14 DAY TRIAL // Richard "Chip" Lutton Junior, who manages Apple’s patent portfolio, will soon leave the company, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Lutton did not respond to requests for comment, and neither has any Apple representative contacted for clarification on the matter, the IB Times reports.
And while Lutton's voicemail was still set up at Apple on Monday, it has been confirmed by a source familiar with the situation that he will be leaving Apple soon.
BJ Watrous, a former deputy general counsel with Hewlett Packard, is now listed as Apple's chief IP counsel on LinkedIn. Watrous was in charge of IP licensing at HP.
If indeed true, Lutton's move couldn’t have come at a worse time for Apple.
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is embroiled in legal disputes with three major handset manufacturers - Samsung, Nokia and, more recently, HTC), as well as many other companies over patent infringement, and copyright.
Last week, Apple filed a second patent complaint against HTC.
Germany-based intellectual property analyst and blogger, Florian Mueller said "I believe Apple's leadership wants to see results now, especially in connection with Google's Android system."
"The second complaint against HTC shows that Apple feels it did not handle its patent litigation perfectly in the past."
The most recent suit lost by Apple is the one with Amazon in which the Mac maker claimed it had every right to trademark the term App Store, therefore not allowing others to use it.
Recent developments indicate that Apple lost that battle just as news broke out that Richard Lutton Jr. was leaving.
However, things may not be so bad for Apple. Recently, the iPhone maker has been hiring a lot of patent and IP experts to help it fight off rivals in court.
Most recently, Apple's intellectual property team has added litigation specialist Noreen Krall from Sun Microsystems.