Legal

Hot on the heels of Apple's $945 legal settlement to a Korean man over location logging behavior in iOS in June, a new suit in the works reportedly seeking class action aims to bring similar settlements to some 27,800 other individuals.

The Korea Herald reports that law firm Miraelaw plans to file the suit against Apple in Korea later this month, once again claiming that the iPhone violated the country's domestic privacy laws. If those listed on the suit end up with a similar payout to the one provided in June, Apple could be facing an overall … Read more

More than a month after Apple filed a motion to intervene as the defendant in a lawsuit from Lodsys that targets 11 application developers, Lodsys has filed a rebuttal seeking to get Apple's efforts denied.

In a heavily redacted document filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Marshall Division, and picked up by blog Foss Patents, Lodsys notes that things have changed since Apple got involved. That includes who's been targeted by the suit, which was expanded last week to include a number of gaming giants like Atari, Electronic Arts, Rovio, … Read more

A multimillion-dollar settlement is said to have been reached between Apple, Groupon, and at least one other company in litigation initiated by Walker Digital. earlier this year.

Bloomberg reports that three of 100-plus companies that were targeted in a massive wave of patent infringement litigation back in April have since settled with Walker Digital, in a deal that topped $25 million. Included on that short list are Apple and Groupon, which Bloomberg says reached a deal with Walker Digital to license, and outright purchase, patents from the company.

Groupon spokeswoman Julie Mossler declined to comment, and Apple did not immediately … Read more

Lodsys, a group that's targeted companies big and small for infringing on its patents, has added five new defendants to a suit it filed back in May, including Electronic Arts and Rovio, the maker of the popular Angry Birds franchise.

In an amended complaint (PDF), filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and picked up by patent-tracking blog Foss Patents, Lodsys has added a number of gaming heavyweights including Atari, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Square Enix, and Take-Two Interactive to the list of companies it says are violating patents it holds. That brings … Read more

While many secrets remain about how Nortel's patent portfolio, which sold last month for $4.5 billion, is going to be controlled by the consortium of companies that pooled together to purchase it, how much Apple put into the deal is now out in the open. And the figure is a whopper.

Culling through the company's 10-Q (PDF), which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, Business Insider this morning pulled out the total of Apple's stake, which was listed in a section about contractual obligations.

"On June 27, 2011, the Company, … Read more

Future Apple computers could one day have two displays layered one right on top of another to create a sense of depth for what users see on screen.

A freshly posted Apple patent application (PDF), unearthed by AppleInsider this morning, details a "multilayer display device." The described system makes use of different displays that are layered together and can project different images, sometimes at once.

In the patent, the company notes that the quest for making displays that can add depth to two-dimensional device displays is making a comeback.

"Creating the illusion of a three-dimensional image on … Read more

Personal Audio, the company that was awarded $8 million in damages from Apple in patent infringement ruling earlier this month, has come back with a new lawsuit taking aim at additional Apple products it says infringe on the same intellectual property.

In a suit filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, picked up by patent tracking blog FOSS Patents, Personal Audio alleges that Apple's sixth-generation iPod Nano, fourth-generation iPod Shuffle, fourth-generation iPod Touch, iPhone 4, and iPad 2 all infringe on the company's patented audio technology. Personal Audio is seeking additional … Read more

Swapping between the front- and rear-facing cameras on Apple's latest-generation iOS devices during a FaceTime call is currently a manual process, requiring users to tap an onscreen button. But that could become a thing of the past with a system Apple hopes to patent.

Patently Apple has unearthed a patent application Apple filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January of last year titled "automatic video stream selection." In short, it's a system for automatically swapping between the two captured video streams depending on what's happening in front of each lens. … Read more

The legal fracas between gadget makers Apple and Samsung has reached a new level, with Samsung now vying to get some of Apple's legal team members kicked off the case.

FOSS Patents picked up on a 20-page motion filed by Samsung with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday, asking to have some of Apple's lawyers from law firm Bridges & Mavrakakis taken off the case. In the filing, Samsung alleges that these lawyers have a conflict of interest under the California Rule of Professional Conduct for having previously worked on Samsung's … Read more