Samsung is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to cut more money off the $930 million Apple won in a patent lawsuit. The company is arguing that the appeals court’s earlier ruling is still unfair, even after successfully convincing the panel to chop off $382 million already.
Apple is accused of corporate bullying after reportedly booting rival headphone maker Monster from its “Made for iPhone” accessory program.
Monster claims the move is in retaliation for an ongoing lawsuit against Beats, which is now owned by Apple. Monster was the original contract manufacturer of Beats-branded headphones. The move could seriously impact Monster’s headphone business.
Considering the headphone market is a $2 billion industry in the United States, there’s plenty of money to be lost without Apple’s support.
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.
Given that Apple can’t make an iPhone with a battery life of more than (best case scenario) a couple of days, how would it ever manage with a far more power-intensive technology like, say, an electric car?
It seems that this is exactly the question being asked in Cupertino — and the attempt to answer it has landed Apple with a new lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Massachusetts federal court.
As per the complaint, back in June last year, Apple reportedly began an “aggressive campaign” to poach top engineers from the electric car battery maker A123 Systems. The engineers were responsible for performing critical development and testing activities on cutting-edge electric vehicle batteries.
It’s been a long hard slog for all involved but the 64,000-person class action anti-poaching lawsuit brought against four major tech companies, including Apple, is finally over.
The companies — which also included Google, Intel, and Adobe — reportedly agreed to pay a total of $415 million for their misdeeds.
Ericsson’s former CEO has gone on the record as saying his company should have taken the iPhone more seriously when it arrived back in 2007. Today, everyone takes the iPhone seriously — and there are the lawsuits to prove it.
In the latest of these, Apple and Ericsson are suing each other after failing to come to an agreement about the pricing of Ericsson-owned patents used by Apple.
Apple is claiming Ericsson is chasing excessive royalty rates, while Ericsson is holding out for more cash.
And when you’re talking about a handset like the iPhone 6, which sold upwards of 10 million units in its first weekend, who can blame it for trying?
Monster Inc, the company that help co-design the original Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, is suing Beats Electronics along with cofounders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine for allegedly stealing its headphone technology.
The company, known for its overpriced audio cables, filed a lawsuit this week in San Mateo California, claiming Beats and its founders screwed the it out of millions of dollars before the company was sold to Apple last year for $3 billion. According to court documents obtained by USA Today, Monster says Beats concealed its role in the designing and engineering the headphone line, as well as its part in the manufacturing, distributions and selling of the headphones.
One way you can tell a technology is becoming mainstream is when it starts to have brushes with the law. We saw it in the 1980s with the first computer hacker trials, more recently with the appearance of Google Glass, and now with fitness trackers — courtesy of a personal injury suit taking place in Canada.
In what is thought to be the first ever case of data from a wearable device being used in court, a female Calgary plaintiff is using information gathered by her Fitbit device to demonstrate that her activity levels have dropped dramatically following an accident.
The data is being analyzed by a third-party analytics firm called Vivametrica, which will make its findings known to the court.
Apple could find itself facing a class action lawsuit over the loss of “countless” text messages, courtesy of its iMessage service.
California resident Adrienne Moore filed a case against Apple back in May this year, saying that she missed out on receiving text messages after giving up her iPhone 4 and moving to a Samsung Galaxy S5.
Moore’s victory in court means that she now has the ability to pursue a class action lawsuit against Apple. She is also seeking unspecified damages.
Apple is being sued by China’s second biggest insurance company over claims that it allowed a “counterfeit app” to be sold in the iTunes App Store.
The app in question misleads users into thinking it is the official app of Lufax, the leading provider of wealth and financial assets management in China, and a subsidiary of the Ping insurance group.
Ping is arguing that users in China might download the counterfeit Lufax app instead of the legitimate one, and that the ensuing risk of fraud and potential loss for Lufax’s customers is significant.
A budding feud between Bose and Beats Electronics has ended with both sides settling out of court. Although the terms haven’t been made public, according to Bose the matter has been satisfactorily “resolved” and will no longer go to trial.
Both sides have agreed to pay their own costs and legal fees, and have asked the International Trade Commission to suspend its investigation into the disagreement.
Having previously filed multi-million dollars suits against Chinese knockoff brands, Beats is now suing one of its own — or at least someone who claims to be one of its own.
In a lawsuit filed late last week, Beats filed false advertising and unfair competition lawsuit against inventor Steve Lamar. Lamar has been involved with ongoing lawsuits with Beats regarding whether or not he can claim ownership of the brand after first bringing the idea of celebrity musical artist-endorsed headphones to Iovine.
You’re most probably familiar with the expression “out of the frying pan into the fire.”
Having seemingly settled its e-book price-fixing lawsuit by agreeing to pay $450 million, Tim Cook and other top Apple execs are now being sued by Apple shareholders, claiming that the incident has damaged the company.
As per a complaint filed at the end of last week, Cook and other Apple executives were told that they should accept “responsibility for ensnaring Apple in a multi-year anticompetitive scheme.”
If you thought that round two of Apple vs. Samsung was the end, you are sadly mistaken.
Although Apple recently won $119 million in a second victory against Samsung in patent court, that modest figure is nowhere near enough to make Apple back down. Not only is Apple seeking a retrial, but it wants to ban past and potentially future Samsung phones from being sold.
Round two of what might be the biggest patent trial in tech history will be decided by a plumber, a police officer and a store clerk. Those blue-collar types are among the 10-person jury finalized Monday for the latest legal battle between Apple and Samsung.
“Jury picked,” tweeted San Jose Mercury News reporter Howard Mintz shortly after jury selection concluded. “Plumber, teacher, cop, secretary, store clerk, county worker, etc. Not [a] sniff of a tech geek to decide $billion patent trial.”
Apple and Samsung have become very acquainted with one another in the courtroom. Every since Apple’s crushing victory against Samsung in 2012 over patent infringement, the tech giants have been duking it out through a seemingly-endless string of appeals. The culmination of 2012’s verdict is a second trial that begins today in San Jose, California.
Much in this trial is the same as the last: Apple and Samsung are both accusing each other of copying patented ideas, and there are billions of dollars on the table. But enough has changed to make the outcome of this second trial unguessable.
Phil Schiller and possibly Scott Forstall are expected to make witness appearances for the next round of the Apple v. Samsung trial, when the two companies return to court in California in late March.
As Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Schiller was the highest-profile witness to take the stand during the first jury trial in the patent case between Apple and Samsung in August 2012.
A group of 64,000 Silicon Valley workers have won the right to pursue a lawsuit against a number of tech companies — including Apple — accused of an “overarching conspiracy” to keep employee pay low through anti-poaching agreements.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand an order by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh that will let the workers sue as a group, and pursue what defendants claim could be more than $9 billion of damages.
Right now, Apple has over $156 billion in its war chest, prompting investors like Carl Icahn to pretty much riot to try to get at some or all of it.
Compared to $156 billion, $16 million is a drop in the ocean of Apple’s money, an amount so small that Tim Cook wouldn’t think twice to even sign the check. But when it comes to Samsung, Apple’s intellectual property arch rival, Cupertino wants to wring out every drop of money it can.
Remember that time Cult of Mac reported that Apple’s oft-maligned iOS Maps function steered people the wrong way across Fairbanks Airport Taxiway? If you’re anything like this writer, you probably either chuckled at the egregiousness of the error or else were momentarily aghast, and then went on with the rest of your day.
Well, in the eyes of some what you should have been thinking is: “hey, I could probably sue over that.”
Perhaps it’s better that you didn’t, however, because the class action lawsuit that has been filed against Apple for iOS Maps is a bit of a headscratcher.
‘Tis the season for class-action lawsuits, and a new one is being brought against Apple, alleging that the Cupertino-based company knew about problems effecting the 27-inch iMac, yet did nothing to stop them.
Apple has been targeted by a class action lawsuit for falsely advertising a Season Pass for the final season of Breaking Bad. The season was split into two parts, but those who purchased a Season Pass were angered when they discovered that the eight episodes included in the second part were not included, and that they would have to pay extra to get them.
Those with older iPhones and iPods are now being contacted regarding a possible payout over faulty liquid damage indicators that caused some customers to lose out on free AppleCare repairs. Apple agreed to pay $53 million in a class action lawsuit earlier this year, and those who may be eligible for damages should be receiving an email soon.
Apple’s “pinch to zoom” patent, which features prominently in a patent dispute against Samsung, has been dismissed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to documents filed by Samsung in a U.S. federal court, all 21 claims of the patent have been rejected in a “final office action.”
Well, that’s exciting! Apple and Amazon have apparently settled their differences over who can use the “App Store” name, making it possible for one or both companies to use it in their business.
US District Judge, Phyllis Hamilton, ordered today that the case be dismissed, as requested by both Cupertino-based Apple and Seattle-based Amazon. The trial, originally scheduled for August 19, will no longer occur.
