legal

The spat between Motorola Mobility and Apple in Germany just got a little more interesting, with a regional court granting Motorola an injunction against the iPhone and Mac maker.

The judgment does not mean that Apple can be kept from selling its products in the country, since the suit takes aim at Apple Inc. and not the company's local subsidiary in the region.

Intellectual property tracking blog FOSS Patents today posted the default judgment by the Mannheim Regional Court in Germany, which granted Motorola Mobility an injunction against the Mac and iOS device maker for infringing on two of … Read more

Samsung plans to despose several of Apple's designers, including its senior vice president of industrial design as part of the legal battle between the two companies.

In a court filing, picked up on by blog EdibleApple today, Apple's design SVP Jonathan Ive and three others are listed as being unable to be deposed by November 1 as part of Apple and Samsung's legal battle in the U.S., which goes to trial in July 2012.

Ive, who has been at Apple since 1992, is being deposed along with Douglas Satzger, Shin Nishibori, and Christopher Stringer. Out of … Read more

A judge dismissed the class action lawsuit against social reviews site Yelp, putting an end to a case filed against it by a group of unhappy business owners.

That suit, which was filed last February, claimed that Yelp was running an "extortion scheme" by asking businesses to pay the company in exchange for the removal of negative reviews, claims denied by Yelp.

"While we were confident that Yelp would ultimately prevail because we knew the allegations were false, it is helpful to have the matter resolved early so we can put these allegations behind us," Yelp … Read more

Apple didn't infringe on four of HTC's patents, according to an initial ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission's administrative law judge.

The administrative law judge ruling, which is essentially a recommendation to the ITC's judges, found "no violation" by Apple, Reuters reported. A final ruling by the ITC is expected in February.

The ruling is just one component of an increasingly complex set of complaints and lawsuits between Apple and HTC filed in multiple courts and employing several different patents. The four HTC patents in this case, for instance, don't include … Read more

Samsung just isn't willing to go down without a fight.

After losing an important patent battle with Apple in Australia last week, the company has now fired back with Apple's new iPhone 4S in its crosshairs.

Samsung today filed an injunction request in an Australia court, saying that Apple's iPhone 4S, which launched on Friday, violates wireless patents it holds. According to ZDNet Australia, a CNET sister site, Samsung argues that Apple's new smartphone (in addition to the iPhone 4 and iPad 2) violate three patents in Australia. In a similar suit filed today in Japan, … Read more

A U.S. district judge in Northern California said today that Samsung's line of Galaxy tablets infringe on Apple's patents, while adding that Apple still has to show that those patents are valid under the law.

Reuters, which followed the court hearing, notes that the comments came as part of request by Apple to get an injunction against Samsung's tablets in the U.S., and that a formal order on whether Samsung infringes on an Apple utility patent will be issued "fairly promptly."

Reuters notes that Apple still needs to demonstrate to the court that … Read more

Apple and Dropbox have joined the Digital Due Process coalition, according to an announcement yesterday from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the sponsors of the group.

Digital Due Process is made up of a host of organizations and companies, including the EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Amazon, that have publicly noted their disapproval of the treatment of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) on the part of law enforcement officials.

The ECPA was passed in 1986, and since then, few modifications have been made to it to adequately govern the changing times in technology, the EFF argues. … Read more

Full Tilt Poker has lashed out at the U.S. Justice Department for calling it a Ponzi scheme.

"While the government has obviously taken issue with the underlying activities of FTP, under any reasonable interpretation, the world-wide operations of the online cardroom are not a so-called Ponzi scheme," Full Tilt Poker attorney Ian Imrich told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published today.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department amended an earlier civil complaint against the site's executives, including celebrity poker players Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson, charging them siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars … Read more

Add Sprint to the list of big names choosing to speak now rather than hold their peace on AT&T and T-Mobile's dreams of corporate matrimony.

Saying it would violate the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, Sprint today filed a lawsuit opposing the deal before the same Washington, D.C.-based federal judge who received a related suit filed last week by the Department of Justice.

"Sprint opposes AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile," said Sprint Vice President of Litigation Susan Haller in a statement. "With today's legal action, we are continuing that advocacy … Read more