Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Apple Inc. (Apple; NASDAQ: AAPL) is a publicly traded multinational technology company headquartered at One Apple Park Way, Cupertino, California. It was founded in April 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, and listed on NASDAQ in December 1980. Apple is a subsidiary-free independent public company and one of the world's most valuable by market capitalization (roughly $4–5 trillion in recent 2025–2026 trading), with approximately 164,000 employees and annual revenue in the range of $390–416 billion (FY2025). [Sources: Apple corporate site; Fortune Global 500; Wikipedia; Simply Wall St/CB Insights company data.]
Products / services. Apple designs, manufactures, and sells consumer electronics and related software and services. Major hardware lines include iPhone, iPad, Mac (MacBook, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio/Pro), Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro. Services include the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pay, and AppleCare. Apple also designs its own silicon (A-series and M-series chips) and, since 2025, a cellular modem (C1). It is unambiguously an operating company, not a patent assertion entity.
Patent-litigation posture. Per the tracked data, Apple appears in one case, as a defendant and zero as plaintiff: Qualcomm Incorporated v. Apple Incorporated (filed 2017-11-29, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California). That one-dimensional posture reflects the narrow scope of this tracked dataset rather than Apple's overall history; Apple is widely known as a frequent two-way patent litigant (asserting and defending), including against Qualcomm, Samsung, Masimo, and VirnetX.
Notable case context. The tracked suit was part of the 2017 Apple–Qualcomm global licensing/royalty dispute over standard-essential cellular patents, running parallel to Apple's own January 2017 S.D. Cal. antitrust complaint and consolidated contract-manufacturer actions. The case was terminated on 2019-04-23, coinciding with the parties' global settlement of the Qualcomm litigation. Cases clustered in the Southern District of California (San Diego), Qualcomm's home venue, rather than the Eastern District of Texas. [Sources: Docket Alarm/CourtListener dockets; Reuters; IPWatchdog; VitalLaw.]
Qualcomm sued Apple in the Southern District of California, asserting five Qualcomm patents including the '633 patent against Apple's dual-camera iPhones with Portrait Mode. The case was resolved by the April 16, 2019 global Qualcomm-Apple settlement and dismissed.