Apple is in court again in China, defending another of its products from attack based on pre-existing claims from a Chinese company. This time around it’s Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, that has landed it in Chinese legal trouble, after last year another company took issue with the iPad trademark resulting in a $60 million settlement deal. → Read More
Apple’s landmark $1 billion damages award over Samsung has been partially vacated by presiding judge Lucy Koh, FOSS Patents reports. The judge has orders just north of $450 million be struck from the $1 billion total, an amount which relates to 14 Samsung products involved in the case, pending a new trial to determine appropriate damages for those specific devices. → Read More
David Einhorn has dropped the suit filed against Apple over a proposal the company intended to bring to a vote at its shareholder meeting this past week, Bloomberg reports. The proposal included a provision that would require a common shareholder vote before Apple could issue any preferred stock, something Einhorn and his hedge fund Greenlight Capital have been seeking from Apple to unlock more of… → Read More
In ongoing legal proceedings in California, Apple has added six new devices to its patent infringement claims against rival Samsung, getting them in late Friday evening ahead of a deadline on changes to the scope of the complaint. The new additions essentially cover just about every piece of Samsung hardware now available in the U.S. market, with modifications that also account for recent OS… → Read More
In an ongoing California court case between Apple and Samsung, a judge on Thursday granted the requests of both companies to add recently released hardware to the suit. The iPhone 5 is now included, as well as Samsung’s U.S. Galaxy S III, the Galaxy Note 10.1 and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (specifically as it pertains to the Galaxy Nexus, and not beyond). → Read More
Samsung has “no intention” to follow the example of HTC and work out a settlement with legal and consumer tech rival Apple, according to Samsung Electronics Head of Mobile J.K. Shin. He said so to reporters today, the AFP reports, when asked if Samsung might pursue a settlement similar to the 10-year cross-licensing agreement announced by Apple and HTC this past weekend. → Read More
Apple is hoping to add Samsung’s latest tablet, the Galaxy Note 10.1, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to a list of product it claims infringe its patents in an existing court case in California, Bloomberg reports. The arguments supporting these additions were made in federal court in San Jose today, and follow Samsung’s expressed intent to add the iPhone 5 its own infringement claims. → Read More
According to Reuters, Google has settled a lawsuit brought by software maker Rosetta Stone over the search company allowing people to purchase keywords within its ad product using its trademarked name.
The lawsuit was filed in 2009 and has dragged on in Virginia since then. The language-teaching company says that competitors were getting a leg up by confusing people searching for them on… → Read More
Wayne Plimmer, a retiree living in Sechelt, British Columbia, filed a class action lawsuit against Google last week. In it, he and his attorney allege that Google’s Gmail service “intercepts, obtains and uses personal information it collections from emails sent to Gmail users.” → Read More
Apple has been sued over Passbook, newly discovered court documents show. The suit was filed by Ameranth, a San Diego company that wears its patents proudly on its sleeve (or the front page of its website, in a literal sense). The suit claims that Apple infringed four patents that revolve around wireless synchronization tech to do with mobile payments, point-of-sale systems and other issues… → Read More
At the upcoming Apple event on September 12, the company is expected to release a new iPhone compatible with 4G LTE connectivity around the world. Yet, competitors such as Samsung and HTC are already warning Apple that if it releases a new iPhone with LTE connectivity, they will sue the company for patent infringements and will demand a sales ban in the U.S.
When it comes to 4G LTE… → Read More
When you search for “Bettina Wulff” on Google, the search engine will happily autocomplete this search with terms like “escort” and “prostitute.” That’s obviously not something you would like to be associated with your name, so the wife of former German president Christian Wulff has now, according to Germany’s Süddeutschen Zeitung, decided to sue Google for defamation. The reason why these terms… → Read More
Samsung Electronics has been knocked hard on mobile phone design innovation in the last few days, but in what might be a spectacular display of diversionary tactics, it is also doubling down on another significant part of its business — chipmaking. Today, the Dutch semiconductor machine maker ASML announced that Samsung would be investing close to $1 billion — yes, more or less the same amount… → Read More
Google’s Motorola Mobility filed a new lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington, seeking to ban the imports of virtually every Apple product into the U.S. At the time, the details of the filing weren’t public yet, but the ITC has now posted the full complaint online and we can finally get a better idea of what patents Apple allegedly violated. → Read More
According to Bloomberg, Google’s Motorola unit just filed a new patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington. According to this report, Google’s complaint seeks to block Apple from importing the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and “various Apple computers.” Today’s lawsuit is only the latest in a long series of recent disputes between Apple… → Read More
For some of you this will be news, for some, a reminder. But the long and short of it is that Netflix has been forced to change its approach to user privacy, specifically in regard to how long it stores rental history for those who have unsubscribed. Netflix was forced to do so by a class-action lawsuit, which alleged that the company was illegally retaining and disclosing the personal information… → Read More
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple and a number of other large U.S. publishers of conspiring to fix eBook prices and filed an antitrust lawsuit. While most of the publishers quickly settled the lawsuit, Apple decided to fight. Earlier this week, as Ars Technica reports today, Apple responded (PDF) to the government’s accusations. Apple doesn’t mince words in its response. → Read More
It was bound to happen sooner or later, but it looks like all the heated conversation we’ve seen over user privacy in mobile apps has now finally boiled over into a class action lawsuit, filed this week in the Western Division of the U.S. District Court, Austin Division.
A list of 13 plaintiffs, acting “on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated,” have filed a suit against… → Read More
Google was hit with yet another patent lawsuit last week, but this one at least makes for some very, very interesting reading.
A company called buySAFE, which offers a safe-shopping service to online retailers and their customers, argues that the search and advertising juggernaut not only infringes a patent it owns by preparing the launch of a similar service called Google Trusted Stores, but… → Read More
Timelines Inc., a small venture capital-backed Chicago company that operates the Timelines.com website, has launched a trademark-infringement suit against Facebook on Thursday, claiming that the latter’s recently announced Timeline feature could “quite possibly eliminate” its entire business.
Timelines.com is a website that basically allows people to record and share personal or historic… → Read More
Satirical, bizarre and amusing news website Fark has kicked the fark out of a patent troll called Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC. The original lawsuit was leveraged in January, claiming Fark infringed on a patent that covered a “method of inputing news releases into a web form, which would then compile the news release and email it to media outlets.”
The patent, for those who know Fark, has… → Read More
Yesterday, PayPal filed a lawsuit against Google and two of its executives for stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit came on the same day that Google announced its mobile wallet plans involving Android phones with NFC chips. The two executives, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, previously worked at PayPal. In fact, Bedier was in charge of negotiating a deal with Google on behalf of PayPal for… → Read More
After two years, LGE and Vizio have settled their differences over patent-infringement disputes in both the US and Taiwan. This legal battle had to do with their flat-panel TVs, but terms weren’t disclosed as to what and how it was settled. But the settlement did end in a licensing agreement “that will resolve all outstanding patent disputes and related actions.” → Read More
Earlier today I reported on a class action lawsuit against Facebook which argued that when it comes to teenagers, the social network should not be able to use their name or likeness to promote either Facebook itself or on behalf of advertisers without parental consent. “If you don’t like the law, change the law, John C. Torjesen, one of the lawyers bringing the suit, tells me. “But I think… → Read More
Some people don’t like ads. But a new class action lawsuit in California against Facebook (embedded below) thinks it should be illegal for teenagers to like any ads without first obtaining parental consent.
We’ve written before about the legal implications of using the likeness of Facebook members in advertising, but this time it is not a joke. And the issue is Facebook’s “Like” button, not… → Read More
Scapegaming, the company that had set up and was running a private World of Warcraft server until Blizzard’s lawyers went after ‘em, now has to cough up some $88M in damages. There’s no question that Scapegaming had it coming to them, but $88M? Man alive! → Read More
You Americans have all the good stuff. Stuff like BP pumping oil in the Ocean and guns, lots of guns. And then you have Netflix and we people outside the U.S. are wondering what could it feel like to have a service like that. Now I know. → Read More
While the producers of Hurt Locker have been quick to sue anyone they can find that’s downloaded the film, they’re not following the typical pattern of movie producers. Typically, after the producers start suing everyone they can find that downloaded the movie, they send out cease and desist orders. Not in this case. → Read More
It is over. The SCO’s long-running lawsuit against Novell over a number of patents involved around Unix copyright. In short, SCO claimed to own Unix even after Novell bought it back near the turn of the century. SCO’s patent-trolling has been shameless. The once great company reduced itself to a lawsuit machine and essentially attacked IBM and Novell for years. You can read all about… → Read More
It’s no secret that I’m a big Free Software fan. It’s no secret that IBM is a giant company with more money than I can possibly imagine. So I was pretty happy in 2005 when IBM, in an obvious PR stunt to get buddy-buddy with the open source community, made its Statement of Non-Assertion of Named Patents Against OSS, ostensibly saying that it would permit open source projects to use any of the items… → Read More
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