Back in 2022, a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Jose, California, regarding the Butterfly Keyboard in MacBook models introduced between 2015 and 2019. The lawsuit was settled in November after a judge approved a proposal by Apple to pay owners of affected MacBook models, and now those customers are being contacted to claim their payout.
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Last year, Apple announced a handful of changes coming to the App Store in response to a class-action lawsuit from US developers. In addition, the company had unveiled a Small Developer Assistance Fund, which would pay out between $250 to $30,000 to developers making under $1 million per year in the App Store. Now, this assistance submission request for small developers is due by May 20.
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We are used to seeing Apple involved in multiple legal disputes regarding its products and services, but this one is a bit different. The Cupertino-based company has filed a lawsuit against Ukrainian indie film director Vasyl Moskalenko, who wrote the comedy film titled Apple-Man.
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In the US, PUBG’s developer sued the maker of another popular battle royale game, Free Fire. Not only that but Krafton has also named Apple and Google in the lawsuit, alleging that Apple and Google have refused to stop selling rip-off versions of its games.
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Last week, in the Epic vs. Apple case, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decided that Apple can no longer ban developers from using “buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing methods,” but she didn’t say Apple needs to lower its commission or that it could no longer charge its fee.
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A federal judge said Apple must face nearly all of a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that its voice assistant Siri violates users’ privacy. As reported by Reuters, US District Judge Jeffrey White could try to prove that “Siri routinely recorded their private conversations because of ‘accidental activations’, and that Apple disclosed these conversations to third parties.”
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Apple could soon be hit with another lawsuit over alleged iPhone planned obsolescence. The Spain Consumer Protection Organization has sent a letter to the Cupertino company on behalf of users who say Apple is slowing down iPhones 12, 11, XS, and 8 with recent iOS 14.5, 14.5.1, and 14.6 updates.
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Procon-SP, the Brazilian consumer protection regulator based in São Paulo state, fined Apple on Friday for not including a charger in the iPhone 12 box.
The fine is around $2 million (R$ 10,5 million) “for misleading advertising, selling a device without the charger and unfair terms.” This is not the first time Procon-SP questioned Apple about its new policy.
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Apple has been ordered to pay $308.5 million to Personalized Media Communications after infringing on a patent related to digital rights management (DRM), reported Bloomberg. A federal jury in Marshall, Texas, decided on Friday that the company infringed PMC’s patent after a five-day trial.
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Apple is facing a new lawsuit from Deco Proteste, a private consumer organization from Portugal, over “planned obsolescence” with the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, and 6S Plus. The lawsuit alleges that Apple’s planned obsolescence forces consumers to buy a new phone before they would otherwise have to.
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A report from Bloomberg details how Apple’s director of cellular systems architecture, Matthias Sauer, testified that the company sought 4G cellular modems from an array of different companies besides Qualcomm, however, none were able to provide market-ready 4G modems in time.
The news is a big boost to the chipmaker’s case, who is fighting claims that its near market monopoly has forced phone manufactures to pay fixed, inflated prices on chip licensing royalties.
On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down with CNBC and spoke all-things Apple, including a defense of the company’s recent rare earnings miss, calling out reports of a failing iPhone XR and the future of Apple’s services business. During the interview, Cook was quick to address the ongoing lawsuit with California-based chipmaker Qualcomm.
A man from Columbus, Ohio claims that his less than one-month old iPhone XS Max caught fire and exploded in his pants pocket around December 12, iDropNews reports. The man, Josh Hillard, says he initially noticed a strange smell emanating from his rear pant pocket, before feeling a “large amount of heat” allegedly burn his leg.
While the man says he’s already been in contact with Apple regarding the matter, their offer of a replacement hasn’t seemed to bode well, who says he’s already exploring his legal options against the company.
An Israeli broadcaster behind the voice of Hebrew Siri is suing Apple for NIS 250,000 (approximately $67,000), claiming the company never sought permission to use her voice before the localized virtual assistant launched in 2016.
As the heated legal saga between Apple and Qualcomm only continues to intensify, the California chipmaker is now insisting that after asking Chinese courts to impose an all-out iPhone ban in the region, it won’t rule out imposing Chinese civil procedure to fine or detain legal representatives from Apple for disobeying the sales ban, according to Global Times China.
A lawyer representing Qualcomm said that under Chinese rules of civil procedure, Qualcomm has the right to ask a court to fine or detain Apple’s four legal representatives in China or bar them from leaving the country.
Further, the company is said to be dissatisfied with Apple’s flippancy towards the Chinese injunction as compared to the recent German one, which saw Apple immediately ban sales of iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 in the country.
Lead attorney for Apple assembly firm Foxconn reiterated statements similar sounding to ones made by Apple attorneys that neither company would seek a settlement in court with Qualcomm over the companies ongoing legal tug-of-war.
The statement comes just weeks after Apple attorney William Isaacson told reporters that a trial against Qualcomm “would be necessary”, despite conflicting comments coming from Qualcomm via its CEO, who implied a peaceful resolution was just “on the doorstep.”
A lawsuit has been filed against Apple this week by a man and women claiming prominent iPhone XS and iPhone XS marketing photos on Apple.com are overly deceptive in hiding the notch. The lawyer for the plaintiffs claims they pre-ordered an iPhone XS Max unaware there would be any “missing pixels,” bezel or notch of any sort.
As the fight for the right to repair your own devices continues, Apple is having some trouble cracking down on third-party repair shops that are using counterfeit parts.
It didn’t take long between Apple confirming that it deliberately slowed older iPhones to the first class action lawsuit. More quickly followed, and the latest tally appears to be 15 separate cases …
Apple has been accused of violating the patents of a Boston-based company through its launch of Apple Pay. Universal Secure Registry CEO Kenneth Weiss says he ‘was the first in the space, and the secure payment technology that he developed goes right to the core of Apple Pay.’
In an interview, Weiss says that the patents cover all three key elements of Apple Pay.
Kenneth P. Weiss, received 13 patents for authentication systems that use a smartphone, biometric identification such as a fingerprint and the generation of secure one-time tokens to conduct financial transactions.
While it’s not unusual for more than one company to be simultaneously working on the same technology, Weiss says that in this case both Visa and Apple were aware of his technology four years prior to the launch of Apple Pay …
Reuters reports that South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Apple for possible anti-competitive practices in the country. This appears to support an earlier unconfirmed report in Korea Times that FTC was examining the legality of Apple’s contract terms with mobile carriers.
Sources said Apple Korea has pressed carriers into buying a minimum volume of promotional iPhones and sharing the burden of repair costs […]
In April, the FTC ordered the rectification of 20 unfair provisions in contracts with its certified repair service partners. The contracts included stipulations that the repair firms could not file lawsuits against Apple Korea within a year after any dispute.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes an earlier case in France …
Shenzhen Baili, the Chinese company that last week managed to win a Beijing patent office ruling that the iPhone 6 copied its own Baili 100C smartphone, is effectively defunct, reports the WSJ.
[Parent company] Digione had collapsed, brought down by buggy products, mismanagement and fierce competition, according to former employees and investors. Digione has been absent from China’s mobile-phone market for at least a year and Baidu has accused it of squandering its investment.
When the WSJ attempted to track down the company behind the alleged patent, it found no signs that it was still operating …
Update: Apple has now issued a statement.
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as well as iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone SE models are all available for sale today in China. We appealed an administrative order from a regional patent tribunal in Beijing last month and as a result the order has been stayed pending review by the Beijing IP Court.
Bloomberg reports a Beijing Intellectual Property Office ruling that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus violate the design patent of a Chinese phone, and that Apple must cease sales of both models within the city.
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus infringe on Shenzhen Baili’s patent rights because of similarities to its 100C phone, the Beijing Intellectual Property Office wrote in its decision. Apple, whose iconic gadgets helped define the modern smartphone industry, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Bizarre intellectual property rulings are not unusual in China – witness Apple losing the exclusive right to the iPhone trademark there last month – but this one does appear to set a new record, as the iPhone 6 looks nothing like the Baili 100C …
Making a phone call: one of several claimed patent infringements …
Patent trolls – companies that buy old patents purely to sue companies for claimed infringements – love to get their hands on very generic patents, as those give them the maximum number of possible targets. But Texas-based Corydoras Technologies LLC wins the prize for the dumbest claims yet against Apple. It is alleging, among other things, that the iPhone infringes its patents by making phone calls and sending emails …
