The patent war between Samsung and Apple has been long and, to whatever extent possible, bloody, with both sides seeing some victories and defeat. Ultimately, Samsung has suffered some major financial blows, and now Apple wants to add upon that burden, filing a motion to have the Korean company take on some of its legal […]
Taking a peek into our genes isn’t something easily accomplished, and that is where the Google-backed 23andMe genetic testing service came in. For $99, anyone could send in their sample and receive the results a short while later. In recent days, the company was slapped with an order from the FDA to stop selling its […]
Apple has more often than not been the party that brings someone else to court, but this time around, they are on the receiving end of a lawsuit after being sued by patent company DSS Technology Management. The reason for this lawsuit? DSS claims that Apple has allegedly infringed a couple of patents of theirs that have something to do with using wireless peripheral devices. Oh yeah, just so that everyone is on the same page, DSS stands for Document Security Systems.
DSS’ accusation would see Apple’s products such as the iMac, Mac mini, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, iPod nano and the upcoming Mac Pro for infringing at least one of their claims in its patents that deliver wireless Bluetooth connectivity to a plethora of peripheral devices. DSS claimed to have obtained a pair of patent portfolios in October from two different owners, and has every intention to make money from their acquisitions via licensing.
The patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 5,699,357 and 6,128,290, where both of them have been described as “Personal Data Network.” DSS is currently suing for damages which could possibly see the inclusion of lost profits, and chances are they would also ask for some royalty from Apple. Apple has remained mum on the situation, however.
DSS Sues Apple For Patent Infringement original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Remember all the fuss a couple years ago about Apple storing your location data from iPhone 4 handsets and the subsequent privacy lawsuits that resulted? Well, that’s all amounted to nothing for four of the plaintiffs, as their claims have just been dismissed in court by none other than Judge Lucy Koh. She said that those folks failed to show they had relied on any alleged Apple misrepresentations, and suffered no harm in any case. Shortly after the allegations were made in 2011, Apple countered that it was just using the data to improve connection times, and the only thing it did wrong was keep it for too long. As a result, it ended up patching the problem so that the offending file only stored your information for a week, instead of a year. Despite Koh’s ruling, Apple has paid out similar suits elsewhere, and still has up to 19 more to contend with stateside. Anyway, after what we’ve seen since then, the whole thing now seems downright quaint.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple
Source: Reuters
Freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million yesterday when a US federal jury found two large media companies guilty of copyright infringement. Agence France-Presse and Getty Images had swiped his photographs of the 2010 Haiti earthquake and distributed them to news outlets around the world. Guess where they swiped them from! Morel was present […]
When Apple was awarded over $1 billion in damages at the conclusion of the tech trial of the century (until the next one, at least), we knew that the ultimate price paid by Samsung would be different. Why? A few months after the jury announced its calculations, presiding judge Lucy Koh ordered a retrial regarding $450 million of the original award because the jury based that number on some faulty legal logic. In this second damages calculation proceeding, Apple has asked that the jury adjust the award to $380 million, while Samsung argued it only owes $52 million. Today, the jury has settled between those two numbers, and Samsung’s revised legal tab is $290 million. That number, when combined with the $598 million not at issue in the retrial brings the total Samsung owes to $888 million.
Of course, this latest decision doesn’t change anything but dollar signs — the court’s earlier finding of infringement upon Apple’s patents still stands. Still, with the damages settled, the case is closer than ever to a conclusion, though the lawyers on both sides still have plenty left to do. There are still post-retrial motions and appeals to be filed, as has been the case with prior rulings made during the case. Still, at least now we know just how big a check Samsung will have to write if and when those appeals cease.
Update: We reached out to Apple about today’s proceedings and a company rep offered the following response about the protection of “hard work”:
For Apple, this case has always been about more than patents and money. It has been about innovation and the hard work that goes into inventing products that people love. While it’s impossible to put a price tag on those values, we are grateful to the jury for showing Samsung that copying has a cost.
The consortium that outbid some big-name companies, Rockstar, to grab the Nortel patents up from a bankruptcy issue, has filed patent lawsuits against a variety of companies, among them being Google, Samsung, and Huawei. There are seven companies in total, and all of them are accused of various patent violations. Thus far, none of the […]
Apple has been on the receiving end of a patent infringement from Wi-Lan Inc., which alleged that Apple had infringed upon a patent related to wireless technology via its iPhone handsets. Wi-Lan had sought $248 million from Apple in addition to a cut of each sale, and has told Bloomberg that in light of the […]
Serving up advertisements can be tricky business, and depending on how it is achieved, could land companies in hot water. Such was the case with Google earlier this year over issues with email scanning, something that had prompted it to say that emails sent to Gmail addresses had no expectation of privacy. Following a judge’s […]
Lavabit, the encrypted email provider of choice used by Edward Snowden, spontaneously closed its doors this past summer, doing so for vague reasons related to the government, though the service’s owner was (and is) under gag order, keeping things quiet. Last month, a request to have some of the documents unsealed was submitted, which would […]
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