Supreme Court

Because it’s connected to a wireless carrier, your iPhone can be used to locate you. Until this week, police could access this data on little more than a hunch — no Supreme Court location data ruling stood in their way. That changed on Monday.

The Supreme Court ruled that pulling your phone’s location history now counts as a Fourth Amendment search — no matter how short the window or whose server it sits on. Cops now need a real, individualized warrant before being able to dig through where your iPhone has been.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump does not have the authority to impose tariffs on imports coming into the United States from virtually every country. This could ease costs for U.S. companies that rely heavily on overseas manufacturing, including Apple.

In the months since Trump began broadly imposing tariffs, Apple paid billions in these import taxes. And it rearranged its supply chain to move some product assembly away from China, the country that the president made the primary focus of his tariff policy.

Apple is hoping to take its lawsuit with Epic Games all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on Monday received permission to hold off on making a significant change to the App Store ordered by lower courts until there’s a final decision by the high court.

This means the Mac-maker won’t have to change its App Store policy that prevents developers from sending customers to their websites to pay for apps or services… yet.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear Apple’s appeal of a $440 million judgment in one of many patent infringement suits brought by internet security firm VirnetX more than ten years ago.

The justices rejected Apple’s appeal in the long-running case in which a federal jury in 2016 found that Apple had infringed VirnetX’s patents and awarded $302 million. A judge later increased that amount to $439.7 million including interest and other costs.

Cupertino’s seemingly neverending legal battle with patent troll VirnetX Holding Corp. took another turn this week when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied Apple’s request to reconsider an original patent-infringement decision.

VirnetX and Apple have been fighting in courts for a decade over patents related to FaceTime and other secure communications. VirnetX, which doesn’t produce any products, previously won more than $503 million in damages, but courts subsequently threw out the award.

Apple today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the DACA program — an Obama-era policy that gave some legal status to children of illegal immigrants. The Trump Administration ordered it shut down, and it’s in legal limbo.

The “friend of the court” filing by Apple was signed by CEO Tim Cook, and it’s not the first time he has spoken up for the “Dreamers.”

Apple’s iPhone sales in the U.S. are starting to flatline, according to data from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Growth of the iPhone install base in the U.S. has been on a downward trend for years now, but CIRP’s latest report reveals that growth was at its slowest rate ever during the first quarter of 2019.

Find out what’s going on in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine for iOS.

Or read on to get the rest of the week’s best Apple news, reviews and how-tos in your browser.

A lawsuit targeting Apple and the App Store will be allowed to proceed, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided.

The case involves whether or customers technically buy apps from Apple, or whether Apple is a middleman connecting app developers with consumers. The Supreme Court ruled against Apple on Monday by 5 votes to 4.

Apple’s legal team could soon be headed to the Supreme Court to face an antitrust case being levied against the company.

U.S. Supreme Court justices heard an hour of arguments for an antitrust lawsuit against Apple today. The nine justices appeared to be open to letting the lawsuit move up to the highest court. If Apple loses, we could see huge changes in the App Store.

The Supreme Court handed down a number of high-profile rulings this week. One that didn’t get much attention will have a negative effect on Apple Pay.

The SCOTUS decided that retail store owners who accept American Express can not suggest to customers who bring out this card that they use another method of payment. That includes Apple Pay, even though this iPhone payment system would save the merchant money.

The U.S. Supreme Court just handed down a victory for privacy advocates: police can no longer access mobile phone tracking data without a warrant.  

Wireless providers know which of its cell towers each of their customers is connected to, giving it a basic idea of where all of them are. Law enforcement agencies used to be able to obtain this data without permission from a judge.

If you buy your products online, you could soon find that they get a bit more expensive — due to a Supreme Court ruling that states can now require internet retailers to collect sales taxes. This decision ends 50 years of legal battles banning states from imposing sales taxes on purchases sold by out-of-state retailers.

“Our state is losing millions for education, health care and infrastructure, and our citizens are harmed by an uneven playing field,” said Marty Jackley, South Dakota’s attorney general, summing up the argument in favor of the decision.

Apple and dozens of other top tech companies filed a Supreme Court brief today in support of a transgender boy’s fight for equality.

In the case, Gavin Grimm, a transgender student from Virginia, is suing the Gloucester County School Board for creating a bathroom policy he says discriminates against transgender students by separating them from their peers.

2016 sent Apple for a wild ride full of fantastic new products, crazy controversies and tons of extra drama with its rivals.

Tim Cook and his colleagues probably can’t wait to jump into 2017. But before we start looking toward Apple’s future, let’s take a quick look back at all the stories that made 2016 a year Apple fans will never forget.

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to Apple Tuesday when it sided with Samsung in a smartphone patent battle that had the South Korean company staring at hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.

In a unanimous ruling, the Court ruled a patent violator does not have to turn over all its profits from sales if the stolen design involved certain components and the not the entire device.

U.S. Supreme Court justices appear to be confused over how much Apple’s patented iPhone design should worth.

Lawyers for Apple and Samsung faced off this morning at the nation’s highest court. The two sides argued whether breaking a design patent should be worth most of a product’s profits, or if the thousands of other patents that go into a smartphone should be viewed as equally valuable to the contribution of profits.

Billions of dollars and the future of patent law is at stake in the case that hinges on a law written in 1887. But the justices didn’t give much indication which side they’ll take.
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Samsung and Apple will go back to the Supreme Court this week as part of their never-ending legal battle over patents.

The Tuesday hearing will concern how much of the $399 million patent-infringement damages awarded against Samsung the South Korean tech giant should actually pay.

The U.S. Court of Appeals gave Apple another victory today in its five-year-long legal battle with Samsung.

Apple won its appeal in an 8-3 ruling that reinstated a previous patent-infringement verdict that awarded the company $119.6 million. The judges in the case said it was wrong for the three-judge panel to throw out the verdict in February and suggested Apple could be owed even more money.

In a petition to the Supreme Court, Apple says the high court shouldn’t waste its time with Samsung’s high-profile appeal in the two companies’ long legal battle over patents.

Samsung filed an appeal in December asking for the Supreme Court to take a look at how the damages were calculated, but Apple argues that even though it was awarded $548 million, the case is “legally unexceptional.”

Samsung agreed to finally pay Apple $548 million for the patent infringement case the iPhone-maker won way back in 2012, but it appears Samsung has had a change of heart and is now taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The company filed a 219-page appeal to the Supreme Court today, claiming that the way U.S. courts handle patent lawsuits isn’t fair because juries aren’t given enough information on how to understand the patents. Samsung is also disputing the way patent damages are calculated, noting that if multiple firms sue a company for design patent issues, the company could have to pay multiple times the profit they actually made.

The highest court in the land has spoken. Gay marriage is now legal and much of Facebook is celebrating Friday’s historic day with messages, memes and pictures.

Facebook will help you celebrate pride by letting you add a rainbow filter to your profile picture.

The steps are simple. I volunteered my profile picture above to demonstrate how easy it is to show your colors.

Apple was among a group of almost 400 companies which yesterday filed a so-called “friend of the court” brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that same-sex couples should have just as much of a right to marry as anyone else.

Interestingly, the brief doesn’t just focus on moral or ethical reasons that the Supreme Court should be on the right side of history, but actually makes a business case for the legalization of gay marriage; arguing that the confusing legality around the issue “places significant burdens on employers and their employees — making it increasingly hard to conduct business.”

Apple is an LGBT-friendly company that embraces all sorts of people as long as they are committed to excellence, so it’s bracing to see that they are urging the Supreme Court to support legalizing gay marriage.