Apple’s heated battle with Qualcomm is continuing and, as part of it, the company wants a legally sanctioned block to be placed on import iPhones featuring Intel chips.
However, a group of Apple consumers is striking back, arguing that any kind of an import ban would, “freeze out Intel’s nascent challenge to Qualcomm’s illegal monopoly” and “injure competition in a market already suffering from Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behavior.”
There have been no shortage of days in court in the ongoing Samsung vs. Apple legal battle, which has raged since 2012. Something that is lacking? Unbiased jurors, apparently.
While a new round of courtroom drama kicked off this week, it apparently took a long time on day one to find jurors who were in a position to make a non-biased judgement. In all, multiple candidates were excused for various reasons of partiality. Here are some of them.
Apple has claimed final victory in a lawsuit arguing that the company was purposely intercepting and failing to deliver texts sent from iPhones to Android owners.
The case was related to Apple’s iMessage service, which posed a challenge to Apple-to-Android switchers up until 2014, when Apple finally issued a fix for the problem.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh may reject a plea put forward by Apple, Google, and two other companies following a lawsuit which accused Apple of participating in anti-poaching practices.
As previously reported, Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar all stood accused by former employees, although Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar quickly agreed to settle — paying a collective $20 million.
The remaining companies — Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe — faced a possible damages payout of $3 billion, although this could potentially rise to as much as $9 billion under antitrust laws. After an appeal refusal, the companies ended up settling for the comparatively small tiny of $324.5 million.
Understandably, not everyone was pleased with the result: with plaintiff Michael Devine calling the sum “grossly inadequate,” and demanding that it be rejected. Now it seems that he could get his wish.
Apple might be among the companies which settled the Silicon Valley anti-poaching dispute out of court last month, but one plaintiff isn’t happy — calling the $324 million settlement “grossly inadequate.”
The trial was supposed to begin at the end of May, which would have potentially led to months of revelations about Apple’s anti-poaching practices. Ultimately the four tech companies involved, including Apple and Google, settled for $324 million: a figure substantially lower than the $3 billion in damages requested by the suit, or the $9 billion which could have been awarded if the defendants were found to be guilty in court.
Samsung is trying to weasel out of paying up to Apple, asking Judge Lucy Koh for a mistrial based upon the supposedly “racist” remarks of Cupertino’s attorneys. But Judge Lucy Koh was having none of it.
There are few tech terms more loaded than “user privacy” here in 2013.
Back in January Cult of Mac reported that Apple had lost its spot on a list of the 20 most trusted companies when it comes to user information. That was long before the revelations of Edward Snowden and PRISMgate (the subject of an entire recent issue of our Newsstand magazine), which made everyone super-jumpy about data collection and what it means for personal liberties.
In latest news from the Samsung vs. Apple patent case, Samsung on Wednesday filed an emergency motion with presiding Judge Lucy Koh to halt Apple’s damages retrial.
Why the halt? Because according to court documents, the US Patent and Trademark Office has suggested that Apple’s “pinch to zoom” patent (which much of the patent trial revolves around) might not actually be valid.
In case you’ve missed it, there are currently two cases being heard by US District Judge Lucy Koh in the Apple v Samsung patent legal struggle. The first one, Apple won a $1.05 billion verdict last fall against Samsung, which Judge Koh pulled about $450 million off of, and then ordered a new damages trial. She also rejected Apple’s request for a permanent sales ban. Apple appealed, but we’re waiting for a ruling till September, most likely.
US District Court Judge Lucy Koh today denied Apple’s request to have several documents sealed from public view in its fight to recoup more damages from Samsung than were even awarded by the jury several weeks ago. The documents include “product-specific unit sales, revenue, profit, profit margin, and cost data” that it also wants to use in its argument for a higher award from the court.
Judge Koh basically said that Apple can’t have it both ways. Her decision says to the Cupertino-based company that it can’t use documents in its arguments that it then in turn wants to keep secret. It just doesn’t work that way.
