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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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"...
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...
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...
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...
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"...
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...