Apple lawsuits - page 3

Ericsson takes lawsuit against Apple to Europe, wants up to $725 million per year

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Apple raked in the cash last quarter.
Apple could be about to hand over a whole lot of cash. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Claiming that Apple is infringing on several of its patents, Ericsson has ramped up its legal efforts against the company by expanding lawsuits to cover Germany, Britain and the Netherlands.

“Apple continues to profit from Ericsson’s technology without having a valid license in place,” said Kasim Alfalahi, chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson, adding that he is confident the courts will resolve the matter fairly.

Exec pleads guilty to leaking Apple sales figures, iPad info

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An former executive of an Apple supplier pleaded guilty to leaking Apple secrets.

Walter Shimoon, who once worked at electronic manufacturer Flextronics a supplier of camera parts to Apple, was arrested in 2010 for spilling the beans on actual and forecast sales figures for iPhones and iPods in the third and fourth quarters of 2009.

He’s the 12th person to plead guilty so far in a government investigation of insider trading.  

Apple Sued Over Touch-Screen Patents

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Taiwanese company Elan Microelectronics has sued Apple for the unauthorized use of two of Elan’s patents in Apple’s MacBook, iPhone and iPod Touch products.

“We couldn’t find a common viewpoint with Apple, so we decided we had to take action,” Elan spokesman Dennis Liu told the New York Times, adding that the companies had been in licensing talks for about two years.

A statement published on Elan’s website says the patents cover innovations in touch-sensitive input devices incorporated into smartphones and computer touchpads.

“The first patent at issue, U.S. Patent 5,825,352 (“the ‘352 patent”), relates to touch-sensitive input devices with the ability to detect the simultaneous presence of two or more fingers. Multi-finger applications are becoming popular in smartphone and computer applications. The ‘352 patent is a fundamental patent to the detection of multi-fingers that allows for any subsequent multi-finger applications to be implemented. The second patent, U.S. Patent No. 7,274,353 (“the ‘353 patent”), is directed to touchpads capable of switching between keyboard and handwriting input modes.”

Elan said it won a preliminary court injunction against a U.S.-based rival, Synaptics, in a dispute over one of the patents mentioned in the Apple lawsuit, after a suit was filed in 2006 by a unit that was a subsidiary at the time. Synaptics countersued.

Both actions were dismissed last year after the two companies reached a cross-licensing agreement. That result likely emboldened the company to take legal action against Apple, an analyst who follows Elan told the NYT.

Image used with a CC license, courtesy dnorman

Strung Out: Apple Loses “Pod” Trademark Down Under to Guitar Co.

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Apple lost its bid to trademark the word “pod” in Australia, due to an objection from a guitar company that also makes a product called “POD.”

Guitar accessories company Line 6 makes a line of  multi-effects processors, like the pocket version aimed at giving your guitar sound a boost sans amp pictured above, called POD.  Line 6 blocked Apple’s trademark claim, arguing it has a pre-existing trademark in the same category related to musical devices.

Although Line 6 has sold far fewer PODs than Apple’s range of iPod devices, the Australian Trade Marks Office hearing officer Iain Thompson declared that the POD device was still an established product.

“While the evidence does not show particularly strong sales [for Line 6’s POD], the marketplace is not particularly large and the participants in the musical industry are generally well informed about the products available to them to enable them to perform.”

Apple’s lawyers maintained the POD was “digital signal processing hardware,” and therefore did not qualify for the  “portable electronic devices” class of trademark. Thompson rejected the claim, arguing the iPod’s sound equalizer features used digital signal manipulation.

Apple was ordered to pay Line 6’s legal costs.

Via Smart Company

Image courtesy Line 6