On July 26, 2010, the Library of Congress ruled that under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), jailbreaking was legal. This was a big deal at the time, as prior to the ruling the legality of jailbreaking was a bit of a mystery.
The decision was part of a list of DMCA exemptions, which unfortunately just expired. So the Library announced a new batch of exemptions today. And although jailbreaking is still legal, it appears there are some significant caveats...
UK-based Apple Corps, which handles business dealings of the legendary Liverpool-based pop group The Beatles, has finally ended its dispute with Apple, Inc. of Cupertino, California over use of the Apple Corps' Granny Smith logo, which was originally owned by The Beatles. According to a new report, Apple for an undisclosed sum has secured rights to use the Apple Corps logo in association with music, computers, entertainment, multimedia and more. Matter of fact, Apple, Inc. has actually gained entire ownership over all trademarks which included or are related to the word “Apple”...
The South Korean conglomerate Samsung has become the target of another antitrust investigation concerning suspected abuse of FRAND-pledged standard-essential patents, which the company asserted against Apple in litigation and recently used to sue the Cupertino, California firm over 4G wireless technology utilized for the iPhone 5.
This time around, the United States Department of Justice is preliminary probing Samsung, which could lead to a full-blown investigation. If it finds an unlawful use of standard-essential wireless patents on Samsung's part, it'll clear Apple of a possible U.S. import ban sought by Samsung because the iPhone maker had refused to accept a Samsung-suggested per-device royalty fee of 2.4 percent (Apple wanted to pay half a cent per device)...
We know Apple often patents stuff just so rivals couldn't patent the same invention. That's what other companies are doing as well. But Apple, more than any other company, depends on being able to protect its ideas and leverage patents to prevent copycat products from eating into its sales. The iPhone maker has been on somewhat of a patent spree lately and today has been granted a key patent for design of the original iPad tablet computer...
If you bought Walter Isaacson's official Steve Jobs biography, titles from the New York Times bestseller list or other iBooks from Apple (or e-books from other retailers) between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012, you may be eligible for your share of the $65 million settlement in the e-book price fixing scandal. Amazon and Apple started emailing customers that the settlement has been reached between the State Attorneys General and book publishers Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.
Though Apple has not been sued in this case, the company is "assisting in providing this notice as a service to its customers". Companies will compensate eligible customers from $0.30 to $1.32 per e-book as the named publishers already paid $69 million into a settlement fund...
Google's pricey $12.5 acquisition of handset maker Motorola Mobility didn't change the dynamics of patent wars as Google hoped it would. Recently, Microsoft and Apple scored a major win in a patent dispute in Germany, forcing Google's Motorola subsidiary to pull all of its Android-based smartphones and tablets from store shelves in the country.
Luck continues to be in short supply at Mountain View, California. Today, the Windows maker has expanded the Motorola patent case to include Google Maps for Android, specifically naming Google as a defendant.
As the public fight between Google and Microsoft gets uglier, Google faces a real possibility of Google Maps becoming unavailable in Germany as early as next spring. Ouch!
The Galaxy Nexus, a Samsung-made smartphone providing so-called stock Android experience (one free of carrier crapware and skinning) may soon be back on store shelves in the United States as the country's appeals court warned that a "district court abused its discretion".
Back in June, U.S. Judge Lucy Koh granted Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction. The appeals court now reversed Apple's injunction warning that the iPhone maker did not prove people bought Samsung's phone because of the infringing technology.
The appeals court has sent the case back to a lower California court for reconsideration...
Apple Thursday won a temporary reprieve from a South Korean court, keeping the Cupertino, Calif. company's iPhone and iPad on store shelves in that country. A Seoul judge whose court in August ruled products by both Apple and Samsung should be yanked from stores, approved Apple's request for a stay while the U.S. firm appeals.
According to Bloomberg, Samsung has yet to file for a similar injunction. The original ruling by the Seoul Central District Court also banned sales of the Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1. The court ruled both Apple and Samsung guilty of violating each others' patents...
Apple, Google, Samsung and others meet today - not in a courtroom but in neutral Switzerland. The discussion, moderated by the UN's International Telecommunications Union, focuses on whether the key principal of patent licensing is preventing products from coming to market.
The talks follow Apple and Samsung high-profile patent dispute and the EU investigating whether a number of companies are abusing the patent guidelines...
Handset maker Motorola Mobility, a Google subsidiary, has pulled all of its phones and tablets from the German market, following unfavorable rulings over patents. This has got to be a huge blow as the search Goliath has been struggling to return Motorola to profitability after it had acquired the ailing cell phone company for $12.5 billion, gaining a treasure trove of 17,000 mobile technology patents. Motorola reported an operating loss of $233 million during the second quarter so you could imagine that any disruption in sales is not going to look good in its next earnings report...
Following up on a revealing Sunday piece by The New York Times that looks at patent wars from both sides to conclude that Apple (like other tech giants) patents anything and everything just to prevent rivals from patenting the same inventions, Google's chief legal counsel David Drummond has now called for an all-encompassing software patent reform.
Criticizing broken patent system in the United States, Drummond advocates for a change to make the system more akin to Europe and some other countries, which make it much harder to get a software patent of any kind, let alone something as basic as Apple's slide-to-unlock gesture...
Apple is again in the sights of a company with patents and an itchy trigger finger. The iPhone's Passbook feature, which allows consumers to store tickets, loyalty cards, coupons and such digitally, is the target of San Diego-based Ameranth. The company is seeking triple damages, claiming in the lawsuit that the Cupertino, Calif. technology giant willfully infringed on Ameranth patents on wireless mobile payments.
The company has already sued the likes of Hilton, Marriott and Ticketmaster and gotten 14 other companies to ink licensing pacts. TechCrunch spoke to the CEO of one of the companies who'd rather pay than suffer some long drawn-out legal fight. The interview is enough to send cold shivers up Apple developers who survived the 2011 patent uproar from Lodsys...