Koss settles headphone patent dispute with Apple ahead of trial
Yahoo Finance Live's Rachelle Akuffo breaks down the latest in Koss' patent dispute between Apple.
Video Transcript
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- Welcome back, everyone. My pick for our triple play to kick us off is Koss. Now, Apple actually dodged a patent infringement trial with Koss. It was actually meant to start today over in West Texas, all over Apple's AirPods. Now, Apple settled with costs for an undisclosed amount. But the claims were dismissed with prejudice, though. They can't be-- they can't be retried.
We did see, though, Koss stocks soaring today, though. Up about 34%, as you can see in intraday trading. Now, this actually started when Koss sued Apple back in 2020 alleging that Apple's wireless earbuds violate of Koss' patents for its Strivia headphones. And that includes technology for an internal microphone that reacts to voice prompts, headphone touch controls, and WiFi connectivity.
Now, Koss says it developed these things back in the early 2000s. Of course, Apple denied the allegations and in fact, countersuing. And they argue that the complaint actually included confidential information from their licensing discussions. Similar lawsuits still pending between Koss and other headphone makers, including Bose and Skullcandy.
And even with today's stock pop, Koss is down over 40% over the past year. But I don't think we're going to be seeing some of these complaints going away any time soon. Jared.
JARED BLIKRE: No, and I'm looking at the YFi Interactive here. That intraday chart, well, it's trading like a meme stock yet again. This is year to date, off about 1.78%. So really clawing back most of those gains. Can't say the same for many stocks in the same boat.
But you take a look at what's happened over the last three years-- we'll see if I can get that back up. Well, I was gonna-- there we go. If we can show this over a three-year period, you can see the meme stock madness that was in early 2021, just a shadow of that at the current price.
