Department of Justice

The Department of Justice’s monumental Apple antitrust case appears weak.

Still, the civil lawsuit, filed Thursday, represents the biggest legal challenge to Apple’s power in the company’s 47-year history. If successful, the lawsuit could force Apple to fundamentally change the way it makes products and conducts business. A similar action against Microsoft in the 1990s significantly curtailed that company’s reach and power.

But the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple appears to be based on old and outdated information, and Apple has already — or is about to — address most of the major concerns.

The Department of Justice and 16 state attorneys general filed an blockbuster antitrust lawsuit Thursday aimed at forcing Apple to open up many aspects of its ecosystem, from the App Store to Apple Watch.

The 88-page civil suit, which accuses Apple of wielding monopoly-like power, could bring truly sweeping changes to iPhone, Mac and other Apple computers.

Apple is disputing the interference of the U.S. Justice Department in a copyright suit against software maker Corellium as questions arise as to why the federal government is now involved in the case.

The Department of Justice has now intervened in the case asking Apple to delay its request for a deposition of Corellium cofounder Chris Wade, and inquiring to what evidence Apple is planning on presenting before its lawyers question Wade.

Apple’s biggest competition from China just got hit with the R.I.C.O.

The FBI and US Department of Justice revealed this afternoon 16 charges filed against Huawei, one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers. Prosecutors claim Huawei conspired to steal trade secrets, commit wire fraud and conspired to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

We’re still digging into the 56-page indictment, but it looks like Huawei was on a two-decade-long streak of keepin it gangsta.

The Department of Justice has ordered Apple and Google to turn over names, phone numbers and IP addresses for users of a gun scope app that allows gun owners to calibrate scopes and capture video.

Data privacy activists say the government’s ask would set a “dangerous precedent,” giving officials access to data on thousands of innocent people.

The long-awaited merger between T-Mobile and Sprint could finally be approved by the Department of Justice this week. The deal requires the agreement of the DoJ in order to proceed.

Provided that it goes through, the merger will create a company valued at $160 billion. The merged companies will also have to help establish a new fourth wireless competitor to replace the one being taken away.

The Department of Justice is investigating whether AT&T and Verizon colluded to subvert the primary goal of electronic SIMs. This new tech makes it easy to switch between service providers, something to two largest wireless carriers apparently wanted to prevent. 

Apple uses an eSIM in the Apple Watch Series 3. And last year this company formally complained to the DoJ that the two carriers were pressuring an international standards body to make an anticompetitive change to this emerging tech. 

Apple says it is cooperating with U.S. government agencies investigating the company’s decision to throttle CPU speeds on iPhones with older batteries.

The official statement from Apple this morning comes a day after news broke that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating whether Apple broke any securities laws.

Investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into whether or not Apple violated securities laws when it disclosed that it throttles CPU speeds on some iPhones.

Apple revealed at the beginning of the year that it intentionally lowers the speed on iPhones with older batteries to prevent unwanted crashes. Customers in numerous counties have filed lawsuits against the iPhone maker. Now it appears that the feds are getting ready to weigh in.

The FBI dropped its case against Apple to hack the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, but the Department of Justice filed a new letter today demanding Apple help it unlock a different iPhone.

The iPhone in question belonged to meth deal Jun Feng in New York. Federal authorities believe the device may contain critical evidence and plan to appeal a ruling made by a magistrate judge in Brooklyn who decided the government can’t force Apple to hack its own device.

In its letter of appeal, the DoJ argues that because Apple helped prosecutors unlock at least 70 iPhones in the past, the company should do it again.

The Justice Department may have dropped its suit against Apple after successfully gaining access to the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, but according to Apple the case should never have been brought to begin with.

In a statement, Apple doubles-down on its beliefs about the importance of user privacy. Check out the company’s words of wisdom below:

The Department of Justice has removed all legal action against Apple after the FBI successfully hacked the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone without assistance from Cupertino.

Apple and the FBI have been fighting a very public legal battle over whether the government can force the iPhone-maker to create a backdoor into iOS. Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly defied a federal court order to deliberately weaken iOS security for millions of users, but it appears that the feds are backing down — at least for now.

The Department of Justice has pulled another surprise on Apple this week by making a last minute request to turn the company’s court appearance on March 22nd with the FBI into an evidentiary hearing.

Apple lawyers told reporters this morning that they were caught-off guard by the last minute request which should have been submitted weeks ago.

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a new motion in court today regarding its battle against Apple to compel the iPhone-maker to unlock the iPhone 5c that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

In the new filing the feds argue that Apple has “deliberately raised technological barriers” on iOS to make it harder for the government and other attackers to hack Apple devices. They also claim that demanding Apple to unlock one iPhone won’t result in a security vulnerability for all users.

FBI director James Comey and his supporters suggest that making Apple break its iPhone encryption for the San Bernardino shooter case would be a one-off event, and not the start of a slippery slope into unwanted surveillance.

Well, it seems that someone needs to tell the Department of Justice that, because the D.O.J. is reportedly salivating at the thought of being able to hack iPhones for criminal investigations — with court orders being filed for Apple to help extract iPhone data in a further dozen cases around the U.S.

Not too surprisingly, the five major publishers originally named in the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book case regarding their collusion with Apple on pricing have now themselves filed a complaint regarding the Justice Department’s proposal to eliminate the use of the agency model in any Apple agreements with publishers for a period of five years.

Publishers like the agency model as it allows them to set prices for e-books, instead of the distributor, as Amazon did before Apple’s own iBooks system launched on the iPad.

The ongoing iBooks antitrust case between Apple and the United States Department of Justice took a very interesting twist this morning when the DoJ and 33 state Attorneys General laid out plans to remedy Apple’s wrongdoings and restore competition to the market.

The DoJ wants Apple to terminate all of its deals with book publishers, and refrain from entering into any new ones for at least five years. It also wants the company to start selling e-books from rivals like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Following a lengthy trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote has today ruled that Apple conspired to raise the price of e-books. Another trial for damages will follow at a later date, Reuters reports.

Eddy Cue is at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in lower Manhattan testifying in the Department of Justice’s e-books antitrust case, and he’s been sharing more information on the work that went into developing iBooks prior to its launch in 2010.

Cue reveled that Steve Jobs, then Apple’s CEO, chose to give away a free copy of Winnie-the-Pooh not just because he liked the book, but because its colorful illustrations showcased the capabilities of digital e-books in the iBooks app.

Walter Isaacson, the author of the best-selling biography about Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, will not have to share his notes or testify in an ongoing lawsuit over alleged eBook price fixing between Apple and book publishers.

Lawyers wanted to see Isaacson’s notes from interviews with Jobs in an effort to establish Apple’s agreements with publishers, but Isaacson refused to hand them over, citing a New York law that allows journalists to shield their sources.

Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs threatened Palm CEO Edward Colligan with patent litigation if he did not agree to stop poaching Apple employees, according to a court filing that was made public on Tuesday.

Confidential emails between the pair, along with documents from Adobe and Google, have surfaced in a civil lawsuit that claims a number of major companies in Silicon Valley violated antitrust rules by entering into agreements not to recruit each other’s employees. Five employees are now fighting for class action status and damages for lost wages as a result of the “no-hire” agreements.

In a somewhat ironic move, the U.S. government has entered into an ebook deal with Apple that will see a range of government reports, documents, and ebooks published in Apple’s iBookstore. The partnership, which was announced earlier this week, coincides with the Department of Justice’s latest legal filings in its anti-trust suit against Apple.

The deal with the Government Printing Office (GPO) will make a wide swath of documents and ebooks available through the iBookstore. While some government documents are available for free, a number of documents and full-length ebooks are not.

It’s long been rumored that the Department of Justice would file an antitrust suit against Apple for e-book price fixing, but now it’s happening, as the United States DoJ just filed such a suit against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin.

At issue here is Apple’s attempt to overthrow Amazon’s hegemony on e-book selling by collaborating with publishers ahead of the iBookstore launch to standardize how much is charged for e-books, not just through Apple, but through Amazon as well.

With the U.S. Department of Justice gearing up to slap Apple with an antitrust lawsuit, the Cupertino company has spoken out over claims it has teamed up with publishers to raise the price of e-books, and downplayed the threat from Amazon’s Kindle. It argues that it gave publishers the opportunity to set their own prices, and that it cannot be blamed for e-book price hikes.

After 13 years, Microsoft will no longer be scrutinized by the Department of Justice. The timing is apt, because Apple has supplanted Microsoft as the biggest company in tech — and with Apple’s rise in fortunes come its own anti-trust concerns.