| Cult of Mac

Court backs ex-Apple engineer who says he was left off inventors’ list

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Find my iPhone
Inventor worked on "Find My iPhone," among other features.
Photo: Apple

The ex-Apple engineer who claims he helped invent “Find My iPhone” and other features has beaten Apple in a preliminary court hearing.

Apple lost its bid to dismiss the former employee’s lawsuit earlier this week. The suit claims Apple left him off a list of five patents on which he was a rightful co-inventor. Along with “Find My iPhone,” Darren Eastman also notably worked on Passbook, the electronic ticketing system.

Attorneys punished for discussing confidential Apple documents in court

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Anti-robocall bill is one step closer to being passed into law
Apple asked for the lawyers to be booted from the case.
Photo: Pexels

Two attorneys have been sanctioned for sharing proprietary Apple information as part of a lawsuit.

Lawyers Joseph Cotchett and Mark Molumphy from the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy repeatedly referenced confidential Apple documents during a public hearing in May. The hearing concerned the fallout from Apple’s iPhone throttling controversy from a couple years back.

Qualcomm owes Apple $1 billion rebate payment

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Qualcomm headquarters
The latest chapter in the Apple vs. Qualcomm case is unfolding.
Photo: Qualcomm

Apple has won the latest battle in the Apple vs. Qualcomm war. A judge has ruled that Qualcomm owes Apple close to $1 billion in patent royalty rebate payments.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California made the ruling on Thursday. The payments were due as part of a business cooperation agreement made between the two companies during happier times in their relationship. It’s not going to necessarily mean Qualcomm handing over a $1bn check, though.

iPhone users’ lawsuit against Google thrown out of court

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Google
Case explores the legality of data collection.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

A lawsuit against Google, claiming to represent 4.4 million iPhone users, has been thrown out of court by a U.K. judge.

The Apple-using coalition, a group called “Google You Owe Us,” was asking for up to $1 billion in damages. This was to have been split among Safari users affected by Google’s allegedly unlawful data collection, which involved Google supposedly bypassing privacy settings to categorize users for advertising.

Apple demands $1 billion from Samsung for patent infringement

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Apple and Samsung return to court
Apple and Samsung are battling it out again.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Apple wants Samsung to cough up a whopping $1 billion in damages for infringing iPhone design patents.

The two companies again returned to court this week over the long-running dispute, which first began seven years ago. Apple told jurors that Samsung should hand over all the profit it made on four devices that were heavily inspired by the iPhone. Samsung’s lawyers disagree.

Here’s who Apple will call to the stand in its latest Samsung trial

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iPhone with Samsung
The latest Samsung vs. Apple trial kicks off next month.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Apple has revealed which executives will be taking the stand when it comes to court for its latest bout with Samsung — and, no, sadly that doesn’t include Tim Cook or Jony Ive.

Instead, at Apple’s May 14 hearing it will call Richard Howarth, senior director of the Apple Design Team, and Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of product marketing to testify. More intriguingly, it will also call original Mac icon designer Susan Kare to the stand.