Apple

Bruce Willis to sue Apple over his iTunes music rights

Update: Bruce Willis’ wife, Emma Heming-Willis contradicted the report saying that it is not a true story. Anyway, whoever imagined the story, it surely managed to aim the attention at the iTunes Terms and Conditions.

It seems that Bruce Willis is going to save the world again, this time from the delusive iTunes policy. The 57 Hollywood star plans to sue Apple for the rights to his iTunes library after he passes away.

The Die Hard actor has recently spent some time reading his iTunes Terms of Service and discovered that instead of owning the purchased music, customers only “borrow” it, thus a customer’s posthumous music collection becomes worthless. In a more elaborate way, this means that when a user downloads a track, he is actually purchasing the rights to listen to a copy of it and not the track.

Willis’ music collection includes lots of classics, starting with the Beatles and ending with Led Zeppelin and he wants to pass it to his daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. He also started to support legal moves to increase the right of the iTunes customers. You go Bruce Willis! Yippee ki-yay Apple!

Source: The Sun

Apple

Jury Foreman on Apple vs. Samsung Trial Verdict

Apple’s win in the patent case against Samsung raised a wave of controversies and of debates  concerning the jury’s decisions. Apple jury foreman Velvin Hogan comes to puzzle out the 1$ billion verdict and to make people’s minds easy about Samsung’s fail by unveiling in a Bloomberg interview the factors of the decision.

During the 17-minutes video Hogan elaborates the jury dynamics, his experience with patents, the magnitude of Google’s intervention, how they reached to the 1$ billion sum and many others.

“We were at a stalemate, but some of the jurors were not sure of the patent prosecution process. Some were not sure of how prior art could either render a patent acceptable or whether it could invalidate it. What we did is we started talking about one and when the day was over and I was at home, thinking about that patent claim by claim, limit by limit, I had what we would call an a-ha moment and I suddenly decided I could defend this if it was my patent…And with that, I took that story back to the jury and laid it out for them. They understood the points I was talking about and then we meticulously went patent by patent and claim by claim against the test that the judge had given us, because each patent had a different legal premise to judge on. We got those all sorted out and decided which ones were valid and which ones were not.”

Source: Bloomberg

News/Rumors

Apple Attorney Got on Judge Lucy Koh’s Nerves

Each day seems to be just a new day for the patents battle between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics. Even the Federal Judge Lucy Koh got a little irked by the lingering lawsuit between the two tech giants.

Judge Koh lost her temper a bit when Apple’s lawyer presented a document covering 22 potential witnesses that the company might want to call after Samsung’s case introduction. According to The Verge, she asked Apple lawyer when the jury was not in the courtroom, why a 57-page witnesses list was presented “when unless you’re smoking crack you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called!”

Apple attorney William Lee retorted “First, your honor, I’m not smoking crack. I can promise you that.” Even though Apple’s lawyers decided to reduce the witnesses, Judge Koh continued to grow more frustrated as the discussion advanced.

Lucy Koh is a Judge with lot of sense of humor, but it is more than obvious that the length of the trial and the fact that the two parties are not willing to reach to a conclusion soon, is putting her patience to a test. The arrogance of the situation provoked also Judge Paul Grewal to affirm the following:

 ”At some point the accommodation must end, lest the hundreds of other parties in civil rights, Social Security, and other cases also presently before the undersigned and presiding judge might reasonably ask: what makes the parties in this patent case so special?“

After all, the case between Apple and Samsung is just a fight of smartphones and interfaces patents.

News/Rumors

Apple’s Former Logo Designer Confounds Galaxy S3 with iPhone 4S

The designer of Apple’s old Happy Mac icon for Macintoshes and of lots of other graphics for Mac, Susan Kare, took the stand yesterday in Apple’s lawsuit with Samsung. The trial began last Monday and Susan is one of Apple’s key witnesses that can bring valuable information and that can make the case a victory.

Susan’s testify brought into the open the similarities between Apple and Samsung’s devices and she stressed out that she barely saw a difference between an iPhone 4S and a Galaxy S3. Just before the trial, Susan accidentally picked up a Samsung device that she mistaken for an iPhone.

”I think of myself as someone who’s pretty granular about looking at graphics, and I mistook one for the other. So I guess in addition to my formal analysis, I had the experience of being confused.”

Kare also noted that the icons on Samsung devices infringe in many ways Apple’s icons. Samsung’s attorney, Charles Verheoven, opened during the trial a Samsung smartphone and an iPhone and told Kare that users should be able to make a difference by the logos and sound. Kare retorted that the difference should stand in the look and feel of the operating systems and not in their functionality.

Read more about Susan Kare’s testimony at the courtroom on CNET.

News/Rumors

Samsung Copied Apple technology [Conan Video]

It seems that the everlasting quarrel between Apple and Samsung has not yet come to an end. Recently, in June, Apple has won lawsuit against Samsung and as a result two android devices, Galaxy 10.1 tab and Galaxy Nexus smartphone were excluded from sales.

Later in July, Apple was constrained to advertise for Samsung in UK having to state clearly all over the web in U.K that Samsung Galaxy tablets have nothing to do with the iPad’s design. Even Samsung’s lawyer stated that the entire quarrel has caused “real commercial harm” for the company. 

Apple claims that Samsung copied both tablet and smartphone technology and their strategy is debated at Conan television.

Apple, News/Rumors

Apple Proves with 2005 iPhone Prototype that it didn’t Copied Sony

Lately, the trials between Apple and Samsung concerning patent infringements have brought into the open some of Apple’s early iPad and iPhone prototypes and the design samples continue to loom.

During a trial that took place in a federal district court in San Jose, Calif., Samsung’s lawyers accused Apple from stealing design patterns from a Sony product. Thus, according to Samsung, Apple’s iPhone is inspired from a Sony smartphone.

To clear the false blaming, Apple has released today the images of a “purple” iPhone from 2005 that looks fairly similar to an iPhone 4. The “Purple” iPhone is labeled as iPod and it has lots of design elements of an iPhone 4, including the shape and the screen.

The filling includes also the chronological progression of the 2005 iPhone and of Sony’s smartphone, proving which one came first.

Source: The Verge

Apple

Apple Constrained to Advertise for Samsung in U.K.

Due to the July 9 London court decision that Samsung Electronics does not infringe Apple’s iPad design patents, the Cupertino company will have to state it clearly on its U.K. website and on U.K. newspapers that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets don’t copy the design of the iPad.

Judge Collin Birss said that Apple will have post the notification on its home page for 6 months and will have to pay for notices also in the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, Guardian Mobile magazine, and T3. Judge Birss concluded that Samsung infringes none of the design patents because the Galaxy tablets “are not as cool” as the iPad.

Richard Hacon, Apple lawyer, commented on the humiliating situation by telling the court that “No company likes to refer to a rival on its website” and that the decision constrains Apple to “advertise” for Samsung. Samsung’s lawyer Kathryn Pickard said during the lawsuit that Apple’s patent infringement accusation was unfair and “caused real commercial harm.”

Still, Judge Briss granted Apple’s permission to appeal the 9 July London court decision.

Source: Bloomberg

Apple, News/Rumors

Apple Sued by Chinese Company for Infringing Patents of Siri-like Service

What goes around turns back around. It’s Apple’s turn to be accused of breaking the patents of others. The voice assistant developer Zhizhen Network Technology from Shanghai, China, filled on June 26 a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the Cupertino-based company of patent infringements.

Zhizhen received on February 15, 2006 the patents for a voice assistant, called Xiaoi Bot. The patent is “a type of instant messaging chat bot system” and it was implemented in services for MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and others. The issue is not about the Siri trademark, as in Proview’s lawsuit against the iPad trademark, but about how Apple introduced Siri on their Chinese website, saying that Siri “can understand what you say and what you’re asking for, and it can find the answer that you are looking for on the web”.

Zhizhen introduced Xiaoi bot on the market last month, as a voice assistant service of Lenovo’s Android 4.0 Smart TV and it will appear on smartphones, too, on February. On the other hand, Apple launched Siri last year with the iPhone 4S model and the iOS 6 will add also Chinese language support. Yet, according to the lawsuit, the Shanghai Company owned the patents first.

The lawsuit is currently in pre-trial negotiations and if the court will find Apple guilty of patent infringements, the tech giant may have to offer for the second time a huge financial compensation to a Chinese company.

Source: MIC Gadget

Apple, News/Rumors

Apple Pays Proview $60 Million for iPad Trademark Settlement

According to the terms of the settlement agreement on June 25, Apple Inc. had to pay Proview International Holdings Ltd. $60 million for the rights to use the iPad name in China.

The dispute between the two companies started in 2010 when Apple sued Proview Shenzhen claiming the iPad trademark ownership, which was obtained by the latter in 2001 for a device with touch-screen called IPAD (Internet Personal Access Device).

Roger Xie, attorney for Proview, said that the company hoped for a larger sum and that “Proview accepted the settlement amount because it’s under great pressure from creditors. Maybe this is the only choice.”

For today’s most popular and valuable company of the world $60 million means nothing. On the other hand, for Proview $60 million are not  enough to cover debts to creditors, reason for which the company was pressed to accept the settlement. “Many of our creditors cannot wait too long, so we believe it’s best for us to settle at this moment,” said founder Rowell Yang.

Source: Bloomberg

 

News/Rumors

Apple Purposes to Prevent Galaxy S3 selling in U.S.

Apple Inc. needs some strong reasons to accomplish its new patent infringement request against Samsung Electronics Co. who is first on the list of Apple’s lawsuits. The Cupertino Company intends to block Samsung’s latest smartphone generation in the U.S. remitting that the Galaxy S3’s S-Voice replicates iPhone 4S’ Siri.

The S3 model was released in the U.K. on May 29 and five carriers from U.S. said they will start selling the model on June 21, with two weeks after the first preliminary injunction meeting. Till today, Galaxy S3 scored nine million preorders from various corners of the world and Chris Chung, a Seoul-based spokesman for the Suwon-based company, said Samsung will start selling its latest model also in U.S. with or without a trial.

James Song, a Seoul- based analyst at Daewoo Securities Co., argued that is little probably for Apple to succeed: “Smartphones aren’t uniquely Apple’s products any more. It won’t be easy to find convincing reasons to block sales.”

Source: Bloomberg