Legal

Apple wants a trial on e-Book pricing allegations

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Apple Inc wants to go to trial to defend itself against U.S. government allegations that it conspired with publishers to raise prices of electronic books, a lawyer for the Silicon Valley giant said in court on Wednesday.

Apple, Samsung CEOs to discuss patent lawsuits

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Reuters:

Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd agreed that their chief executives would participate in settlement talks to try to resolve a patent lawsuit over smartphone and tablet technology, according to a court filing.

DOJ likely to lose ebook antitrust case against Apple

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CNET:

The Department of Justice “has a far better case against the publishers than Apple,” says Dominick Armentano, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Hartford and author of Antitrust and Monopoly who’s now affiliated with the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. “If the CEOs of the various publishers got together in hotel rooms to discuss prices, they are sunk” and might as well settle, he says.

A crock of shit

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Fred Wilson:

Yahoo! thinks they can bully Internet newcomers with their bogus patents. And that’s a line they should not have crossed. Because other companies have bogus patents too. And they’ve opened themselves up to be sued back. Frankly I’d like to see it happen just to show them how stupid they are.

Telling it like it is.

Kodak sues Apple, HTC

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Kodak claims Apple’s iPhones, iPads, and iPods, and some of HTC’s smartphones and tablets use Kodak patents for transmitting images. Kodak is seeking to prevent further patent infringement from Apple and HTC as well as compensation.

Kodak is on its last leg.

Italy fines Apple for misleading customers

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Italy’s anti-trust body has fined units of U.S. technology group Apple Inc a total of 900,000 euros for failing to adequately inform customers about their rights to product guarantees and assistance.

∞ Brits uphold Apple firing employee after posting on Facebook

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Josh Ong for AppleInsider:

A British Employment Tribunal has upheld Apple’s decision to dismiss a retail store employee who violated company policy by posting derogatory comments about his employer on the Facebook social networking site.

You can’t break the rules and then complain the rules are unfair. Well, you can, but…

∞ HTC loses patent complaint against Apple

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Reuters: Taiwan’s HTC Corp lost a patent infringement complaint filed against Apple Inc in a preliminary decision at the U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday. An ITC administrative law judge found “no violation” by Apple of four HTC patents that … Continued

∞ AT&T ruling, not PSN debacle, forced Sony TOS change

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CNN: Last week Sony changed the terms-of-service document for its PlayStation Network, asking U.S. customers to forfeit their rights to file class-action lawsuits against the company and its partners. Customers can opt out by sending the company a letter in … Continued

∞ Study shows $500 billion lost to patent trolls since 1990

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Ars Technica: …Three Boston University researchers have produced a rigorous empirical estimate of the cost of patent trolling. And the number is breath-taking: patent trolls (“non-practicing entity” is the clinical term) have cost publicly traded defendants $500 billion since 1990. … Continued

∞ Seizing a copyright troll's bank account

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Nate Anderson for Ars Technica: Wayne Hoehn beat Righthaven so badly that the Las Vegas-based copyright troll lost its copyright infringement case on fair use grounds—and had to pay Hoehn’s lawyers at the Randazza Legal Group $34,045.50 in attorney’s fees. … Continued

∞ Apple files another ITC complaint against HTC

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I take it that Apple is skeptical of the outcome of that ongoing ITC investigation and, therefore, wants a second try with potentially stronger patents. In April, the ITC staff (the Office of Unfair Import Investigations, which participates in most … Continued

∞ Apple files lawsuit against Samsung in South Korea

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Apple, which was Samsung’s second-biggest client after Japan’s Sony Corp last year, became the South Korean firm’s biggest customer in the first quarter, mainly by purchasing semiconductors, according to Samsung’s quarterly report. Earlier this week Apple’s lawyers said executives from … Continued

∞ Lawyer says Apple may settle iCloud lawsuit

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After announcing its iCloud service last week at WWDC, Apple was slapped with a lawsuit from Arizona-based iCloud Communications. Apple bought iCloud.com from Xcerion and has 11 applications registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Apple also owns the … Continued