple on Tuesday, claiming that the Apple TV, Airport Express, and Macintosh itself infringe on its patents which it obtained from Universal Electronics (UEI) in March.

In the complaint, EZ4Media alleges that Apple hired three former UEI employees about a year before it introduced Apple TV and that the employees had access to UEI's confidential and proprietary information. The employees allegedly left UEI for Apple within 30 days of each other in the second quarter of 2005.

Apple acknowledged the suit in its 10-K for fiscal year 2008, filed with the SEC, saying it "is vigorously defending more than 21 patent infringement cases, 13 of which were filed during fiscal 2008, and several pending claims are in various stages of evaluation."

InformationWeek adds that EZ4Media filed patent-infringement lawsuits in June against Logitech, Netgear, D-Link, Samsung, Pioneer, Yamaha, D&M Holdings, and Denon.