Legal Archive

"Apple has filed a motion to intervene in the patent infringement lawsuit that Lodsys slapped on seven iOS developers last Tuesday. The company maintained that its license for Lodsys patents allows developers to use in-app purchase APIs, and that it has a right to intervene since its licensed technology is at issue."

"The Supreme Court ruled against Microsoft on Thursday in its appeal of a record $290 million jury verdict for infringing a small Canadian software firm's patent. The justices unanimously upheld an appeals court's ruling that went against the world's largest software company in its legal battle with Toronto-based i4i Limited Partnership. The smaller company had argued that Microsoft Word had infringed its method for editing documents. Microsoft contended that i4i's patent was invalid."

In order to not overwhelm OSNews with even more legal news, I didn't report on the recent developments in Apple v. Samsung until we had some more stuff to consolidate. Well, since the goings been getting good lately there, let's talk about it. Samsung was ordered to hand over a slew of unreleased products and materials to Apple, and now, Samsung, for its part, has demanded that Apple hands over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 to Samsung. If they exist. This is gettin' good.

Ding ding ding ding - I think we have a record here. Launched yesterday, Google Wallet has already attracted a lawsuit. While patent lawsuits are teh shizzle these days, this lawsuit is a little different, so sadly I can't trot out my usual 'software patents bad' lines (aww). PayPal has sued Google over its Wallet service, claiming that one key former PayPal executive who accepted a job at Google took trade secrets with him.

"The French government's 'three strikes' approach to online copyright infringement relies on a private company that scans file-sharing networks and gathers the IP addresses of alleged Gallic content pirates. But that company, TMG, suffered an embarrassing security breach last week, and the French government has 'temporarily suspended' its acquisition of new TMG data while an investigation is underway." Yeah, the company that collects IP addresses of alleged file shares got Sony'd.

This is certainly worth a meagre +1 in my book: patent troll Lodsys has actually taken the time to answer some of the concerns on the web regarding its legal threats to several small-time iOS developers. There's some interesting stuff in there.

"A new bill backed by movie studios and other large copyright holders takes a novel approach to curbing access to piratical Web sites: an Internet death penalty. That's a good way to describe the approach adopted by the legislation introduced today, which specifies a step-by-step method for making Web sites suspected of infringing copyrights or trademarks vanish from the Internet. It's called the Protect IP Act. The U.S. Department of Justice would receive the power to seek a court order against an allegedly infringing Web site, and then serve that order on search engines, certain Domain Name System providers, and Internet advertising firms - which would in turn be required to 'expeditiously' make the target Web site invisible." ...because the interests of big content are obviously far more important than socialist communist terrorist nonsense like freedom of speech, right to a fair trial, innocent until proven otherwise, and so on. This is exactly what the founding fathers had in mind. Honest.

Nilay Patel has read through the 750 pages of legal filings in the Skyhook v. Google case we have also reported on extensively, and it's one damn fine piece of work. An absolute must-read, with detailed timelines of how Google uses compatibility to push Android device makers into a certain direction. "So what does all this mean? At the very least, it's now extremely clear that Google plays a major role in Android device development, to the point where Andy Rubin himself approves and denies requests from OEMs. It's also clear that Google places tremendous value on collecting location data, and it acted swiftly when it determined Skyhook's deal with Motorola might threaten its ability to collect that data."

"A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. may spell the end of the 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person."

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that AT&T - and indeed, any company - could block class-action suits arising from disputes with customers and instead force those customers into binding arbitration. The ruling reverses previous lower-court decisions that classified stipulations in AT&T's service contract which barred class arbitration as 'unconscionable'."

"Amazon today responded to Apple's trademark suit over the term 'App Store'. Interestingly, Amazon's answer made use of quotes from Steve Jobs to prove that the term 'app store' is generic and not subject to trademark protection."

A Texas jury has ruled against Google in a suit that alleged some of its use of open-source Linux code amounted to patent infringement, something that could have big implications for other companies using Linux technology and other open-source systems. In the verdict, delivered last week, the jury decided that Google should pay $5 million for the infringement.

"US patent law will be put in the dock later today (18 April) when the highest court in the land considers a case brought by the world's biggest software company, Microsoft. But at stake is more than just the $290m judgement that a small Canadian firm, i4i, secured against Microsoft for patent infringement. Legal experts have said that the outcome of the US Supreme Court hearing will decide how patent laws protect exclusive technology and impact innovation."

Well. Raise your hands if you didn't see this one coming. Nobody is safe from Apple's and Microsoft's legal crusade against Android, not even Samsung, which supplies a lot of chips to Apple. Apple has sued Samsung for copying Cupertino's look and feel in various Samsung devices. This is about as surprising as the tides rolling in. Update: And Samsung's going to strike back. Hit 'm hard, Samsung. I don't like you anymore than any of these other patent trolls, but maybe we'll finally see it all crash and burn.