Apple Lawsuits

Apple has agreed to pay $18 million to settle a California class-action lawsuit that accused it of intentionally breaking FaceTime in iOS 6 to force users to upgrade to iOS 7. According to the lawsuit, originally filed in 2017, Apple forced users to upgrade so it could avoid payments on a data deal with Akamai. Apple used two connection methods when it launched ‌‌FaceTime‌‌ in 2010: a...

A court in Florida has dismissed a consumer lawsuit alleging that Apple intentionally "broke" FaceTime on older iPhones as a cost-saving measure (via Bloomberg Law). In 2017, a similar class-action lawsuit was brought against Apple in California that claimed Apple broke ‌FaceTime‌ in iOS 6 to force users to upgrade to iOS 7. According to the lawsuit, Apple forced users to upgrade so it could ...

Apple in January was ordered to pay the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) $838 million for infringing on Caltech patents related to WiFi transmissions. Apple was hoping to get one of the patents in the case invalidated, but today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against Apple and declined to invalidate the patent in question, upholding a prior decision from ...

Apple has been in an ongoing legal fight with Gerard Williams III, who worked at Apple until February 2019 when he left to start up a new company called Nuvia with other Apple developers. Williams was Apple's lead chip designer, working on the A7 to A12X chips that Apple used in its mobile devices, and his new company develops processors for use in data centers. Apple first sued Williams in...

Apple broke California law when it failed to pay employees for time spent waiting for mandatory bag searches at the end of their shifts, the California Supreme Court ruled today. [PDF] The unanimous court decision, shared today by Bloomberg Law and The Los Angeles Times, dates back to a class action lawsuit filed against Apple in 2013. Employees at the time alleged that Apple subjected...

Last week, BlueMail co-founders Ben Volach and Dan Volach penned an open letter that encouraged any developers who feel that Apple kicked them out of the App Store or has treated them unfairly to share their stories. BlueMail itself was removed from the Mac App Store in June 2019 after Apple found the app to be in violation of several App Store Review Guidelines, but the Volach brothers...

Back in October, the developers behind email app BlueMail sued Apple, alleging that the "Hide My Email" feature of "Sign in with Apple" infringes on its patented technology. The complaint also accuses Apple of anticompetitive behavior, including removing BlueMail from the Mac App Store. Last week, after months of making little to no progress with Apple towards having its Mac app reinstated,...

Back in October, the developers behind email app BlueMail sued Apple, alleging that the "Hide My Email" feature of "Sign in with Apple" infringes on its patented technology. The complaint [PDF] also accuses Apple of anticompetitive behavior, including removing BlueMail from the Mac App Store. "Hide My Email" hides a user's personal email address by substituting it with a unique, random email ...

A class action lawsuit accusing Apple of violating consumer laws and breaching its warranties over an alleged iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus audio chip defect has been allowed to proceed, but the case has been narrowed. U.S. district judge Jon Tigar on Thursday denied Apple's motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' claims for breach of implied warranty under California law, violations of the...

Apple and Broadcom have been ordered to pay the California Institute of Technology a fine of $1.1 billion for infringing on Caltech's patents related to WiFi transmissions, reports Bloomberg. Apple has been ordered to pay $838 million, while Broadcom has been ordered to pay $270 million, but Apple plans to file an appeal. Caltech in 2016 filed a lawsuit against Broadcom and Apple,...

A former Apple executive who worked on the chips that power iPhones and iPads has had a request to toss a breach-of-contract lawsuit brought by the company rejected by the court in a tentative ruling. Last August, Apple sued its former A-series chip lead, Gerard Williams III, for breach of employment contract. Williams was the lead designer of Apple's custom ‌iPhone‌ and ‌iPad‌ chips from ...

Apple and M. Night Shyamalan, producer of Apple TV+ show "Servant," are being targeted in a new lawsuit that accuses "Servant" of copying 2013 film "The Truth About Emanuel," according to The Blast. "The Truth About Emanuel" director Francesca Gregorini claims that "Servant" appropriates the plot of her movie and uses the same "cinematic language," resulting in a "substantially similar...

Masimo, a medical technology company that designs pulse oximetry devices, has filed a lawsuit against Apple accusing the Cupertino company of stealing trade secrets and improperly using Masimo inventions related to health monitoring in the Apple Watch. According to Bloomberg, Masimo claims that Apple stole secret information by pretending to have a working relationship with Masimo, and then...

Apple is currently involved in a lawsuit against Corellium, a mobile device virtualization company that supports iOS. Apple has accused Corellium of copyright infringement because Corellium creates software designed for security researchers that replicates iOS. The lawsuit has been ongoing since August, but it is heating up after Apple amended its lawsuit in late December with a Digital...

Chicago-based law firm Fegan Scott has levied a lawsuit against both Apple and Samsung, claiming that independent testing suggests the radiofrequency radiation levels in recent smartphones "far exceeded the federal limits" when used "as marketed by the manufacturers." The basis for this lawsuit dates back to August, when The Chicago Tribune launched an investigation into the radiofrequency...

A federal judge this week rejected Apple's request to dismiss a class action lawsuit over its faulty butterfly keyboards, reports Reuters, which means the lawsuit will proceed. The complainants believe that Apple knew of and concealed the fact that its 2015 and later MacBook models had keyboards prone to failure and that its repair program does not serve as an effective fix because replacement ...

Apple and Intel on Wednesday jointly filed a lawsuit against SoftBank-owned investment firm Fortress Investment Group, accusing the company of violating U.S. federal antitrust laws by pursuing "endless, meritless" patent litigation. The complaint alleges that non-practicing patent assertion entities like Fortress aggressively pursue patent litigation against large companies like Apple and...

Apple in August filed a lawsuit against Corellium, a mobile device virtualization company that supports iOS, with Apple accusing Corellium of copyright infringement for replicating the operating system that runs on the iPhone and iPad. As noted by Motherboard, Corellium today filed its response to Apple's lawsuit, accusing the Cupertino company of owing $300,000 and claiming that its software...

Former Apple lawyer Gene Levoff, who was in charge of enforcing Apple's Insider Trading Policy, is facing criminal charges related to insider trading of Apple stock, reports CNBC. Levoff was today indicted for insider trading, and he is facing six counts of security fraud and six counts of wire fraud. According to the U.S. government, Levoff used inside information from Apple, including...

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear the University of Wisconsin's appeal in its patent fight with Apple, according to Reuters. In July 2017, a U.S. district court ordered Apple to pay $506 million to the University of Wisconsin's Alumni Research Foundation for infringing on a patent related to computer processing technology with its A7, A8, and A8X chips. In September 2018,...