Apple's effort to trademark the term "Multi-Touch" in the United States has been denied.

MacRumors posts the decision of the United States Patent and Trademark Office dated from last week, wherein the governing body denied Apple's application, saying that the term is merely descriptive of how people interact with its products.

"Thus, from the foregoing, we find that 'multi-touch' not only identifies the technology, but also describes how a user of the goods operates the device," the filing from the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board reads. "Based on the evidence discussed … Read more

People are downright salivating for a new iPhone, and it looks like the wait is very nearly over.

A buzzy report from All Things Digital this week pointed to October 4 --which is now less than a week and a half away--as the day Apple plans to take the wraps off the next version of the device, with a release to follow a few weeks later.

There's one hiccup with that plan, however, which is that both the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Moscone Center (which are Apple's usual places for product launches outside of … Read more

Apple this week is once again the target of new lawsuits from companies with which it's already entangled in separate legal battles.

The first salvo comes from Samsung. Bloomberg reports that Samsung filed four suits against the company this week, with the first related hearing in the cases to kick off early next week.

A court representative did not tell the news outlet what the Netherlands suits were about, though Samsung has taken aim at Apple in the U.S., Europe, and other countries for allegedly infringing on its patents, with lawsuits targeting the tech giant's portable devices. … Read more

During a testimony yesterday, a former Samsung manager admitted to leaking confidential information about the company providing components for Apple's first iPad roughly a month before the device was formally announced.

Bloomberg reports that Suk-Joo Hwang, who had worked at Samsung Electronics as a manager up until June 2011, disclosed information about supplying Apple with tablet-sized LCDs during a lunch with Global Research executive James Fleishman and a hedge fund manager in 2009. The testimony came as part of an insider trading trial targeting Fleishman.

In Hwang's testimony, he describes telling Fleishman and the unnamed hedge fund manager … Read more

A lawsuit filed last week by software company Droplets takes aim at Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and YouTube for infringing on its patented Web technology.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, the Droplets suit alleges that the group of tech giants infringe on one or more of two patents it holds "for developing and delivering highly functional and scalable applications over the Internet." The company seeks damages as well as future royalties on the use of those patents.

The two patents in question are United States Patent No. … Read more

Cell phone software maker Openwave Systems has taken aim at Apple and Research In Motion for infringing on its intellectual property.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company today filed a complaint (PDF) with the International Trade Commission, as well as a lawsuit in the federal district court in Delaware, accusing Apple and RIM of infringing on five of its patents that cover technologies related to Web browsing, cloud computing, wireless networking, and using e-mail while offline.

In its complaint, which was reported earlier today by Bloomberg, Openwave takes aim at Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch, … Read more

A newly unearthed memo posted on Wikleaks details Apple's burgeoning efforts to combat counterfeit goods in China and elsewhere, something the document says the electronics giant began in earnest just three years ago.

The unclassified memo, picked up by CNN's Mark Millian this morning, originates from the U.S. embassy in Beijing and is dated September 2008.

In it, the embassy provides an update on Apple's plans to deal with the growing number of counterfeit versions of its products in the region, including hiring former Pfizer employees Don Shruhan and John Theriault to manage the company's … Read more

Samsung's latest salvo against Apple and its attempts at barring the company from selling its line of Galaxy phones and tablets in the U.S. involved a bold trick earlier this week: saying Apple's iPad design patent should be tossed on the grounds that others have gotten there first.

The proof for that claim? Science fiction, of course.

Samsung last week cited Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" wherein two of the astronauts watch video on two separate tablet devices while eating a meal. (See above.) In its brief, Samsung says those tablets share design similarities with the tablet depicted in a granted Apple design patent, and the patent should therefore be tossed from Apple's effort.

That very idea opens up a wealth of other gadgets to scrutiny of "what came first?" Without further ado: a handful of gadgets that could be targeted for trailing their fictional media counterparts.… Read more

In its ongoing legal battle with Apple, Samsung has returned fire against Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction that aims to bar some of its phones and Galaxy Tab in the United States.

In a new filing, picked up by intellectual-property tracking blog Foss Patents, Samsung has opposed the preliminary injunction Apple filed for in early July. While the document is sealed at the moment, Foss points to one of the non-sealed exhibits Samsung is using to go up against Apple, which cites Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" as clear evidence that tablets … Read more