lawsuits

In what could be the beginning of many lawsuits, Hewlett-Packard is now reportedly being sued by an investor over the brewing Autonomy kerfuffle.

Reuters reported today an investor is suing HP, claiming that the company knew its statements about its Autonomy acquisition were misleading, which led the stock to fall.

The proposed class action lawsuit, Nicolow v. Hewlett-Packard, was filed at the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California in San Francisco.

For reference, there is a lot of unrest surrounding HP after it was revealed that the tech giant lost $8.8 billion over its purchase of Autonomy … Read more

Internet comic The Oatmeal is back in the legal spotlight after a Massachusetts greetings card company began litigation against the comic for allegedly infringing its trademark.

According to Ars Technica, who first reported the story, the popular Web comic's creator Matthew Inman is being sued by Oatmeal Studios, after Inman joined forces with Recycled Greetings to offer greetings cards based on The Oatmeal's comics.

This caught the eye of Oatmeal Studios, which then filed a suit against Inman in a Boston, Mass. courtroom, claiming a trademark on the term "Oatmeal Studios." 

The … Read more

HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou said today that he was happy with the settlement reached with Apple, and called the estimates floating around "outrageous."

Earlier this month, Apple and HTC struck a 10-year cross-licensing agreement, putting to bed a long-running and bitter legal battle. While the companies didn't disclose the terms of the deal, analysts had surmised that HTC was on the losing end, and would pay upwards of $6 to $8 per Android phone.

Chou, speaking to reporters, including Reuters, at a product event in Japan, slammed the estimates as inaccurate and "baseless," but … Read more

Color Labs, whose intellectual property and engineering team were purchased by Apple earlier this year, is the target of a new lawsuit from a former founding employee.

Adam Witherspoon, who served as a quality assurance engineer at Color, today filed a suit against the company and its CEO, Bill Nguyen, accusing both of creating "an extremely hostile, unsafe, and harassing atmosphere."

The suit, which was filed in the Superior Court for the County of Santa Clara and spotted by TechCrunch, accuses the company of violating three labor codes, including retaliation for reporting unsafe work conditions, reporting illegal conduct, … Read more

Samsung has filed a lawsuit against LG Display in an effort to convince the court that seven of LG's OLED displays don't hold water.

Filed with an intellectual property tribunal in Korea, the suit is seeking to invalidate LG's patents on the grounds that they "lack innovation," according to the Yonhap News agency.

This is just the latest salvo in the ongoing legal turmoil between the two companies.

In September, LG Display filed suit against Samsung, claiming violation of the seven (organic light-emitting diode) patents in question. The lawsuit alleges that Samsung violated the design of LG's OLED panels, driver circuitry, and device design, … Read more

It's looking like Google may have to soon cough up the $22.5 million fine it agreed to pay in order to settle Federal Trade Commission claims that it illegally bypassed user privacy settings in Apple's Safari Web browser.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston approved the fine in San Francisco federal court late Friday, according to the Associated Press. This is the largest penalty the FTC has ever levied against a single company.

Google and the FTC reached the settlement agreement in August when the Web giant agreed to pay $22.5 million on charges that it &… Read more

Some of Apple and Samsung's latest devices have been given the go-ahead to be included in an ongoing lawsuit between the two tech giants.

In an order yesterday, U.S. magistrate judge Paul Grewal granted motions from both companies that sought to add devices launched after a legal cutoff in mid-June.

That shortlist includes Apple's iPhone 5, which debuted in September, Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1, the U.S. model of the Galaxy S3, and, notably, Google's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS in conjunction with the Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

The new devices add to an … Read more

It looks like Judge Richard Seeborg may be turning a corner in the lawsuit over Facebook's "sponsored stories" feature. He said today that he would review the social network's second settlement offer and would issue a ruling "very shortly," according to Reuters.

The crux of the case focuses on Facebook's use of advertising in its sponsored stories. The original five plaintiffs, which aimed at representing more than 100 million members in a class-action suit, claimed the social network violated users' right to privacy by publicizing their "likes" in advertisements without asking … Read more