Items tagged with Legal
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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Apple wants to make it harder for anyone to gain unauthorized access to iPhones with a new USB Restricted Mode in iOS 12. That move infuriated law enforcement as it meant that the GrayKey iPhone hacking tool (and others from Cellebrite) used by authorities to crack iPhones would be useless. Grayshift, the company behind GrayKey, didn’t take Apple's new restrictions lying down. Grayshift went on the offensive and has been actively working to crack Apple's new USB Restricted Mode, and the company is now claiming victory. If you haven’t been following USB Restricted Mode, the...
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Apple is no stranger to class action lawsuits and has fought many of them over the years. The most recent had to do with the butterfly keyboard on MacBook Pro computers. Apple is now facing another class action suit and this time the suit is over the Apple Watch. The class action lawsuit claims that all Apple Watches from the original Series 0 through the current Series 3 share the same defect that affects the screen. The main claim in the suit is that there is a defect that results in the screens cracking, shattering, or detaching from the body of the watch. The screen issues seen are allegedly...
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The FBI has quoted statistics to the public and Congress that claimed investigators had been locked out of encrypted devices like smartphones nearly 7,800 times. It is now being reported that the actual number is much smaller in the area of between 1,000 and 2,000 incidents. The report claims that over a time frame of seven months, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray cited the inflated figure as evidence that the FBI needed to address what it calls "Going Dark." Going Dark is a term the FBI uses to describe the spread of encrypted software that can block investigators from accessing data...
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Nintendo has been selling Switch consoles in droves pushing its earnings to record levels. Months back, a company called Gamevice took issue with Nintendo and filed a patent infringement suit against the Switch for allegedly infringing on patents relating to how controllers attach to the sides of an electronic device. While the Switch controllers attach only to the Switch console, the Gamevice patent has to do with controllers that attach to each side of its Wikipad gaming tablet and detachable controllers for third-party tablets. Gamevice eventually dropped the lawsuit for unknown reasons. That...
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Last month, the FTC stepped up and said that those "Warranty Void if Removed" stickers were totally illegal and ran afoul of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. The FTC is now back and is telling six companies that they are in violation, giving the firms 30 days to clean up their acts or face potential legal action. The FTC sent letters out to ASUS, HTC, Hyundai, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, which have all been warned that language on their websites is in violation of U.S. laws. The letters were obtained by Motherboard via a Freedom of Information Act request. The letters state, "This...
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Microsoft decided to file criminal charges against an e-waste recycler named Eric Lundgren. The case against Lundgren originally went to court months ago, but the man remained free as his appeal worked its way through the court system. A federal appeals court has now upheld the original ruling, meaning that Lundgren will serve a 15-month prison sentence and will be forced to pay a $50,000 fine. What led to this harsh prison sentence? Lundgren had taken to downloading free software that Microsoft offers to Windows users commonly called restore disks. Lundgren's idea was to make these discs available...
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Police around the world have been using fingerprints to catch criminals for decades. Normally these fingerprints are lifted from surfaces or objects at the scene of a crime. Police in Wales recently used a photograph of a finger to catch and convict 11 drug traffickers. The process of using fingerprints from a digital photo is hailed as groundbreaking. Dave Thomas of South Wales Police said that the police force will now analyze images more closely when it finds them on smartphones seized during investigations. In this case, the police seized a smartphone at a home where an anonymous tip informed...
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Apple CEO Tim Cook and other members of Apple's executive team want employees to know they will make it very difficult for them if they leak inside information about the company or its products. However, at least one of the folks Apple is directly addressing wasn't intimidated by a recent memo posted to the internal company blog detailing how Apple will take action against leakers. Nay, this Apple leaker leaked the memo threatening to destroy leakers if they leaked any more confidential information. Cook may be in his office spinning his totem right now thinking this must be an Inception-induced...
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Ethereum has taken a swift kick to the blockchain after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it has "dozens" of investigations open in the cryptocurrency space associated with ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). The announcement of the investigations was made by an agency official on March 15. The confirmation that the investigations have been opened comes after SEC Enforcement Division co-Director Stephanie Avakian announced in February that subpoenas had been sent to firms that were believed to have broken securities laws. SEC scrutiny of ICOs (initial coin offerings) has grown...
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Authorities in France are set to file a lawsuit against two of the biggest tech firms in the world: U.S.-based Google and Apple. The suit was announced by France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. The minister said that he had been made aware that both Google and Apple had imposed price and contract changes on developers who were selling software on Google Play and the App Store. "I will therefore be taking Google and Apple to the Paris commercial court for abusive trade practices," Le Maire said. "As powerful as they are, Google and Apple should not be able to treat our startups and our developers...
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The FCC “Restoring Internet Freedom” order has been entered in the Federal Register. This is the order that makes massive changes to the Net Neutrality rules that required all internet traffic to be treated equally. The order was published this morning and opens the doors for legal battles to start in earnest. There is no doubt that intense debates and legal battles will ensue over the order and there are strong opinions and feelings on both sides of the Net Neutrality argument. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel issued a statement today: The FCC’s net neutrality decision is...
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Last year, a hacker group was able to penetrate credit reporting agency Equifax and make off with information, including the social security numbers, of 143 million Americans. Only a few days after the hack, a ransom demand for the return of the information was made to the tune of $2.6 million in bitcoin via the dark web. Now it is believed that the hackers are also believed to have made off with other personal data about Americans including tax ID numbers and driver's license details. Other data leaked in the hack that we already knew about included names, birthdates, social security numbers,...
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Net neutrality was officially killed last month, but there are still people looking to bring it back from the dead. In the U.S. Senate, 50 senators have endorsed a new piece of legislation that could override the FCC and reinstate Net Neutrality. The final numbers on the bill have left Senate Democrats one vote short of the 51 needed to pass a Senate resolution of disapproval. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Net neutrality was a set of rules that banned ISPs from blocking or slowing websites. Those rules were eliminated in December, with those against net neutrality arguing that the rules were too restrictive...
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