05/24, 3:57pm
Terms of deal remain unclear
Apple has reportedly established a licensing agreement with patent holder SimpleAir, putting an end to the patent infringement battle that began late in 2009. SimpleAir had filed its original lawsuit in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Texas, a venue frequented by plaintiffs in intellectual-property lawsuits, however the settlement was said to have been reached shortly before the formal proceedings commenced.
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05/23, 10:19pm
Echoes PR that suit is 'fundamentally flawed'
Claiming that the Department of Justice is completely wrong in its approach and interpretation of the circumstances and public remarks of its entry into the e-book market, Apple has filed a formal response [PDF link] to the lawsuit that accuses it and major book publishers of conspiring to fix prices on e-books and undermine Amazon's ability to discount them. The response echoes Apple's few public statements on the matter, saying it fostered competition where Amazon would have destroyed it.
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05/21, 2:57pm
Search giant asked to address issues
European Union antitrust regulators have threatened Google with fines and a formal antitrust lawsuit if the search giant does not move to resolve lingering concerns. European Commission vice president JoaquAn Alumnia has found evidence of anticompetitive wrongdoing, however regulators are enabling the company to make a "commitment decision" as an alternative to litigation and a potential fine.
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05/18, 8:25pm
Legal battle focuses on ActiveSync tech
Microsoft has won an International Trade Commission ruling that may result in an import ban on several Motorola devices. The companies are involved in several separate intellectual-property disputes, though the latest ITC ruling focuses on a lawsuit filed by Microsoft over patented Exchange ActiveSync technology.
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05/16, 3:00am
Class-action civil suit fires back at 'overpriced' e-books
In addition to the lawsuit from the Department of Justice and 17 states against Apple and two major publishers alleging the companies conspired to keep e-book prices artificially high, a US District Court judge yesterday approved a class-action civil lawsuit targeting Apple and five major publishers on the same charges, filed "on behalf of e-book customers." The judge rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in a strongly-worded opinion.
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05/15, 10:36pm
Apple claims Siri works fine, user error and opportunism
Apple has filed to dismiss a range of lawsuits filed against it over the performance of Siri, the digital assistant featured on the iPhone 4S. Apple contends in its motion that the plaintiffs in the case lack standing to pursue their case, have improperly interpreted Apple's advertising of Siri, and have failed to pursue other means of redress beyond litigation.
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05/14, 10:32pm
E-mail predicted bad behavior by Amazon
As the e-book lawsuit from the Justice Department against Apple and two other publishers expands, some recently-unsealed evidence shows that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs personally intervened to convince a holdout major publisher that the "agency model" -- a standard pricing model in the book industry that lets publishers set prices for books -- was the way to go, and succeeded in convincing the publisher.
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05/14, 7:15pm
Judge says patent conduct of Motorola not in good faith
Motorola's patent demands and conduct were condemned by a judge overseeing a preliminary ITC ruling against Microsoft. Administrative Law Judge David Shaw wrote an initial determination, entering public records in a redacted state last week, stating that assurances on reasonable licensing of standards-essential patents "were misleading."
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05/11, 6:28pm
Passing Facebook passwords to employers being blocked in California
The state of California is close to banning requests from employers to interviewees and the workforce in general for Facebook login details. Assembly Bill 1844, passed yesterday, would protect workers from being asked for their social-network usernames and passwords, minimizing personal liability from disclosing private information.
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05/08, 8:47pm
Says dispute will have to be settled in Hong Kong
Proview's attempt to assert the legal argument that it was duped into selling the iPad trademark to Apple in the US has failed, with Judge Mark Pierce of the California Superior Court dismissing the lawsuit per Apple's request. The court said Proview had failed to show any reason why the dispute couldn't be resolved in Hong Kong, where the two companies are currently before the second-highest level Chinese courts.
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05/07, 6:00pm
No decision on fair use, trial continues
The jury assigned to the Oracle versus Google lawsuit has returned a partial verdict. On the matter of API copyright infringement, Google has been found to have violated the sequence, structure, and organization of 37 Java API copyrights. However, whether or not the infringement was fair use remains to be decided, as the jury was unable to break through a previously reported impasse on the matter. Judge Alsop is not waiting for motions from either side, and is immediately moving forward with the next phase, the patent phase, of the trial.
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05/04, 8:23pm
Judge urges Oracle vs Google jury to reconvene
The jury in the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit has reached a partial verdict on three of four questions that they were required to consider as part of the copyright liability phase of the trial. The foreman said that a minority of the jury felt that more time would be helpful in reaching agreement on all four questions. Judge Alsup pointed out that the jurors did not need to reach a unanimous agreement on the fourth question, but the foreman told the Judge the impasse was on one of the three questions (embedded below) that required full agreement.
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05/02, 9:50am
Separate suits filed in the US and Germany
Nokia has filed several separate lawsuits against HTC, ViewSonic and Research In Motion. The latter companies are accused of patent infringement for technology that is claimed to be protected by as many as 45 different patents related to hardware and software.
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04/27, 6:25pm
Now alleges 12 patent violations by Facebook
The patent struggle between Yahoo and Facebook took another turn today, with Yahoo adding two more patents to its list of alleged infringements by Facebook. The move, which brings the total number of alleged Facebook infringements to 12, came in response to Facebook's own countersuit against Yahoo, in which the social network claimed that Yahoo had infringed on 10 Facebook patents.
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04/23, 4:20pm
New case started by Voltage Pictures in Florida
Voltage Pictures is back in a federal Florida court, last week naming at least 2,514 BitTorrent users in a new lawsuit. Last May, it sued about 10 times that number of alleged file sharers for the loss of income resulting from illegally sharing the studio's Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker blockbuster. Then, it listed nearly 25,000 alleged infringing users at once, the biggest such lawsuit in the US.
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04/18, 6:50pm
Book publisher seeks trial based on ip evidence
Book publisher John Wiley and Sons has named people accused of sharing books online and is calling for a trial with jury. If the trial goes ahead, this will be the first time a case based on evidence from BitTorrent will be tested in court.
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04/12, 6:45pm
New judge agrees to limited intervention
Courts have finally allowed Apple to involve itself in an ongoing lawsuit filed by Lodsys against a number of app developers. Apple in June filed a motion to intervene, however the request was met by opposition from Lodsys and further stalled as the case was swapped to Judge Rodney Gilstrap.
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04/12, 5:55pm
Lawsuit attacks carrier claiming illegal profits
AT&T faces a class action lawsuit with accusations that the network helps cellphone thieves by reactivating stolen phones and telling customers that the calls to and from the handsets cannot be blocked. This comes after an agreement by the FCC and major carriers to form a stolen phone database in an attempt to prevent this happening in future.
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04/11, 11:25am
GameStop settlement offers customer restitution
GameStop has settled a class-action lawsuit concerning advertised downloadable content not being included in used games being resold. Under the settlement terms, the game retailer must warn potential buyers from California online and in-store that certain content may require an additional purchase.
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04/05, 9:25pm
Company increasing fight against spam
Twitter has announced that it has filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco federal court against five companies that are claimed to profit from spamming operations. The suit is said to be not limited to just spammers themselves, but also the developers that have created tools that are used to spread bulk marketing messages via the social network.
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04/04, 9:50pm
Botched search backfired on company, police
The attorney for the man accused by Apple of having pilfered an iPhone 4S prototype from a San Francisco bar last summer has suddenly gone silent on the case and refuses to confirm or deny the possibility of a settlement. Lawyer David Monroe had announced near the end of last year that settlement discussions had ended "and we're moving forward" with a lawsuit against Apple with his client, Sergio Calderone, reports NetworkWorld.
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04/03, 8:45pm
Misinterpretation 'unprofessional and unacceptable
Federal Judge Richard A. Posner, in rejecting an motion to reconsider parts of his favorable Claim Construction Order of March 29th that adopted Apple's broad interpretation of its scrolling patent against Motorola, ripped into the unnamed Apple attorneys that filed the brief [PDF link], calling it "troubling" and accusing Apple of wasting the court's time. The lawyers had apparently misinterpreted a section of the judge's original order and made arguments that parts of the order were in error.
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03/29, 11:55pm
H.264 lawsuit continues to unfold
Microsoft has reportedly asked a US court to prohibit Motorola from immediately enforcing a potential injunction if the latter company wins a ruling in German courts. As noted in Florian Mueller's blog, the software giant has offered to establish a $300 million bond to cover potential licensing fees and prevent Motorola from interrupting product shipments until a Seattle lawsuit has come to a conclusion.
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03/29, 11:00pm
LA man says he can't get it to work properly
A second lawsuit has been filed regarding Siri, the voice-capable assistant in the iPhone 4S, this time in Los Angeles. The suit alleges that Apple is overselling Siri's abilities in its TV advertising, echoing an earlier one filed by a New York City resident, claiming that Siri doesn't understand the plaintiff or provides the wrong answer after a long delay. The new lawsuit seeks "relief and damages" for "false and deceptive" representations, and has applied for class-action status.
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03/27, 10:50am
T-Mobile USA sued for selling NFC-ready phones
Chip-based smart card maker On Track Innovations has sued T-Mobile USA because it sells phones equipped with NFC chips. OTI claims such phones violate its patents, though why it doesn't sue the makers of the phones themselves or other carriers that sell the very same phones in some cases isn't known. The lawsuit was filed in a New York federal court, though details such as the amount of damages or a licensing agreement sought haven't been revealed.
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03/26, 3:45pm
Facebook fends off lawsuit with Harvard e-mails
Facebook has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against it armed with copies of e-mails sent between the plaintiff and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg from their Harvard days. Wood-pellet salesman Paul Ceglia sued Zuckerberg for 50 percent of his stake in the world's largest social network, claiming a contract was made between him and Zuckerberg. The Facebook motion stated that said contract was a forgery, as are the e-mails, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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03/23, 2:55pm
Company owns thousands of audio, video titles
Entertainment company ValCom has filed a lawsuit against Megaupload, demanding compensation for alleged copyright infringement. The company is said to hold the copyrights for over 6,000 audio and video titles, many of which it claims were found to be illegally distributed through the file sharing service.
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03/22, 10:10am
TiVo, Microsoft come to lawsuit agreement
Microsoft has now dropped its patent lawsuit against TiVo for allegedly violating its Mediaroom video purchasing and delivery patents. TiVo may have had to stop selling its set-top boxes in the US had Microsoft continued the lawsuit and been successful. The move was revealed by TiVo in an 8-K filing with the SEC, as it's needed to disclose this information to investors.
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03/07, 8:40pm
Comments follow fresh lawsuit
Less than a day after Samsung filed a fresh lawsuit against Apple, the Korean company has stepped up its public rhetoric as the patent war continues to escalate. Samsung's telecommunication division head, Shin Jong-kyun, told the Korea Times the company would accept "no compromise" in the ongoing legal battles.
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03/05, 9:30pm
Suit targets tech used in iPhones and iPads
Apple is facing yet another lawsuit, as Mosaid subsidiary Core Wireless Licensing accuses the handset maker of infringing on eight patents. The suit targets several current Apple devices, including most iPhone and iPad variants, along with any similar products that the company will release in the future.
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02/27, 6:15pm
PanoMap sues Apple, Google over Street View patent
Apple and Google are both named as defendants in a new patent lawsuit initiated by Florida-based PanoMap Technologies. In contention is a patent for an "interactive system for displaying detailed view and direction in panoramic images." PanoMap wants three times the damages from both giants because they have allegedly knew about the patent but ignored it. Proof of their knowledge is in Apple's visiting of a website in 2007 that contained the patent while Google reportedly cited it in a patent application of its own, PanoMap claims.
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02/22, 10:40pm
Total reimbursement said to reach millions
Samsung has reportedly agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that centers around defective televisions that the company has sold over the past several years. The settlement entitles affected customers to receive up to $650 to cover the cost of diagnosis, shipping and past or future repairs.
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02/22, 5:55pm
Suit centers around four patents
Comcast has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Sprint in a Pennsylvania court, accusing the latter of violating several patents related to wireless network technology. The suit centers around four patents that were issued between 1999 and 2010, covering technology ranging from backhaul to USB modems and MMS/SMS messaging systems.
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02/08, 6:25pm
Company expands patent litigation
A Texas court is finally ready to hear arguments in a high-profile patent lawsuit that names tech giants Google, Amazon and Yahoo among a list of defendants. The companies are attempting to defend themselves against a suit filed by a patent holding company, Eolas Technologies, that accuses the group of violating several patents related to "interactive web" technology.
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02/03, 6:55am
Stakes raised in Apple case against Samsung
Apple has initiated a massive expansion of its lawsuit against Samsung in Australia, according the The Australian. Its lawsuit now encompasses 278 claims across 22 patents that cover 10 Samsung devices, some of which are yet to go on sale locally. In its initial claim against Samsung, which had resulted in a temporary ban on the sale of its Galaxy Tab 10.1, Apple had chosen to test only three of its patents.
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01/31, 8:35pm
Counterfeit battery pack cases to be destroyed
Two online petitions that look to address issues around claims of factory worker abuse among the Chinese suppliers of Apple and other electronics firms have been launched online, while accessory maker Mophie has won a case against a counterfeit case producer in Texas.
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01/23, 9:25pm
Chicago case common in insurance disputes
An unusual arrangement between Apple, a nearby train station and the contractors who did work on both has resulted in a lawsuit from Colony Insurance against Apple, the Chicago Transit Authority and contractor Petter Construction Company over liability on an accident claim that originated when a woman slipped and fell in the construction area between the then-in-progress Lincoln Park Apple Store and the also-renovated subway station next door.
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01/05, 5:20pm
Terms of settlement unknown
Amazon has reportedly settled a patent infringement lawsuit that had focused on touchscreen technology used in the Kindle Fire. Court documents suggest the retailer and the plaintiff, Smartphone Technologies, have resolved the dispute and moved to have the lawsuit dismissed, though the terms of the deal remain unclear.
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12/19, 4:35pm
Cablevision, Verizon settle ad lawsuit
Cablevision on Monday said it would drop a lawsuit it filed earlier this month against Verizon over allegedly releasing misleading ads about the speed of Cablevision's Internet services. A Monday report maintains the two companies have reached an agreement in the matter outside of the courts, though the details weren't made public. Verizon ran ads that stated Cablevision delivers only 59 percent of its advertised Internet speeds during peak hours, which were based on an FCC study.
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12/13, 9:35pm
Move comes after negotiations fail to materialize
The Authors Guild has reportedly asked a New York federal court judge to certify the class of authors in a lawsuit against Google. The move is an essential step in transitioning toward a class-action lawsuit, which will push the longstanding dispute back into the courts after the search giant and trade group failed to reach a settlement agreement.
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12/02, 12:00pm
Microsoft: WP7 location suit doesn't list damages
Microsoft has tried to dismiss the lawsuit that alleges its Windows Phone handsets illegally collect location information on its users. A Thursday WithinWindows report revealed that Microsoft back on November 18 filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that plaintiff Rebecca Cousineau hasn't shown any inflicted damages to her or those she represents. The motion to dismiss (PDF) is full of quoted precedent cases that possibly support Microsoft's claim.
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11/21, 11:20pm
Government seeking outside help
The US Department of Justice has reportedly received permission to share internal AT&T documents with outside parties. The ruling essentially enables government lawyers to establish a deeper level of collaboration with civilian consultants and outside lawyers in its lawsuit aiming to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile.
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11/16, 11:40pm
Parties fail to reach early agreement
Software company Basis International has filed a lawsuit against Research In Motion, accusing the latter company of trademark infringement. The dispute centers around the term "BBX", which RIM uses as a label for its latest mobile operating system. Basis claims it has been using the same term for software that runs on desktop platforms, such as Windows and Mac OS, and products that are used by developers who create apps for iOS and Android.
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10/24, 9:00pm
Participants will get $3.25 iTunes credit
Apple has opted to settle a long-standing class-action lawsuit brought about by the change in pricing to some songs in the iTunes Store and the wording on gift cards that were available for purchase at the time, AppleInsider reports. Originally filed by Gabriel Johnson in July of 2009, the lawsuit charged Apple with deception by distributing cards that stated songs cost 99 cents, when it then raised the price of some songs to $1.29. Participants will receive $3.25 in iTunes credit.
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09/21, 6:05pm
Judge refuses to consolidate cases
The Department of Justice lawsuit against the proposed AT&T buyout of T-Mobile has finally received a solid schedule, with trial proceedings to officially begin on February 13. Judge Ellen Huvelle allocated six weeks for the trial, however lawyers representing both sides reportedly claimed that such a length would not prove necessary.
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09/15, 8:50pm
Members voice support for merger
Fifteen Democrat members of the House of Representatives have sent a letter asking President Obama to find a quick resolution to the Department of Justice lawsuit against AT&T's proposed T-Mobile buyout. The group, headed by North Carolina Representative Heath Shuler, argues that a settlement and approval of the deal will have a positive effect on the economy and job creation.
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09/08, 5:50am
Apple sues Samsung in Japan
Apple has initiated a new lawsuit against Samsung, this time in Japan. Reuters reports that Apple is suing Samsung for similar patent violations relating to the iPhone and the iPad as it has in several other countries around the world. It is the latest in a string of lawsuits and counter-suits between the two companies in an ongoing and increasingly acrimonious battle unfolding across several continents.
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09/07, 6:50pm
Carriers to meet with DoJ
A federal judge has reportedly scheduled a status conference for the Department of Justice lawsuit against AT&T and T-Mobile. All parties have been asked to be prepared to "discuss the prospects for settlement" at the hearing, which is slated for September 21, while a case management and scheduling plan must be presented by September 16.
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08/22, 8:55pm
Ruling could leave door open for locker services
MP3tunes has lost a copyright infringement lawsuit originally filed by EMI, however the judge tossed many of the record label's DMCA claims that were viewed as a threat to other music locker services. Judge William Pauley agreed that MP3tunes violated EMI copyrights by failing to remove pirated tracks from its customers' music lockers after pulling the same listings from Sideload.com, a music search engine that operated alongside the locker service.
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08/17, 5:35pm
Terms of deal remain unknown
Various music publishers and the National Music Publishers Association have agreed to settle their lawsuit against Google's video sharing site, YouTube. The class-action lawsuit originally claimed YouTube was actively encouraging copyright violations, as users uploaded content that included music videos, album tracks, movies and television programs.
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