Items tagged with Lawsuit
Owners of the original Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones who have devices that were manufactured before January 4, 2017, may get some money from Google. Google has agreed to a proposed settlement for a class action lawsuit that was brought by owners of the original Pixel devices who claim they were sold devices with defective microphones. The settlement could see owners getting up to $500 from Google. Google finally admitted that there was an issue with the microphone in some of the smartphones in March of 2017 when it said that less than 1% of Pixel phones had a hairline crack in the solder connection on the audio codec. That crack caused issues for affected users when calling and when...
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Sammy Davis Jr. offered up some helpful advice to would be criminals in a theme song he sang for Baretta, a detective show that ran in the late 1970s. He said, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." But what if you didn't do the crime in the first place? Well, if you're an 18-year-old student in New York, you apparently sue Apple for $1 billion. That is the amount Ousmane Bah is seeking for being falsely accused and arrested for theft at an Apple Store, according to a lawsuit filed today. In the lawsuit, Bah claims he was at his senior prom in Manhattan when the alleged thefts occurred. So how exactly did he get accused of the crime to begin with, if he wasn't even there? We only have...
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In what is a somewhat surprising turn of events, Apple and Qualcomm have agreed to settle all ongoing litigation between the two companies. The two have been going back and forth with lawsuits around the globe over patent licensing relating to 4G LTE modems used in Apple's iPhone and iPad products. Apple accused Qualcomm of using monopolistic practices to extract exorbitant licensing fees from its customers. Qualcomm countered by saying that Apple infringed on many of its patents, which resulted in successful sales bans both in China and in Germany. However, it appears that all of those past battles are now just water under the bridge. Apple has agreed to pay...
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Epic Games is the company behind the incredibly popular battle royale game Fortnite. However, Epic Games has been facing a series of lawsuits from people claiming that the dance moves characters in the game perform are copies of dances they invented. One such suit and the first to go to court is from a rapper called 2 Milly, whose real name is Terrance Ferguson. The rapper sued Epic Games claiming that the Fortnite dance called "Swipe It" is based on the dance he invented called "Milly Rock" and was used in the game without his permission. Epic has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit stating that the suit is "fundamentally at odds with free speech principles." Epic also claims in the suit...
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Well, you could see this one coming from a mile away. Remember that Group FaceTime bug we wrote about yesterday? The one that Apple apparently knew about since at least last week? Predictably, someone has gone and filed a lawsuit and is seeking unspecified punitive damages on claims of negligence, product liability, misrepresentation, and warranty breach. In case you missed it, the bug allowed users to exploit the Group FaceTime feature in iOS to spy on another iPhone, iPad, or even a Mac user. We say "allowed" (past tense) not because the bug has been squashed (soon, but not yet), but because Apple has disabled Group FaceTime while it works on a fix. Before that happened, a user could place...
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Bethesda launched a very popular mobile game called Fallout Shelter, and as tends to happen anytime a game gets that popular, there were copycats. Most notably the Westworld Mobile game from Warner Brothers based on the hit HBO series of the same name seems to have too many things in common with Fallout Shelter. When Westworld Mobile launched, players and critics quickly noticed that it looked and felt very much like Fallout Shelter, so much so that Bethesda filed suit against Warner Brothers and developer Behavior Interactive in June 2018, alleging copyright infringement among other things. Bethesda said in the suit, "Behaviour breached its contract with Bethesda and utilized its restricted...
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Back in 2017, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a suit against Qualcomm alleging antitrust violations, and only reached trial this week. Odds are that even if the FTC wins the suit against Qualcomm, and licensing fees and royalties that smartphone makers are charged decreased, the smartphone makers would simply pocket the savings and consumers will continue to pay the same prices. While the FTC is accusing Qualcomm of antitrust violations, the price of royalties that Qualcomm charges is 5% of the cost of the device up to $20 per handset maximum. That certainly is a hefty chunk for the smartphone makers, but $20 isn't likely to make a smartphone shopper change their mind about buying...
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A woman named Courtney Davis has filed a lawsuit against Apple in the Northern District of California over misleading images used to advertise the company's new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max smartphones. Mrs. Davis claimed that the images hid the display notch from view and gave the impression that there wasn't one. The display notch is an issue that several companies in the smartphone business are currently working to find a solution to. Companies are trying to make smartphones with displays that cover the entire front of the smartphone without anything else in the way, but this has been problematic as companies also want to keep a camera on the phone's front and the phone needs to have a...
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Last July, Nintendo went nuclear over ROM sites that were giving people access to pirated versions of classic Nintendo games. The first two sites that Nintendo took legal action against were LoveROMS.com and LoveRetro.com; both owned by the same people. The legal action against the two websites resulted in smaller ROM sites shutting down, out of fear they would be next on Nintendo's hit list. The legal action against LoveROMS.com and LoveRetro.com is now over as Nintendo, and the site owners Jacob Mathias and his wife have decided to settle the case. It seems that Mathias and his wife knew there was no fighting the Nintendo legal machine and entered into a negotiation to stave off a lengthy...
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Apple and Qualcomm aren’t exactly friends, but in some ways, the two firms need each other. iPhones are among the top-selling smartphones in the world, and Qualcomm certainly wants to get in on that sales action. Apple needs Qualcomm modems because they typically outperform rival hardware from Intel and MediaTek, and its customers want the best hardware for their money. Apple has sought out hardware from other sources with company implementing Intel modems in their latest crop of iPhones recently and has threatened to use MediaTek in the past. And now it seems Qualcomm is accusing Apple of not paying its bills; the company alleges that Apple is $7 billion behind in royalty payments....
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The debate surrounding net neutrality is going to court.The United States Justice Department is suing the state of California over their new net neutrality law. The lawsuit will decide whether federal or state governments can enact laws that affect national telecommunication companies. The suit was filed on Sunday with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill that prevents companies like Verizon and AT&T from slowing or blocking Internet traffic. Companies are also unable to allow unlimited access to certain sites while blocking others. The bill is intended to protect consumers and undo the laws enacted...
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Qualcomm is one of the biggest names in the mobile industry and makes chips and modems for smartphones, tablets, and other devices. Qualcomm also holds some of the most important patents in the industry and as such is has spent huge sums of money and time in litigation all around the world defending its IP against other manufacturers it claims are infringing on its patent portfolio. Most recently, Qualcomm sued Apple for allegedly sharing trade secrets with Intel. Apple and Qualcomm have been fighting in court for a long time, and Apple is known to be working to eliminate Qualcomm modems in favor of Intel modems for roadmap mobile devices. Qualcomm claims that the only way Intel could build...
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The legal war between Qualcomm and Apple is getting nastier by the minute. The latest salvo is being lobbed by Qualcomm, which filed a lawsuit again Apple on Monday alleging that the company was sharing "vast swaths" of confidential information with Intel. If you recall, Qualcomm filed a lawsuit in early November 2017 which made similar claims against Apple. These new charges accuse of Apple of ignoring the master software agreement that it signed with Qualcomm, and that it shared trade secrets -- in the form of Qualcomm source code and internal software tools -- with Intel to help its engineers improve LTE modem performance. Apple first began using Intel LTE modems in 2016 for...
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One of the neat things about Google Maps and its Timeline feature is that you can bring up view of everywhere you have been within a specific time frame—you'll see little red dots scattered on the map. What some users are finding not so cool, however, is that Google still collects location data after turning off the "Location History" option. That revelation has led to a lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco on Friday. In the lawsuit, Napoleon Patacsil and his attorneys allege that Google is running afoul of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. "As revealed in the recent AP investigation—and confirmed by a team of researchers at Princeton University—Google...
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