Lawsuits

Samsung is about to hand over a billion dollars in damages to Apple after being found guilty of infringing on several of the Cupertino-based company's patents. Weeks of drama ended in the jury awarding Apple with a major win that will impact tech company patent cases for years to come.

Of course as AppleInsider points out, there are still a number of major patent suits around the world that have yet to be settled between the two companies. In this case, Apple won damages on not only its utility patents, but on design patents as well.

Two different iPhone 4S owners sued Apple for "false and misleading" advertising in March, which helped kick off a few different class action lawsuits. David Jones filed a complaint with a U.S. District Court alleging "Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature." Other complaints ranged from not being able to recreate Apple's the ‘Rock God’ Siri commercial in real life, and Siri not giving proper directions.

Apple has responded with a motion to dismiss the class-action lawsuits:

"They offer only general descriptions of Apple’s advertisements, incomplete summaries of Apple’s website materials, and vague descriptions of their alleged—and highly individualized—disappointment with Siri. Tellingly, although Plaintiffs claim they became dissatisfied with Siri’s performance “soon after” purchasing their iPhones, they made no attempt to avail themselves of Apple’s 30-day return policy or one-year warranty—which remains in effect. Instead, they seek to take an alleged personal grievance about the purported performance of a popular product and turn it into a nationwide class action under California’s consumer protection statutes. The Complaint does not come close to meeting the heavy burden necessary to sustain such claims."

UPDATE: The U.S. has officially filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple as well as publishers Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. - via Bloomberg

UPDATE 2: The Department of Justice has released a PDF of their complaint. It's a really interesting read!

The Department of Justice plans to launch an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five major publishers for alleged price-fixing. In March the The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Justice Department warned Apple and the publishers that it planned to sue them for raising the price of electronic books. The Justice Department believes that Apple violated federal antitrust laws by jointly raising the prices with the five publishers.

"The Justice Department is investigating alleged price-fixing by Apple and five major publishers: CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster Inc, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, Pearson and Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH. A lawsuit against Apple, one of the parties not in negotiations with the Justice Department for a potential settlement, could come as early as Wednesday but no final decision has been made, the people said."

Is Apple misleading customers by advertising a beta product on TV? Two different iPhone 4S owners think so. Frank Fazio filed the first California class action suit against Apple for "false and misleading" advertising, and now a second person has also filed a claim.

According to the Los Angeles Times, David Jones filed a new suit in a U.S. District Court alleging "Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature."

"Antennagate" did more than start the annoying trend where we add "gate" to the end of every Apple bug, it also sparked a class action lawsuit. Even though Apple maintained that the problem only affected a small number of iPhone 4 users who were holding their devices wrong, they eventually agreed to a settlement. On Wednesday, the co-lead counsel of the class action lawsuit announced that iPhone 4 owners could cash in on their claims.

Ira Rothken tweeted: "The iPhone 4 Antenna Class Action Settlement website is up if you want to make a claim or get info please visit iphone4settlement.com."

Apple has agreed to give eligible iPhone 4 users a free bumper case or a $15 cash payout. If you have already received the case you're not eligible for the $15.

Even disclaimers and beta software status hasn't prevented Siri from sparking a new lawsuit against Apple. iPhone 4S users including Frank Fazio, who is suing Apple in a California class action suit, have observed that Siri does not always work on their devices exactly how it works on television.

They claim that Apple is providing "false and misleading" advertising and that the iPhone 4S without Siri is simply a more expensive iPhone 4. Of course, this ignores the fact that the iPhone 4S has several hardware upgrades from its predecessor and Siri is just one feature of many available in Apple's mobile operating system iOS 5.

Apple was named with T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, HTC, Samsung and Motorola in a class action lawsuit on Monday. Sianni & Straite of Wilmington of Delaware and two other law firms from New Jersey (Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy of Edison and Keefe Bartels of Red Bank) filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in the District of Delaware. The lawsuit alleges Apple and other companies committed an "unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.”

The class action lawsuit is in response to the Carrier IQ software installed in various cell phones that logs the keystrokes, texts and geographic data of its users. Apple admitted using the diagnostics tool in the past, but said they never recorded "personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.” Apple also promised to remove the software from all their devices in a future firmware update.

It looks like Apple has no intention of slowing down its patent war against Samsung until every Samsung Galaxy device is banned from the planet. Apple has moved the battlefield to Japan, where they hope to block sales of the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II smartphones, as well as the Galaxy 7 tablet. Apple has been successful in stopping Samsung from selling and advertising their Galaxy devices in Germany and Australia, and are looking to do the same in Japan. They're also seeking 100 million yen ($1.3 million) in damages. The lawsuit was filed on Aug. 23 and the first court hearing was on Wednesday.

"It is no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging," said Seoul-based Apple spokesman Steve Park. "This kind of blatant copying is wrong and we need to protect the Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."

Apple plans to invest $1 billion dollars to secure a supply of LCD screens after having issues with LG Display and Samsung.

The proposed move is a product of the Samsung/Apple feud. Apple is looking to move away from their new rival, and invest in a Sharp Corp factory to manufacture LCD screens for iPhones and iPads in the future. Japanese chipmakers are hoping to benefit from the switch, and are preparing for increased orders from Apple if they can't patch their relationship with Samsung.

"If the situation escalates into a state of war, this could mean a huge shift in orders," an unnamed source told Reuters.

Apple was fined 3 million won ($2,830) by the South Korea communications regulator for collecting location data from iPhone users without their knowledge.

In April, U.S. researchers discovered that iPhones stored location files for up to a year. Apple claimed that they weren't tracking users, but that the files were used as part of their GPS system to track Wi-Fi hotspots and cell phone tower locations. The company eventually admitted that a year was too long, and changed it to seven days with the release of iOS 4.3.3.

Ater a four-month investigation, the KCC ordered Apple Korea to pay the small fine for violating their location information laws. The Korea Communications Commission said Apple has been collecting the data from June 22, 2010, through May 4, 2011.