Items tagged with Legal
There were many people in the U.S. crying foul when it was revealed that law enforcement had a man unlock his iPhone using Face ID, since the man couldn't be compelled to unlock a device secured with a passcode. Constitutionally guaranteed protections that are given to a person to prevent them from self-incrimination weren't extended to biometric devices like facial recognition and fingerprint scanners. A federal judge has now stepped up and issued a ruling that greatly changes the landscape for law enforcement and those accused of a crime. The U.S. federal judge has ruled that the police can't...
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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...
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The Weather Channel is one of the the most watched channels on TV and and its app is widely used to gather weather information for cities all around the country. The app claims to have 45 million active monthly users, and the city attorney for Los Angeles filed a lawsuit this week alleging that the app had deceptively collected, shared, and profited from location information on millions of American consumers. According to the lawsuit, the Weather Company, the company behind the app, had unfairly manipulated users into turning on location tracking by suggesting that the location data would...
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Apple and Qualcomm aren't on friendly terms right now considering that the two firms are currently embroiled in a long-running legal battle over patents and royalties. Qualcomm claims that Apple owes billions in royalty payments, while Apple maintains that its devices don't infringe on Qualcomm patents. Qualcomm was granted a sales ban on some older iPhone models in China and is now trying to add the iPhone XR and iPhone XS to the sales ban. Any possibility of having its new hotness banned in China has Apple scrambling to ready a software update that completely bypass the Qualcomm patents...
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Apple and Qualcomm have a very long-running legal battle that has seen the two fighting in court over patent infringement and chip royalties. Qualcomm was also granted an import ban on some iPhones in China, but that ban had no teeth according to Apple. While Qualcomm's CEO has stated it is nearing the end of the legal war with Apple, that seems unlikely. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has now announced that it would review a ruling that banned the import of some iPhone models into the U.S., which it says is not in the public interest even if Apple infringed on the patents....
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The FCC upset a lot of people when it voted to repeal net neutrality rules. The Commission then wanted to reduce the speed that is considered to be broadband in some areas, however, the backlash to that move saw the FCC step back and stop its attempts to reclassify broadband speeds in some areas. The FCC has worked to ensure that it's easier for broadband providers to get their speedy services to more people; Google Fiber in particular benefitted from a change in FCC regulations regarding utility pole usage. The FCC has now announced that it is launching an investigation into one or more major...
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Corporate espionage is something that companies all over the world have to deal with. The latest major manufacturer to deal with the ramifications of corporate espionage is Samsung, as nine people have been indicted in South Korea for stealing Samsung's folding display trade secrets and selling them to China. Samsung showed off this folding display tech when it unveiled the folding Galaxy smartphone earlier this month. That smartphone is tipped to sell for as much as $2,500 and be limited in availability. While the people who sold the data can be brought to justice, there is no putting the genie...
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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...
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Apple has been at odds with law enforcement over its ever-increasing security measures that have at times thwarted efforts to gain access to iPhones during an investigation. Earlier this month reports surfaced indicating that law enforcement had been able to get a user to unlock his iPhone using Face ID. Law enforcement now faces a new challenge; a company called Elcomsoft is warning law enforcement to not look at an iPhone with Face ID. The reasoning behind not looking at the iPhone is that security measures on the device can make it harder to unlock the phone if it sees the wrong face too many...
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When Apple launched the iPhone X, it went through extremes to make the display are of the smartphone as large as possible while minimizing the bezels. This meant the introduction of the notch at the top of the screen and the deletion of the home button where the fingerprint scanner was previously placed. Rather than put the fingerprint scanner on the back of the iPhone, Apple went to Face ID where your face serves as your password. The first reported instance of law enforcement having an iPhone X owner unlock their device with their face has now occurred. Forbes reports that when the FBI searched...
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Apple has lost an ongoing patent battle against a Canadian patent holding firm called WiLan. WiLan proudly announced that it won a judgement against Apple to the tune of $145.1 million after it was found that the company's iPhone family infringed upon a pair of patents. That is most certainly a fraction of a drop in the massive Scrooge McDuck-like coffers over at Apple, but it is still a large sum of money. The patents involved include No. 8,457,145 and No. 8,537,757. That first patent is titled "Method and apparatus for bandwidth request/grant protocols in a wireless communication system."...
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The European Union is set to hit Google with the largest fine in history over its Android operating system practices. The EU has been working on the case against Google for quite some time and judgment was looming earlier this week, but there was no word on just how large of a fine Google might face. The EU antitrust case against Google has been building for over a year now. A report has surfaced today that claims that the fine against Google will be 4.3 billion euros or about $5 billion. Such a massive fine would most certainly set a record for antitrust penalties according to a person familiar...
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Last month the EU tried to overhaul its old copyright law and step into the modern age. The problem was that the law as crafted and supported by many musicians was very overreaching to most. The copyright rules would have placed the responsibility on websites for checking for copyright infringements and forced those websites to pay to link to news stories. Basic linking is what the internet lives on and it is done on literally every website out there. The controversial regulation has now been defeated in a European parliament in a vote that came down 318-278. The legislation was known as the Copyright...
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Apple has been fighting Qualcomm over patents that the iPhone allegedly violates. Qualcomm filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) previously, and a panel has recommended that a trade judge find that Apple infringed on at least one of these patents. If the judge does rule that Apple infringed on the patent, there is a chance that the import of some iPhone devices into the United States could be blocked. More than likely any ruling that Apple violated patents would simply mean a licensing fee paid by Apple to keep a steady flow of iPhone coming into...
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