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Supreme Court rules against Apple in antitrust lawsuit, allows customer to sue over App Store

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A major lawsuit against Apple and its App Store will be allowed to move forward, the United States Supreme Court has decided, affirming the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. The lawsuit relates to Apple’s requirement that apps distributed on the iPhone go through the App Store which is controlled by the iPhone.


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Siding with Samsung, Supreme Court reverses decision on $339 million owed to Apple over iPhone design dispute [U]

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[UPDATE: Apple has responded to the news: “The question before the Supreme Court was how to calculate the amount Samsung should pay for their copying. Our case has always been about Samsung’s blatant copying of our ideas, and that was never in dispute. We will continue to protect the years of hard work that has made iPhone the world’s most innovative and beloved product. We remain optimistic that the lower courts will again send a powerful signal that stealing isn’t right.”]

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Samsung over Apple in the latest chapter of the years-long dispute over iPhone design patents. The decision isn’t totally surprising given some tell-tale signs ahead of today’s announcement, but it does mean that the case will once again continue in a lower court where a new sum for damages owed will be decided.


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111 designers including Dieter Rams & Calvin Klein back Apple in Supreme Court patent case against Samsung

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The United States Supreme Court is set to take on Samsung’s appeal over Apple’s design patent case in two months, and today Apple has submitted an amicus brief with support from 111 famed designers ahead of the trial. Prominent names featured in the amicus brief supporting Apple include Dieter Rams, Calvin Klein, and Lord Norman Foster who is the designer behind Apple’s Campus 2 project. The Supreme Court is scheduled to take on Samsung’s appeal of the ruling in favor of Apple on October 11th.


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Supreme Court ruling makes life harder for patent trolls, easier for Apple

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The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday ruled that a 2011 law designed to make it easier to defeat new patent trolls were legal. The law had been challenged by a company attempting to patent something which had long been done by other companies.

The case before the Supreme Court focused on a patent held by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC that claims an invention for alerting drivers when they are speeding. GPS technology company Garmin brought a challenge at the Patent Office, which invalidated the Cuozzo patent after concluding its claims weren’t innovative when viewed against other prior technologies.

The ruling will be of particular benefit to Apple …


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Authors and booksellers back Apple in ebook appeal to Supreme Court, say Amazon should be investigated instead

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While the ebook trial may seem like old news now, the case is not yet finally settled. Apple was found guilty of anticompetitive behavior in its ebooks pricing and practices back in 2013, and lost a subsequent federal court appeal – despite some judges expressing sympathy with Apple’s position.

Apple then decided to take the case to the Supreme Court, and today got the backing of both authors and distributors, reports The Bookseller.

A group of authors and booksellers have filed a motion in the US asking for the […] decision against Apple’s role in a 2010 conspiracy to fix the price of e-books to be overturned […]

The Authors Guild, along with Authors United, the American Booksellers Association, and Barnes & Noble filed an “amicus brief” in the US which asserts that the government’s focus on Apple’s “allegedly anti-competitive activities” was “misplaced” … 


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Samsung plans appeal to U.S. Supreme Court in never-ending patent war with Apple

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Following a request for a rehearing of its battle with Apple earlier this summer, Samsung last week had its plea denied by the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, putting the case on its last leg. Samsung was hoping that the federal appeals court would reconsider the U.S Federal Circuit Court’s decision to uphold damages from a 2012 ruling. Following last week’s rejections, Samsung’s final option would be to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and now it appears that the company is doing just that.


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U.S. Patent Office invalidates an original iPhone patent in Samsung lawsuit

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Earlier this month, the United States Patent Office made a non-final ruling that one of Apple’s design patents for the original iPhone is invalid within Apple’s long-running lawsuit against Samsung, according to a report from FOSS Patents. This particular patent, as seen in the drawings above, references the overall design of the original iPhone launched in 2007. It is known as the “D’677” patent in court proceedings and legal documents. FOSS explains the reasoning behind the invalidation:


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