lawsuits

Apple and Swiss photographer Sabine Liewald have settled a lawsuit involving the alleged misuse of an eyeball image used during one of Apple's keynote presentations.

News of the settlement came in a court-ordered dismissal dated last Wednesday. The two parties were scheduled to meet for a pretrial conference earlier today.

Terms were not disclosed, and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The original complaint said Apple misused one of Liewald's images (seen above) by including it in a promotion for its latest MacBook Pro computers with the Retina display. Liewald argued that Apple acquired … Read more

After being lured to U.S. territory and arrested in an undercover sting, Chinese national Xiang Li pled guilty in U.S. federal court to pirating, cracking, and selling software worth more than $100 million today, according to Reuters.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security took down Li in June 2011 after agents discovered that he was heading a pirating ring that sold stolen software on the Web. The software was mostly used by defense, space, and engineering companies and was made by Microsoft, Oracle, Rockwell Automation, Agilent Technologies, Siemens, and others.

"Li thought he was safe from … Read more

Convicted file-sharer Jeramiah Perkins has been handed the longest prison sentence even given in a U.S. file-sharing lawsuit: five years.

The 40-year-old man from Portsmouth, Va., was given the sentence today by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen, according to Wired. During his lawsuit, Perkins pled guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement by file-sharing movies, music, games, and more on the Internet.

Perkins -- a.k.a. Butch Perkins, Stash, and theestas -- is said to have been the head of a group that went to theaters, camcorded the movies, recorded the audio, synched the files, and … Read more

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh has denied Samsung's request to keep its phone and device sales data out of the public's eye.

According to Bloomberg, which obtained a copy of an order filed earlier this week, Koh decided that Samsung must file and cannot seal an exhibit detailing total units sold on certain Samsung products. The products included in that exhibit, as well as the span of time in which the sales were registered, were not disclosed in Koh's order.

Koh has been at the epicenter of Apple and Samsung's vicious patent battle in … Read more

LG Display has fired back at Samsung in the ongoing patent skirmish between the two Korean companies.

An injunction filed today by LG seeks to ban Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 in Korea based on allegations that the tablet 's display panel violates certain LG patents. LG said it filed the suit over Samsung's use of OLED displays, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

The patents in question are related to the viewing technology used in OLED displays, which helps people better see the screen from any angle. In addition to halting sales of the Galaxy Note, LG is … Read more

A Beijing-based judge has sided with a group of Chinese authors in a copyright infringement lawsuit against Apple, according to China Daily. The judge ruled today that the tech giant must compensate eight authors who claim their books were illegally sold in Apple's App Store.

It's unclear exactly how much the writers will be paid. The Wall Street Journal reports the total compensation amount is 1.03 million yuan, or about $165,000, while China Daily writes that Apple must pay a total of 412,000 yuan, or around $66,000.

According to Mac Observer, the books appeared … Read more

A new lawsuit filed yesterday in Texas claims that a majority of Apple's products infringe on four patents held by EON Corporation IP Holdings.

The suit, filed by EON in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Tyler Division, targets both Apple's software services like iTunes and the App Store, as well as devices that connect to those services. That list includes the Apple TV, the iPod Touch, all iPhones since the iPhone 3G, and all generations of the iPad.

In its complaint, the Texas-based company says these devices infringe on one key patent … Read more

Samsung Electronics has withdrawn its requests to ban Apple products in several European countries, citing its wish to "protect consumer choice."

The Korean smartphone maker will drop its requests in Germany, the U.K., France, Italy and the Netherlands, according to the Verge, which got a statement from the company earlier today.

Foss Patents legal consultant Florian Mueller noted that Samsung never actually mentioned lawsuit in the statement, and that the company is still suing for compensation. Samsung has confirmed that it is still pursuing compensation.

Samsung had alleged that Apple had violated the use of its patents, … Read more

Patent trolls are for the first time behind the majority of patent infringement lawsuits filed in the United States, according to a study conducted by a patent law professor in California.

About 62 percent of all patent lawsuits filed this year up to December 1 were brought by patent assertion entities (PAEs), which are created to extract licensing fees from other companies rather than make products based on the patents, according to Colleen Chien, a law professor at Santa Clara University.

That's a dramatic increase over last year, when 45 percent of patent lawsuits were filed by trolls. In … Read more