Legal Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

The Steve Jobs email that has the DOJ's interest

by Steven Sande (May 16th, 2013)

TUAW has covered the US Department of Justice price-fixing case against Apple for the past several years. Now an email sent from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corporation (parent company of HarperCollins publishers) is being interpreted by the DOJ as showing that Apple and ...

Apple sued over faulty power button on iPhone 4

by Yoni Heisler (May 15th, 2013)

Florida woman Debra Hilton filed a class action suit against Apple alleging that the power button on the iPhone 4 sports a manufacturing defect that Apple is well aware of and chose not to fix. The suit specifically claims that the iPhone 4's flex cable is defective and designed to cause the power ...

Justice Department calls Apple the 'ringmaster' in e-book price fixing case

by Yoni Heisler (May 15th, 2013)

Back in April 2012, the US Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and a number of publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of e-books on the iBookstore. The original suit targeted five publishing companies; Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon ...

Apple wants to add the Galaxy S 4 to its 2014 patent case against Samsung

by Yoni Heisler (May 14th, 2013)

FOSS Patents reports that Apple is seeking to add Samsung's latest flagship device -- the Galaxy S 4 -- to its second California case against Samsung, currently scheduled to begin in March of 2014. Back in April, Judge Lucy Koh instructed both Apple and Samsung that they have until February 6, ...

Court rules Google must disclose search terms to Apple

by Yoni Heisler (May 10th, 2013)

A few weeks ago, Apple filed a motion alleging that Google's efforts to respond to Apple's discovery requests -- with respect to its ongoing suit against Samsung -- were lacking. Specifically, Apple claimed that the search terms Google employed in response to Apple's document production requests ...

Apple wins "iBooks" trademark case

by Steven Sande (May 9th, 2013)

Have you ever heard of Black Tower Press? Back in 2011, the small New York publisher of sci-fi and fantasy books filed a trademark suit claiming that it had the rights to use the term "iBooks." Yesterday a New York court ruled in Apple's favor, stating that the publisher's mark -- ibooks -- and ...

Apple: Google is no "friend of the court"

by Yoni Heisler (May 9th, 2013)

Earlier this week, Google, along with a host of other companies, sought permission to file an amicus curiae brief to support Samsung's efforts to oppose Apple's own efforts to secure injunctions against a number of accused Samsung devices. Amicus curiae -- which literally means 'friend of the ...

Is Apple's ongoing legal battle with Samsung worth the trouble?

by Yoni Heisler (May 7th, 2013)

When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone at Macworld 2007, he elicited quite a few laughs when he exclaimed, "... and boy have we patented it!" Two years later, starting with its 2009 suit against Nokia, Apple's patent infringement lawsuits began piling up in quick succession. Since then, ...

Samsung: Apple-requested injunction would 'confuse and intimidate' customers

by John-Michael Bond (May 3rd, 2013)

Samsung has a new legal argument in its ongoing litigation with Apple over the sale of certain Android-based smartphones in the US. While the basis of Apple's case is patent infringement claims, Samsung is now arguing that allowing Apple a permanent injunction would "intimidate and confuse" ...

Apple and Samsung headed to court this November to calculate new damages amount

by Yoni Heisler (Apr 30th, 2013)

When Apple was awarded a US$1.05 billion judgement against Samsung last Summer, you might have assumed that Samsung would promptly cut Apple a check and focus on any number of their other ongoing legal entanglements with Apple. Oh, if only things were that simple. Back in March, US District ...

Apple claims that Google's search methodology in ongoing legal dispute is flawed

by Yoni Heisler (Apr 22nd, 2013)

While Apple emerged victorious in its patent suit against Samsung last summer, the two tech behemoths have another trial looming concerning Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone along with a slew of other Samsung devices. Consequently, 2014 will see both Apple and Samsung take center stage yet ...

Apple agrees to $53 million settlement in iPhone and iPod Touch warranty class action

by Yoni Heisler (Apr 12th, 2013)

Wired is reporting that Apple has agreed to a $53 million settlement in a class-action suit focusing on Apple's warranty practices regarding water damage in older iOS devices. The settlement agreement, which was leaked to Wired, has already been signed off on by Apple chief litigation counsel ...

Apple wins invalidation of Samsung 3G patent in Germany

by Steven Sande (Apr 11th, 2013)

This round of the continuing fisticuffs between Apple and Samsung goes to Apple. FOSS Patents reported yesterday that Germany's Federal Patent Court has invalidated the German part of a Samsung patent for a "turbo encoding / decoding device and method for processing frame data according to ...

US Patent Office withdraws primary objections to 'iPad mini' trademark application

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 8th, 2013)

As noted by MacRumors, The US Patent Office has withdrawn primary objections to Apple's "iPad Mini" trademark application. The primary objections were raised last month when the USPTO deemed elements related to the "iPad mini" name as descriptive instead of contributing a unique name to a ...

Anti-poaching lawsuit against Google, Apple and others denied class action status

by Yoni Heisler (Apr 8th, 2013)

In 2010, several high-profile tech companies -- including Apple, Google, Adobe, Intuit, Lucasfilm, Intel and Pixar -- settled a suit with the US Justice Department regarding anti-poaching agreements. The suit alleged that the aformentioned companies, from 2005 to 2009, agreed not to recruit ...