Apple Lawsuits

Apple and Broadcom have jointly filed counterclaims against the California Institute of Technology in an ongoing Wi-Fi-related lawsuit, denying any alleged infringement of the technologies and urging the court to invalidate the asserted patents, according to court documents filed electronically this week. Apple argued that Caltech did not file the lawsuit until May 26, 2016, more than six...

Apple has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against Samsung's request to send a longstanding patent lawsuit between the two companies back to lower court for further proceedings, reports Reuters. Apple told the court that its South Korean rival has "no evidence" that design patent damages should be based on anything less than the value of an entire smartphone, according to court documents...

A judge in Amsterdam has ruled in favor of a Dutch woman [Google Translate] who sued Apple for refusing to replace her broken iPhone 6 Plus with a new model, and instead offering her a refurbished model as per its standard policy. The court nullified the purchase agreement and ordered Apple to refund the woman the full €799 that she paid for the iPhone, which was purchased in December 2014...

Somaltus, LLC has filed a complaint against Apple today in an Eastern Texas district court, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing upon its 2010 patent related to complex battery technologies. The small Frisco, Texas-based firm also filed lawsuits against Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba over the same patent. The lawsuit claims that the iPhone 6s and any similar devices sold by...

Apple will pay $25 million to settle a patent lawsuit with Network-1 Technologies' subsidiary Mirror World Technologies and license its patents, the companies announced today. The patent (No. 6,006,227) dates back to 1999, covering a system that stores documents in a stream ordered chronologically, similar to Apple's Cover Flow or Time Machine. Under the terms of the agreement, Apple will...

Pennsylvania resident Samuel Lit has hit Apple with a lawsuit claiming that the company infringed on his patent for web carousels, according to documents filed in the Northern Illinois District Court (via AppleInsider). Apple's website typically features a homepage with a carousel containing four to five windows displaying its products. Lit owns U.S. Patent No. 8,793,330, which is a "system...

Florida resident Thomas S. Ross has filed a lawsuit against Apple this week, claiming that the iPhone, iPad, and iPod infringe upon his 1992 invention of a hand-drawn "Electronic Reading Device" (ERD). The court filing claims the plaintiff was "first to file a device so designed and aggregated," nearly 15 years before the first iPhone. Between May 23, 1992 and September 10, 1992, Ross...

The United States Department of Justice today urged the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that was in Apple's favor and send the Apple vs. Samsung case back to trial court, reports Reuters. The DoJ submitted an amicus brief on Samsung's behalf as the Supreme Court prepares to hear the long-running Apple vs. Samsung case. Apple's dispute with Samsung made its way to the Supreme...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on May 26 invalidated two of three patents owned by Smartflash LLC, a patent licensing firm that was awarded a $532.9 million verdict against Apple in February 2015, according to Bloomberg.A three-judge panel at the patent agency found that the two patents never should have been issued in the first place because the idea of storing and paying for data is an...

Apple and Broadcom have been jointly named as defendants in a legal complaint filed by the California Institute of Technology last week over alleged infringement of its various patented Wi-Fi-related technologies. Caltech's patents, granted between 2006 and 2012, are highly technical and relate to IRA/LDPC codes that utilize simpler encoding and decoding circuitry for improved data...

In February, Seattle-based law firm Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala (PCVA) brought a class action lawsuit against Apple over the "Error 53" bug, which bricked iPhone 6 models with select third-party components. Apple quickly responded, confirming the error and issuing an updated version of iOS 9.2.1 to fix the error. Earlier this month, Apple moved to dismiss an amended version of the class action...

VoIP-Pal announced today that it has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, Nevada, seeking over $2.8 billion in damages for alleged infringement of its patented internet communication technologies. The Bellevue-based company calculated its $2,836,710,031 figure using a 1.25-percent royalty rate based on an apportionment of Apple's estimated historical profit from ...

Immersion, a company that develops and licenses haptic touch feedback technology, today filed a second lawsuit against Apple and AT&T, accusing the MacBook and MacBook Pro of violating one patent and the iPhone 6s of violating three additional patents not mentioned in the original lawsuit. According to Immersion, iPhone 6s and MacBook features like 3D Touch and the Force Touch trackpad...

Apple will have to pay a $450 million settlement in the protracted e-books antitrust case, which saw the company found guilty of conspiring with publishers to inflate the prices of e-books back in 2014 (via Bloomberg). In October, Apple submitted an appeal to overturn the guilty ruling, but today the United States Supreme Court declined to question the verdict, meaning Apple must now comply...

The long-running dispute between Apple and Samsung continues, with an appeals court today handing the Cupertino-based company a defeat by invalidating two Apple patents and ruling a third had not been infringed by Samsung (via Bloomberg). The ruling, which covers Apple patents related to slide-to-unlock, autocorrect, and interactive phone number features, also threw out the original $119.6 million...

Seattle-based law firm Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala (PCVA) today followed through with plans to bring a class action lawsuit against Apple over the "Error 53" controversy that made headlines last week. "Error 53" is the error code that some iPhone 6 owners have received after third-party repairs that affect Touch ID were made to their iPhones, rendering the devices unusable. As explained by iFix...

Immersion, a company that develops and licenses haptic touch feedback technology, today filed a lawsuit against Apple and AT&T accusing the two companies of patent infringement. Citing technologies like 3D Touch, Force Touch, the Apple Watch Taptic Engine, and vibration patterns for ringtones and notifications, Immersion says multiple Apple devices use its intellectual property. According to ...

Biometric sensor company Valencell today filed a lawsuit against Apple (via AppleInsider), accusing the Cupertino-based company of patent infringement, deceptive trade practices, and breach of contract, all related to dealings Apple had with Valencell before the launch of the Apple Watch. According to Valencell, Apple expressed interest in its PerformTek heart rate sensor technology starting...

U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh has dismissed [PDF] a lawsuit against Apple over a long-standing issue that prevented some former iPhone owners who switched to Android smartphones from receiving text messages from other iOS users, as reported by Business Insider. Koh originally ruled against granting the lawsuit class-action status, because it was not clear enough that all Android smartphone...

A coalition of authors and well-known booksellers have come forth to back Apple in a petition to overturn a recent ruling that stated the company was liable in conspiring to fix the prices of electronic books when its iBooks store launched on the iPad in 2010 (via Cult of Mac). Together, the Authors Guild, Authors United, the American Booksellers Association, and Barnes & Noble have filed a...