Well, the lawyers have won again. Netflix settled the privacy lawsuit brought about by their last contest out of court, and canceled the next contest. Good thing we have outraged class action lawsuits to protect us! → Read More
They fought each other in courts in the USA, Europe, Japan and Korea since summer 2007, but now Samsung and Sharp finally settled [Sharp's official press release in English] all their ongoing lawsuits over LCD technology patents. The suits (initiated by Sharp) concerned a total of five different LCD-related technologies Sharp owned, i.e. regarding the “brightness, response speeds and viewing… → Read More
It appears that Apple has tipped their hand regarding the name of their expected tablet computer. Way back in September of 2009, Apple filed to oppose Fujitsu regarding the name, “iPad”. Apple hasn’t been aggressive about fighting for the name, but they did file for the name on an international scale, and they own that trademark. → Read More
Apple just dodged a bullet.
A New York federal judge dismissed a potential class action lawsuit which alleged that Apple propagated their popular iMac screens without disclosing certain manufacturing defects to its customers, saying that the allegations were too general to be considered.
The lawsuit stated that unwanted vertical lines would appear on the devices after the warranty period had… → Read More
Now that Apple has responded to Nokia’s patent lawsuit filed last October with its own countersuit today, we have a clearer picture of what the dispute is all about. As suspected, it is about money, specifically the patent licensing fees Nokia is trying to get out of Apple for wireless patents it holds and it alleges are infringed by the iPhone.
But more broadly, it is about Nokia missing the… → Read More
Good news in the lawsuit against Netflix and Blockbuster; the legal system for the great state of California has judged that the rental queue patent was not violated! → Read More
Despite the fact that the Kindle has been suggested as an almost perfect alternative to traditional textbooks, some schools have been reluctant to embrace it. This is due to a design issue that makes accessing the audiobook function somewhat difficult for the blind. → Read More
Electronics design studio Mintpass is treading a fine line. They’ve come up with a pretty cool concept, bit it’ll probably never make it to market. What have they done that’s so controversial? Created calculators based on the designs in Windows and OS X. → Read More
Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards,” which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it’s hard to tell… → Read More
It wasn’t too long ago that hackers were successful loading custom firmware onto Texas Instruments calculators. This hasn’t been sitting well with TI, who have been sending legal threats to the plucky hackers. I’m not surprised, are you? → Read More
Psystar, putter-togetherers of Hackintosh PCs, are suing Apple for monopolizing the market for premium computers, a move akin to a prairie dog popping its head up under a lawnmower. The lawsuit states:
“By tying its operating system to Apple-branded hardware, Apple restrains trade in personal computers that run Mac OS X, collects monopoly rents on its Macintoshes, and monopolizes the market for… → Read More
It seems that the Kindle 2 has an issue when used with the official protective case: it cracks. Obviously everyone that spent $30 on the case that’s suppose to protect the Kindle from such damage isn’t too happy right now. Amazon previously stated that owners were kind of out of luck and had to spend an additional $200 for a replacement but recently started replacing cracked Kindles. → Read More
Microsoft, a small company in Washington, has been hit by a $200 million lawsuit by a company in Toronto called i4i over some sort of XML tagging to Microsoft Word. That’s $200 million US, not CAD.
Microsoft would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids. → Read More
SCO, the operating system company that has been trying to make a living doing nothing but litigation, is back in the news! When we last heard from the beleaguered company they were facing Chapter 11, which as we all know is a reorganization process. Now the U.S. Trustee’s office says that it thinks SCO’s bankruptcy should switch to Chapter 7, liquidation. → Read More
A precarious lawsuit is currently in the news in Germany: According to various reports, a streetcar driver in the Southern city of Karlsruhe made pictures of his private parts with his phone camera (while being on duty). As if that alone isn’t stupid enough, the guy also sent the two pictures out to the world via Bluetooth. → Read More
TomTom announced today that Microsoft is suing them for patent infringement, however they denied that they had violated any of Microsoft’s patent rights. Microsoft said that it it taking legal action against the GPS maker after the two failed to reach a licencing agreement after more then a year of negotiation. → Read More
Earlier, Buffalo Inc. and Buffalo Technology, makers of external hard drives, monitors and other computer peripherals were sued by Australian science agency CSIRO who alleged that Buffalo’s Wi-Fi Products infringed on their U.S. Patent 5,487,069. This led to the district court issuing an injunction, ordering Buffalo to stop selling its allegedly infringing Wi-Fi products. In September… → Read More
Smaller, lesser known (to Joe Blow consumer) tech companies have been known to take on the big guys with lawsuits that may or may not hold up in court, but this one seems to hold a bit of water. At least it appears that way based on the Reuters and WSJ reports on the matter. Spansion, an offshoot of AMD, is accusing Samsung and four of its U.S. subsidiaries of infringing on multiple patents and… → Read More
Love ‘em or hate ‘em Klausner Technologies is firing up the lawyers again. The lawsuit-happy patent holding company has sued everybody from AOL to Apple and now has their sights set on Verizon and LG. → Read More
Psystar is suing Apple under the Sherman Antitrust Act saying that the EULA is a form of illicit tying and restrains trade. Psystar’s attorneys are calling Apple’s allegations of Psystar’s copyright infringement “misinformed and mischaracterized.” Psystar argues that its OpenComputer product is shipped with a fully licensed, unmodified copy of Mac OS X, and that the… → Read More
A lawsuit has been filed against Apple over the company’s “defective” iPhone 3G. The plaintiff, from Birmingham, Alabama, argues that the iPhone 3G is a piece of junk, with shoddy data transfer performance, lots of dropped called, an inconsistent 3G connection, and so on. (The case doesn’t mention hardware problems, like the easily breakable body.) Anyone who uses Twitter, you poor… → Read More
The RIAA is looking for people and is willing to sweep up whomever it needs to in order to accomplish its continuing goal of punishing piracy. Under a March court order, Tufts University and other ISP’s in the district are supposed to provide a list of possible violators when not able to provide names to a “reasonable degree of technical certainty.” MediaSentry has identified 11 IP… → Read More
Usually in a situation like this, Microsoft would just buy the offending company and absorb their essence into its being. Apparently that’s no so easy when the company is all Taiwanese and stuff — they’ve resorted to suing the poor deluded fools, who have apparently resisted multiple approaches to work this thing out peacefully. Since they’re infringing on a couple of… → Read More
Well it looks like the case between Psystar and Apple is going to get interesting. It’s been reported that a law firm that has taken on Apple in the past and won, has been retained by Psystar. The name of the California law firm is Carr & Ferrell and they specialize in intellectual property cases. You may remember them from the Burst.com case where in the end, Apple settled and paid them… → Read More
The modding issue has always been a touchy one. In case you’re not aware of it, there are available for almost every game console or handheld a number of hardware-based hacks that allow one to play pirated games and/or homebrew applications. These range from simple boot discs to soldering extra connectors to your console’s boards to simple flash drive-based frontends that take… → Read More
Scrabulous, which has been around for a few years, rocketed in popularity when developers made an application for Facebook. And that caught the eye of Scrabble makers, Hasbro, which recently released their own official version. And then sued Scrabulous. Now, I hate Scrabble as much as the next guy, but this is pretty low even for them. In essence, they let Scrabulous work the game back into the… → Read More
Nvidia and AMD have been accused of price fixing in the GPU market. The class action suit alleges that Nvidia and AMD colluded to keep prices artificially high, by releasing products at the same time and at similar prices. Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California read aloud an email which plaintiffs’ attorneys say contained evidence of a conspiracy to fix prices. Out of 9… → Read More
Last week Apple filed a copyright infringement suit against Psystar, alleging the company “misappropriated Apple’s proprietary software and intellectual property.” That’s no shocker, but that Apple is asking for, along with damages and an injunction, that every Psystar Mac OS-based OpenComputer be recalled, could turn into more than just the usual lawsuit. Psystar began selling the… → Read More
The NYT piece goes into great detail with quotes from random lawyers across the country and mostly just filler, but what you need to know is that only 2,676 angry citizens out of the eight plus million that purchased the game filed a complaint headed up by Seth R. Lesser and a few other lawyers. Lesser and his pack of wolves are seeking $1.3 million in compensation for their time and efforts while… → Read More
Back in December 2007 it was reported that Klausner Technologies was suing Apple and others for stealing its patent on visual voicemail. Today, Reuters is reporting that Apple will finally settle and license its patents on the technology. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but I’m sure it’s less than the $360 million suit originally filed against Apple and AT&T, I think. It… → Read More
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