Apple Lawsuits

Last week, we reported on Apple's plans to close its retail stores in the Eastern District of Texas in April in an effort to avoid patent infringement lawsuits in the jurisdiction, perceived by many as being "patent troll friendly." Ahead of the closures, Apple faces yet more patent litigation in the district. A group of limited liability companies under the Optis Wireless Technology, LLC...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Apple's former vice president of corporate law Gene Levoff with insider trading, according to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey on Wednesday. The complaint alleges that Levoff had access to Apple's earnings results before they were publicly announced and used this information to buy Apple shares in advance of...

New York resident Jay Brodsky has filed a frivolous class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company's so-called "coercive" policy of not letting customers disable two-factor authentication beyond a two-week grace period is both inconvenient and violates a variety of California laws. The complaint alleges that Brodsky "and millions of similarly situated consumers across the...

Apple on Tuesday filed suit against Fundamental Innovation Systems International (FISI), preemptively asking a California court to declare that Apple has not infringed upon a number of USB power patents held by FISI. FISI, described by Apple as a patent assertion entity formed for the sole purpose of generating revenue through patent litigation, acquired a portfolio of charging-related...

California resident Monica Emerson has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple this week, accusing the company of releasing iOS updates which were "specifically designed and programmed to reject, starting on November of 2016, old iPhone chargers from properly charging the iPhones." Image Credit: iGeeksBlog The complaint, obtained by MacRumors, alleges that Emerson bought an ‌iPhone‌ 7 in...

Montréal-based law firm Lambert Avocat Inc. has applied for a class action lawsuit against Apple with the Superior Court of Québec, seeking compensation for all persons exposed to a major FaceTime privacy bug that enabled users to eavesdrop on the people they call, according to its website. The proposed lawsuit seeks compensation for all Canadians who used FaceTime on an iPhone, iPad, or...

Pennsylvania-based entity Rembrandt Wireless Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Apple today in the U.S. district court for Eastern Texas, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing on two of its Bluetooth-related patents. In its complaint, obtained by MacRumors, Rembrandt alleges that all Apple products that support Bluetooth 2.0 or newer with Enhanced Data Rate, including the ‌iPhone‌...

Biometric sensor company Valencell has reportedly settled a three-year-old lawsuit against Apple that accused the tech giant of stealing its technology for Apple Watch. Valencell filed the patent infringement lawsuit against Apple back in January 2016 at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The lawsuit accused the Cupertino-based company of infringing on...

In a statement issued to CNBC, Apple has indicated that it plans to appeal a German court's decision to issue a preliminary injunction—aka sales ban—on select iPhone models containing chips from Intel and Apple supplier Qorvo. In the meantime, Apple said iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models will not be available for purchase at its retail stores in Germany:Qualcomm's campaign is a desperate attempt...

A court in Germany today ruled that some iPhone models equipped with Intel modems infringe on a Qualcomm hardware patent, and issued a preliminary injunction on those devices, according to Reuters and CNBC. However, the reports claim the ruling will not go into immediate effect if Apple appeals, and it almost certainly will. Matthias Zigann, the judge presiding over the case, ruled that...

Back in 2014, iPhone user Garrett Wilhelm was using FaceTime on his iPhone 6 Plus while driving, causing him to crash into the back of another vehicle. The crash resulted in the death of five-year-old Moriah Modisette, and her father, James Modisette, launched a lawsuit in 2017 against Apple for not offering safety warnings or a feature that disables FaceTime while a person is driving....

Apple is facing a class action lawsuit that accuses the company of failing to install vent filters in MacBooks and iMacs, leading to lower processor speeds and screen smudges from trapped dust, which result in expensive repairs for consumers. News of the lawsuit was published today by Hagens Berman, the firm handling the case. "Apple is the most valuable company in the world today because...

U.S. Supreme Court justices "appeared open" to letting a proposed class-action lawsuit proceed against Apple that accuses the company of operating an illegal App Store monopoly, according to Reuters. The lawsuit was filed in 2011 by a group of iPhone users who believe Apple violates federal antitrust laws by requiring apps to be sold through its App Store, where it collects a 30 percent...

Apple owes $7 billion in royalties to Qualcomm since halting payments because of its ongoing dispute with the mobile chip maker over unfair licensing practices, according to a court hearing on Friday (via Bloomberg). Apple began withholding the payments through its manufacturers last year, after the tech giant filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm claiming that the chipmaker was charging unfair...

London's High Court on Monday blocked attempts to bring a collective lawsuit against Google over alleged historical snooping of millions of iPhone users in the United Kingdom (via Reuters). The lawsuit's claimants alleged that Google illegally gathered the personal data of over 4 million iPhone users in the U.K. between 2011 and 2012 by bypassing the default privacy settings on Apple's...

The United States International Trade Commission will not be blocking imports of the iPhone in the ongoing Apple v. Qualcomm case, reports Reuters. Qualcomm had asked the ITC to ban imports of the AT&T and T-Mobile iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X models that use chips from Intel, citing multiple patent violations. Qualcomm did not ask for a ban on iPhones...

Qualcomm has accused Apple of stealing confidential information and trade secrets, and passing them on to rival chipmaker Intel, according to a court document filed Monday and reported by several media outlets. For background, Qualcomm agreed that Apple could have access to its source code and tools for LTE modems, but with limitations. Qualcomm believes that Apple proceeded to share the...

Just over two years after the European Commission ruled that Apple was receiving illegal state aid from Ireland -- where it had reportedly paid less than 2 percent in taxes compared to the country's headline 12.5 percent corporate tax rate -- Apple has now paid back the entire 13.1 billion euros ($15.3 billion) it owed in back taxes (via Reuters). The European Commission confirmed the...

Arizona-based speech recognition technology company AVRS, short for Advanced Voice Recognition Systems, Inc., has filed a lawsuit against Apple this week, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing on one of its patents with its virtual assistant Siri, according to court documents obtained by MacRumors. The asserted patent is U.S. Patent No. 7,558,730, titled "Speech recognition and...

Class action lawsuits continue to mount against Apple over the iPhone Slowdown saga. For those unaware, late last year, Apple admitted that it throttles the maximum performance of some older iPhone models with chemically aged batteries when necessary in order to prevent the devices from unexpectedly shutting down. Apple views this as a feature intended to provide the best user experience...