The ongoing legal battles between Apple and Samsung were rather entertaining early on, now it’s like watching two school children fight over who was first to own the latest pair of trendy sneakers. Even the judges presiding over the cases are beginning to lose their patience. As the pair continue to fight it out in the U.S. district court of Northern California this week, Judge Lucy Koh has made a plea for “global peace.”
Apple and HTC have finally put the boxing gloves down.
After years of battling in courtrooms around the world, Apple and HTC have reached an agreement over patent licensing that will be in effect for the next 10 years. Both companies have spent millions of dollars in ongoing lawsuits relating specifically to smartphone patents for the iPhone and HTC’s Android devices.
HTC was sued first by Apple back in 2010 with more than a dozen iPhone-related patents, and HTC then sued Apple a year later with infringement claims relating to not only the iPhone, but also the iPad and Mac.
Apple’s joint press release with HTC today announces the end of a long and tedious battle over patent litigation:
Judge Lucy Koh has agreed to re-examine the role of jury foreman Velvin Hogan, who found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages earlier this year. Samsung requested a retrial back in October after it became apparent that Hogan failed to disclose details of a lawsuit against Seagate that he was involved in 20 years ago.
Lawsuit hopes to prevent iPhones from being locked to certain carriers.
Two iPhone users claim Apple has violated the Sherman Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by locking their handsets to the AT&T network without their permission. They’re now suing the Cupertino company in an effort to get their iPhones unlocked, and for monetary damages. They also want a restraining order that will prevent Apple from locking its smartphone to carriers completely.
To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, Slashdot persuaded former Apple co-founder and everyone’s favorite geek Steve Wozniak to answer some questions thrown at him by the site’s readers. Woz took the time to answer a number of questions on Apple and his thoughts on how the company is doing without Steve Jobs at the helm, jailbreaking, the iPhone, and more.
We had a sneaking suspicion Samsung would add the iPhone 5 to its patent infringement complaint against Apple shortly after the device made its debut. And the Korean electronics giant has now done exactly that, asking Judge Paul Grewal for permission to include the device in its latest countersuit against Apple.
Rumors had suggested that Samsung would add Apple’s iPhone 5 to the list of devices involved in a patent infringement suit between the two companies, and it looks like that’s going to happen. The Korean company has confirmed that it expects the latest iPhone to infringe the same patents the iPhone 4S does, and that it will be adding the handset to its case after it has had time to “analyze” it.
Trying to sell one of these? You're not the only one.
Apple’s lengthy battle with Samsung came to a close last Friday when a jury decided Samsung was guilty of infringing six of Apple’s patents, and that it must pay more than $1 billion in damages as a result. Not only was this a huge blow to Samsung, but it appears it’s also hit the Korean company’s customers, too.
One used electronics company has seen a 50% growth in the sale of Samsung devices as customers “jump ship” following its loss.
U.S. Federal Judge Lucy Koh has moved the hearing for Apple’s request for an injunction against Samsung phones to December, possibly diluting the economic effect of last week’s patent trial verdict.
Despite siding with Apple, not one member of the jury owned an iPhone.
It isn’t too difficult to understand why the jury involved in the Apple versus Samsung case made the verdict it did last Friday, awarding Apple a landslide victory and more than $1 billion in damages. But what isn’t clear is how the jury came to its decision. Thanks to Jury Foreman Vel Hogan, we now have a fascinating insight into what it was like to be part of that panel.
In his first TV appearance since the billion dollar patent trial came to an end, Hogan reveals how he made up his own mind, how the jury decided on the damages Samsung must pay Apple, whether feelings and emotions influenced the jury’s decision, and more.
Samsung claims Apple wasn't willing to settle out of court.
We’ve already seen Tim Cook’s memo to Apple employees following the company’s landmark victory over Samsung last Friday. As expected, Samsung’s isn’t quite as upbeat or as celebratory. Released today, the Korean company’s announcement insists that it tried to settle with Apple out of court, but that Apple “pressed on with a lawsuit.” It also notes that the verdict “starkly contrasts” those recently made by courts in a number of other countries.
You’re probably going to see a lot of stories like this in the coming weeks. Apple stock opened at a record $680 a share this morning, on the first day of trading following the Cupertino company’s massive victory over Samsung on Friday. This surpasses its previous record of $674.88 a share, which was hit last Tuesday, August 21, and it pushes Apple’s market capitalization to a new high of $637 billion.
Apple won the patent infringement trial against Samsung and received a huge damages sum.
Apple’s victory in its patent trial against Samsung is already a few hours old but the shock of the damage tally is still hard to shake off. The final figure of $1,049,393,540.00 is a staggering rebuke of Samsung’s design and manufacturing process and may force the company toward more original ideas.
The completed jury verdict form, released late Friday night and attached below, reveals the Korean company maybe never really had a chance to win the case.
Apple has won a massive damages sum of nearly $1.05 billion in the patent trial against Samsung and the reaction from the technology community has been vast and swift.
In an email immediately following the verdict, Forrester Research Principal Analyst Charles Golvin told us the main takeaway from the verdict is the focus on innovation. Companies will now be forced to create legitimately different products, or at least engineer some without extravagantly similar features:
The jury particularly vindicates Apple’s software patents and their decision has implications not just for Samsung, but also for Google, other Android device makers like LG, HTC, and Motorola, but also potentially for Microsoft who employs features such as pinch to zoom, bounce on scroll, etc. These competitors are now forced to go back to the drawing board and come up with substantively different designs — or seek settlement terms with Apple. Since many of these controls are now built into the expectations of customers in how they work their phones, those are substantive challenges.
Gartner analyst and VP of Mobile Research Van Baker agrees the redesign of products in the long term is an issue but that it won’t affect any products anytime soon.
This is a clear win for Apple but it will have little impact on the market in the near term as it is highly likely that there will be an appeal so we will have to repeat the process. If sustained it has the potential to force Samsung to redesign a number of products and it will apply significant pressure on all smartphone and tablet makers to avoid trying to emulate the Apple designs as they bring new products to market.
Earlier, the two principals in the case immediately followed the shocking judgement with their own statements.
Goodrich was the executive producer behind major Apple keynotes like this one at Macworld in 2007.
Wayne Goodrich, a former Apple employee who produced and coordinated the company’s hugely popular keynote presentations, is suing the Cupertino company for wrongful termination after he was fired for “business reasons” — despite being promised job security by former CEO Steve Jobs.
Apple finds itself involved in yet another patent lawsuit.
Apple has been named in a California lawsuit filed by EPL Holdings for allegedly infringing a patent that covers audio and video playback at varying speeds. The filing reports that EPL met with Apple back 2002 to discuss licensing over the patents it had developed. But the Cupertino company is alleged to have used the technology anyway without reaching a licensing deal.
It was time for another Apple expert witness today, who said that consumers would be willing to pay $100 for three specific, patented features that are at issue in the high-profile, high-stakes court case against Samsung. John Hauser, called by Apple as an expert due to his role as a marketing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said that in his internet survey, consumers were willing to pay this much more for features like scrolling or multitouch. The survey, Apple proposes, has relevance when calculating potential damages for Apple due to potential patent infringement. Apple is seeking over $2.5 billion from Samsung.
Steve Jobs was particularly proud of the iPhone's inertial scrolling feature.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned blogging about Apple, it’s that the company doesn’t stand for copycats — especially when those copycats go after patents that Steve Jobs was particularly proud of. That’s what Samsung did when it copied Apple’s inertial scrolling feature, right after Jobs told them not to.
Was Siri inspired by a Chinese chat bot called Xiaoi Bot?
Apple is very quick to jump on rival companies who infringe upon its patents, and the company is currently embroiled in a number of legal battles with the likes of Samsung and HTC. But sometimes, Apple is on the receiving end of these complaints. In China, the Cupertino company is being sued for infringing upon a voice assistant patent with its Siri feature.
Three days after we reported an Apple win in regards to the Samsung Galaxy Tab, US District Judge Lucy Koh just handed Apple another, possibly temporary, victory.
Unfortunately, Time Capsule failures are an all too common occurrence.
Canadian lawyer Perminder Tung is suing Apple over a Time Capsule failure that cause him to lose laptop backups that included precious photographs of his child’s birth. Tung wants $25,000 in compensation for the broken device and the lost memories after Apple told him the data on his Time Capsule could not be saved.
Apple attorneys are surely enjoying the latest ruling in the patent case involving Google’s Motorola Mobility unit, which grants Apple the chance of making its case via an injunction. The judge’s order yesterday is one last chance for both parties to plead the case to continue to trial, a trial that was canceled by Judge Richard Posner last week, with the judge ruling that neither party could prove damages.
Imagine for a moment that your three year old daughter has a disability that stops her from using her voice to communicate. Then imagine that a combination of an iPad and a specialized app gave her the ability to talk to you, requesting things, express her needs, and even say, “Daddy, I love you.”
I don’t know about you, but I’d see that iPad and app as some sort of technological miracle.
Now, imagine that the app was pulled from the app store.
Back in March a man sued Apple for conveying a “misleading and deceptive message” about Siri, the flagship feature of the iPhone 4S. He said that Apple’s marketing made Siri seem more magical then it actually was, and he wanted Apple to pay unspecified damages. A string of similar lawsuits also occurred, with someone claiming they couldn’t replicate the ‘Rock God’ Siri commercial in real life and another complaining about Siri not properly giving directions.
Apple has responded to the plaintiffs with a simple message: Siri is still in beta, and if you don’t like your iPhone you can always return it.
A class action suit filed against Apple in 2005 has gotten new life after a judge’s ruling on May 2. The complaint, which has its own website, covers consumers who purchased an iPod classic, iPod shuffle, iPod touch or iPod nano model between Sept. 12, 2006 and March 31, 2009. That’s a lot of people and a big stretch of time.
