A week ago, news broke that Apple mulled adding Samsung’s latest Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone to its patent infringement case against Samsung Electronics. It’s not terribly surprising then that Apple has now filed a motion asserting that both the Internet giant’s head-turning Google Now feature and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 handset violate its two Siri patents and five other inventions… Read More
Penguin, one of the five named publishers in the Apple e-book price fixing suit, has reached a comprehensive agreement with the United States State Attorneys General and private class plaintiffs to pay a cool $75 million in consumer damages, in addition to costs and fees related to resolving all antitrust claims relating to the e-book price fixing suit… Read More
Things are really starting to heat up between Apple and the US Department of Justice over this e-book price fixing scandal. The DoJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple last year for allegedly conspiring with major book publishers to raise e-book prices.
And with the trial set to kick off in a few weeks, there’s beginning to be a lot of activity between the two. Yesterday, a DoJ filing popped up that called Apple out for facilitating the price fixing. And today, a potentially damning email from Steve Jobs has surfaced… Read More
As you know, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster all settled with the US Justice Department (DoJ) in an antitrust lawsuit the government filed against them and Apple in April 2012. In turn, DoJ is focusing on Apple now and, according to a new report, is calling Apple out for being a facilitator of an alleged price fixing related to electronic books sold on its iBookstore.
Furthermore, DoJ claimed it collected evidence that proves Apple was the “ringmaster” in the price fixing conspiracy… Read More
In a class action lawsuit filed in San Jose, California last week, Florida resident Debra Hilton claims that Apple was aware of a flaw in the flex cable that controls the power button on the iPhone 4, but chose to stay quiet about it to sell more handsets.
Hilton is seeking more than $5 million in damages from the Cupertino company on behalf of thousands of iPhone 4 owners she believes bought devices with defective power buttons. Allegedly, Apple knew about the issue, but did nothing to fix it… Read More
We certainly saw this coming. According to the FOSS Patents blog, run by patent expert Florian Müeller, Apple has decided to add the Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone to its patent infringement case against Samsung Electronics, while also dropping another product. The parties are expected to narrow their lists of the patent-infringing products. Currently, there are 22 gizmos each on their respective lists… Read More
Earlier this week, we told you about Apple’s complaint over Google’s resistance to hand over parts of the Android source code documentation. Apple’s request is part of its ongoing California patent fight against Samsung. Bloomberg now reports that U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal ordered the Internet giant to disclose within two days what terms it’s using to find documents Apple has requested.
Despite Google’s insistence that the collection of such information would be “too burdensome,” the court also ordered that the search monster tell Apple “which Google employees those documents came from”… Read More
Apple’s proxy fight against Google and its Android platform has just taken an interesting turn as the iPhone maker asked the court to force Google into turning over Android’s source code. The request is part of Apple’s ongoing California patent fight against Samsung. Bloomberg reports today Apple is dissatisfied with Google’s handling of the request.
According to Apple’s lawyers, the search giant in “improperly withholding information” related to Android’s source code documentation. Google’s mobile operating system, Apple argues, “provides much of the accused functionality” and argues the Google platform is used in all of Samsung’s allegedly infringing products… Read More
While Apple has been praised for its security efforts in iOS, it does not get the same applause for its privacy policies. The company is currently involved in a US-based lawsuit over its information-sharing practices, and today, a German court ruled against it.
This morning, the Berlin Regional Court in Germany ruled that Apple’s sharing of customer data violates its privacy laws. It said that Apple cannot request “global consent” for use of a customer’s data without telling them where and how the data will be used… Read More
In a preliminary ruling, the European Commission on Monday found that Motorola Mobility had abused its dominance in wireless communications patents in seeking an injunction against Apple in Germany. The finding opens the door to a potential antitrust charges to be filed against Google. The EU in its formal statement of objections informed the Google-owned smartphone maker of its allegations that it had leveraged its market position and abused standards-essential patents in order to enforce an injunction against Apple… Read More
Although a jury in August 2012 awarded the California firm $1 billion in damages after finding Samsung guilty of violating utility Apple patents related to the iPhone and iPad, Judge Lucy Koh is still unimpressed. Having determined in January that the Galaxy maker did not “willfully” infringe on Apple’s patents, two months later she announced a decrease of the $1.05 billion verdict by $450 million.
Friday came word that Samsung argued in court documents that any permanent injunction in the United States against the infringing products “would not stop any ongoing infringement.” And why’s that? Because the Galaxy maker has either “discontinued the accused products or designed around any infringing features in the ones it still sells”… Read More
It seems like it’s been a while since we’ve heard any news on the Apple/Samsung lawsuit front, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But today, the silence was broken as Judge Lucy Koh issued a new case management order to the two sides.
According to the order, the two will be battling it out over damages from their August trial this fall, with the next hearing scheduled for November 12. Here, Apple will get a chance to get back some of the $500M Koh cut from its settlement earlier this year… Read More
On April 5, Apple acknowledged via a support document that it “will be changing the behavior of VPN On Demand for iOS devices using iOS 6.1 and later” due to a lawsuit by patent holding firm VirnetX file against Apple in November 2011. VPN technology, which stands for Virtual Private Networking, extends corporate networks securely across public networks like the Internet, allowing users to access a private network as if they were directly connected to it.
Apple originally planned to remove the ‘Always’ configuration option for VPN On Demand with the ‘Establish if needed’ option. The revised document specifically mentions Apple will not be changing the VPN behavior on “devices that have already been shipped”… Read More
Apple has lost three copyright infringement cases in China as No.2 Intermediate People’s Court ruled Tuesday that the iPhone maker’s App Store infringed on the copyrights owned by Beijing-based Motie Press and Chinese writers Mai Jia and Yu Zhuo.
As part of the ruling, Apple was ordered to pay damages of CNY 520,000, or approximately $141,563 to Motie Press, in addition to CNY 200,000 (about $54,447) to Mai Jia and CNY 10,000 (about $2,722) to Yu Zhuo… Read More
Apple’s patent troubles with the struggling handset maker has largely been viewed as a proxy fight with Google, which acquired Motorola Mobility along with its vast patent portfolio in August 2011 for $12.5 billion. Two and a half years ago Motorola asserted its proximity sensor patent against Apple. Monday, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) threw Motorola’s complaint out of the window, invalidating Motorola’s patent because it’s too obvious. That’s good news for Apple as Google was hoping to leverage that patent to seek an import ban against iPhones… Read More
Ah, who could forget the infamous iPhone 4 ‘Antennagate‘ debacle? It had barely been a month since Apple had introduced its newly-redesigned handset, when users began to complain of severe signal attenuation when holding the device a certain way.
Steve Jobs and company held a press conference to defend their product, but it wasn’t enough to keep the lawsuits at bay. Apple was forced to offer free bumpers, or $15 in cash, to iPhone 4 owners. And now, 3 years later, the checks are finally on their way… Read More
Have you been frustrated by Apple’s repair or replacement policy? You could be in for some cash, according to a Friday report.
The iPhone maker supposedly has signed a settlement deal worth $53 million ending a class action lawsuit that claimed Apple dragged its feet on honoring warranties for the iPhone and iPod touch.
The settlement, reportedly signed Wednesday by Apple’s head litigation attorney, could affect “hundreds of thousands” of iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS owners, as well as people who bought the first three generations of the iPod touch media player… Read More
Apple, along with Google and five other Silicon Valley technology heavy-weights, has won a court order blocking a potentially devastating class-action antitrust lawsuit concerning alleged anti-poaching conspiracy.
Bloomberg reported that U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh Friday denied class action certification over accusations that said companies illegally conspired not to recruit one another’s employees, which the plaintiffs said resulted in their incomes being held down by their employers… Read More
In a decision issued on March 26, but kept classified until earlier this week, an International Trade Commission judge found Samsung to be infringing on Apple’s US RE41,922 patent that covers things like text selection and translucent buttons.
It’s only a preliminary decision, and the judge only found Samsung guilty of infringement on one of two patents listed in the complaint. But if the decision gets upheld, Samsung could once again be looking at a major product ban in the US… Read More
A German court ruled invalid Apple’s patent for a sliding touchscreen unlocking image, marking another win for allies of Google’s Android mobile operating. In its ruling in favor of the Google-owned Motorola, the country’s Federal Patent Court slammed the iPhone maker’s slide-to-unlock patent as devoid of “technological innovation.” Still, a long-running patent dispute which began in 2011 may still live on as Apple’s legal team prepares for a round of appeals, according to Friday reports… Read More
