Apple legal battles

August 14, 1991: As Apple and Microsoft head to court to battle each other, the tide begins to turn against Cupertino and its claims that Windows unlawfully copies the look and feel of Mac OS. A judge’s ruling calls into question the basic tenet of Apple’s copyright lawsuit against Microsoft over Windows 2.03.

The case concerns whether key elements of Apple’s operating system are original enough for copyright protection. The decision turns out to be a major blow against Apple — and the start of the company’s 1990s decline.

Apple faces a $32.5 billion lawsuit over how its Photos app scans and stores faces. A federal judge cleared the case to proceed as a class action late last month, allowing millions of Illinois iPhone owners to join.

The case has been years in the making, and Apple has fought to shut it down at nearly every turn. Now it heads back to the court, with the company’s privacy practices on trial.

Three iPhone owners sued Apple last week over a fake Sparrow Wallet app they say they downloaded from the App Store. The plaintiffs say using the bogus app led to the theft of their Bitcoin, resulting in losses of roughly $1.8 million.

The lawsuit, Ramirez et al v. Apple, Inc., accuses Cupertino of failing to catch the scam app despite years of marketing the App Store as a safe place to download software.

July 25, 1989: Apple suffers a major setback in its copyright-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft for allegedly stealing the Mac’s “look and feel” to create Windows.

Apple sued Microsoft on 189 counts of copyright infringement relating to Windows 2.0.3. The judge overseeing the case throws out 179 of them. This paves the way for Microsoft’s dominance over Apple in the coming decade.

Apple is facing a new Hide My Email lawsuit, and it does not look good. A proposed class-action suit claims the company sold customers privacy promises it couldn’t deliver on.

The suit says Apple knew about a certain flaw in its address-hiding feature for more than a year, but kept marketing Hide My Email as airtight privacy the whole time.

July 16, 2014: Apple agrees to pay $450 million to resolve the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against the company over e-book pricing in the iBooks Store. In the e-books lawsuit, Apple stands accused of conspiring with five major book publishers to fix prices on digital books.

After all five publishers settle their claims outside of court, Apple becomes the only one to go to trial. The e-books lawsuit settlement closes the book on a bad chapter in Apple’s history.

Apple just got a proposed class-action lawsuit wiped off its plate — and it’s a big one. A federal judge on Monday dismissed a case that accused the company of failing to stop child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from spreading through iCloud, a lawsuit that sought as much as $32.8 billion in damages.

U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled that Apple would be shielded from the claims by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the 1996 law that protects online platforms from being sued over content their users upload. The judge tossed the case with prejudice, so it’s gone for good.

Apple seems to have gone to unusual lengths to keep one man out of its trade-secret lawsuit against OpenAI: Jony Ive.

However, the legal battle could end up with Apple’s former design chief taking the stand. And that could rattle Apple’s cordial relationship with Ive, who’s helping OpenAI build AI-powered gadgets that threaten the iPhone’s dominance.

Apple sued OpenAI in federal court on Friday, accusing the ChatGPT maker of orchestrating a broad campaign to obtain Apple’s confidential hardware technology by hiring its former employees.

It relates to an effort by OpenAI to develop its own devices with AI built in — products that might someday replace the iPhone and other smartphones.

OpenAI hasn’t been subtle about its plans to compete with Apple hardware, especially after it began working closely with Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief.

Apple just responsded to three YouTube channels that filed a lawsuit against the company earlier this year over AI training data — and Cupertino isn’t apologizing. In short, its defense is that these creators uploaded the videos online for free, so they shouldn’t be shocked that Apple looked at them.

Even if you haven’t uploaded a video in your life, here’s why you should care. This lawsuit is about how AI features baked into your iPhone actually got smart, and whether the people who made it possible got anything for it.

June 13, 2013: Apple exec Eddy Cue takes the stand to defend the company’s iBooks business strategy in an antitrust case regarding e-book pricing.

Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, runs the iBooks Store initiative. His testimony proves vital to a case brought by the Department of Justice, in which potential damages climb well into the nine figures.

A once promising partnership between Apple and OpenAI could be heading for a legal confrontation, according to a report published Thursday.

OpenAI has been providing artificial intelligence services for iPhone and Mac users since 2024, but the deal is souring behind the scenes, with the software developer reportedly unhappy that it’s not getting much benefit from the partnership.

March 26, 2010: Apple pays up to settle a trademark dispute with Japanese multinational Fujitsu over the name “iPad” in the United States.

It comes two months after Apple CEO Steve Jobs first showed off the iPad, and around a week before the tablet will land in stores. As it happens, it’s not the first time Apple battled over the name for one of its new products.

March 14, 1994: Apple introduces the Power Macintosh 7100, a midrange Mac that will become memorable for two reasons.

The first is that it is among the first Macs to use new PowerPC processors. The second is that it results in Apple getting taken to court by astronomer Carl Sagan — not once but twice.

December 19, 2007: Apple settles a lawsuit with reporter Nick Ciarelli, resulting in the shuttering of Think Secret, his masssively popular Apple rumors website. Writing under the screen name Nick de Plume, the Harvard University student broke a number of Apple stories on the site, raising Cupertino’s ire.

The terms of Ciarelli’s settlement with Apple remain secret. In a statement, he says he will “be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”

November 13, 2013: Apple and Samsung head back to court to determine how much the Korean company must pay for having copied the iPhone. Cupertino asks Samsung for $379 million in damages for ripping off key iPhone technical and design features.
Apple arrives at that number based on estimated lost profits, royalty rates and the $3.5 billion worth of copyright-infringing devices Samsung sold during the period in question.

October 9, 1991: A court orders Apple to pay $26.5 million to Apple Corps, The Beatles’ record label and holding company, for trademark infringement. The end of this Beatles versus Apple lawsuit marks the second time Cupertino is forced to pay the English rock band.

The ruling comes a decade after Apple swore it would never get into the music business.

Elon Musk’s xAI filed a lawsuit on Monday against Apple and OpenAI claiming they’re conspiring to stifle competition in artificial intelligence apps.

This comes two weeks after Musk took to social media to complain that the No. 1 Top Free App in the iPhone App Store at the time was OpenAI’s ChatGPT, not the Grok app from xAI, an AI startup that the billionaire owns.

A redesigned blood oxygen measurement capability will arrive Thursday for Apple Watch models that lost access to the feature due to a patent dispute.

Apple found a workaround that involves the Apple Watch testing the user’s blood oxygenation level, then displaying the reading on a paired iPhone.

Update: Apple released iOS 18.6.1 and watchOS 11.6.1 with the promised workaround.

When we polled Cult of Mac readers on what feature they want most in Apple Watch Series 11, the answer came through loud and clear: Bring back the Blood Oxygen app! None of the rumored upcoming Apple Watch features drew more attention than one that went missing last year over a patent dispute.

Unfortunately, the Blood Oxygen app remains tied up in U.S. courts. Apple needs to work out the problem, and soon. The missing Blood Oxygen app is undoubtedly hurting Apple Watch sales and angering customers. And it’s only going to get worse when the Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3 launch next month — assuming Apple doesn’t come up with a workaround.

Multiple iPhone models might be blocked from import into the United States. The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that one of the companies that makes displays for iOS handsets infringes on the patents of another, and products that use the infringing displays face an import ban.

President Donald Trump has the option to veto the ban, however.

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday shot down Apple’s request to put a hold on a recent judge’s order that opens the App Store to more financial competition.

Apple already made the changes after being ordered to by the federal judge in April, but asked that they be put on hold during the appeal process. A federal appeals court denied the request.

Apple officially filed an appeal against the European Union’s Digital Markets Act interoperability requirements Friday. That’s no big surprise, and neither is the reason why. Apple argues the regulations pose significant privacy and security risks to iPhone users, while also stifling innovation.

Apple submitted its challenge to the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg, targeting the commission’s March decision that requires Apple to make iOS more compatible with rival products, including smartwatches, headphones and VR headsets.

Fortnite can once again be installed on iPhones and iPads in the United States, developer Epic Games announced triumphantly on Tuesday. The very popular game is back in the U.S. App Store.

The change comes almost five years after Apple banned the battle royale game in a spat with Epic over in-app payments.

UPDATE: Fortnite returned to the U.S. App Store on May 20.

Epic Games’ hope to get Fortnite reinstated on the U.S. iPhone App Store crashed and burned.  Apple used a letter from one of its lawyers to deny the attempt to let iPhone users in the United States install and play the popular game. This is the latest clash in a long-running dispute between the two companies.

Epic claimed Friday that Apple had also blocked Fortnite in Europe, which Apple denies.