Is An Apple-HTC Lawsuit Battle Headed Our Way?

I feel like it has been far too long since a major smartphone manufacturer accused another one of stealing or cheating. Thankfully, HTC has given me my fix on smartphone finger pointing. According to Want China Times President of HTC North Asia Jack Tong reacted to suggestions in a lot of reviews that his company's new HTC One A9 bears remarkable similarity to the iPhone 6. In fact, there have actually been reviews on the HTC One A9 calling it an iPhone clone.

Apparently these reviews hurt Tong's feelings as he was quoted saying, "We're not copying. We made a unibody metal-clad phone in 2013." Well, there you have it. HTC made one in 2013 so Apple must be the one copying, right? "It's Apple that copies us in terms of the antenna design on the back," Tong added.

These types of copying battles have been going on for years, the most famous of which was when Apple and Samsung went back and forth in a court accusing the other. Apple was doing rather well, but the whole thing is still going on. So does this mean that another legal battle will be popping up? Will Apple sue HTC or will HTC sue Apple? Neither company has commented on anything yet, though.

Apple and HTC both agreed on a 10-year licensing deal nearly three years ago and both companies decided to stop all patent litigation. However, lawyers can find reasons to break deals if things like emotions or money get in the way.

HTC has made some pretty nice looking smartphones for some time though the marketing that goes along with these phones has been particularly terrible. Sure they have ads that star big-name Hollywood celebrities like Gary Oldman and Robert Downey Jr. though neither of those ads are memorable or captivating. Which is probably why you are just as shocked as I am to hear that both Gary Oldman and Robert Downey Jr. have been in HTC smartphone commercials.

With the recent slew of smartphones that was released, one thing has become evident. They are all pretty much the same in both look and functionality. I mean the only device that offers anything remotely different is the Galaxy S6 Edge+. It is still unclear how this whole process will turn out, though if it is anything like the Apple vs. Samsung case, at least it will be entertaining!

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Courts Decide That Australia Won’t Be Seeing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

In Australia this week, a court decided that it will be complying with Apple’s request to participate in a temporary ban of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1. This means that consumers in Australia will most likely not be seeing the newest version of Samsung’s tablet during the holiday season.

Samsung released a statement after the decision was made. It stated that the company was disappointed with the court’s decision, but it would "take all necessary measures including legal action in order to ensure our innovative products are available to consumers."

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Justice Annabelle Bennett believed that there were several different factors that were in Apple’s favor. Earlier this month, Samsung informed the court that it would consider cancelling all plans to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 if they placed a ban on the tablet. Despite this, the Herald reported that Bennett said, "she had to weigh this consideration against the loss and injury that could be caused to Apple should Samsung be allowed to sell the iPad rival."

Samsung had been confident that they would be able defeat Apple with a countersuit which it filed in September, but clearly things didn’t work out as well as they had hoped.

"Our wireless standard patents are essential for mobile business. We will continue to legally assert our intellectual property rights against those who violate Samsung's patents and free ride on our technology," Samsung said.

The Herald reported that Apple released the same statement that it had issued earlier this year, "This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."

Patent blogger Florian Mueller said that of course the issue will not be completely resolved until the full trial has concluded, but by the time that the trial is complete "the product will likely be obsolete in this rapidly evolving market," he wrote in a blog post.

"After today's decision, I believe no company in the industry will be able to launch any new Android-based touchscreen product in Australia anytime soon without incurring a high risk of another interim injunction," Mueller wrote.

"If Apple wins the Australian case at the end of the main proceeding, all Android-based products will effectively be shut out of the Australian market forever, unless Google or its device maker partners settle with Apple," Mueller said. "Therefore, Google and Samsung will have to fight very hard to have the asserted patents declared invalid, or at least have their scope narrowed."

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ITC to Hear Samsung's Case Against Apple

On Wednesday, July 27 the International Trade Commission decided that they would hear out Samsung’s patent case against Apple.

The commission "has voted to institute an investigation of certain electronic devices, including wireless communication devices, portable music and data processing devices, and tablet computers," the ITC said in a statement. What Samsung wants is for the commission to block all U.S. imports of iPhone, iPods and iPads.

At the end of June, Samsung filed a complaint against Apple just two months after Apple sued Samsung. Apple claimed that Samsung had copied the look and feel of the iPhone and the iPad with its Galaxy S smartphones and tablets. That’s when Samsung turned right around with a countersuit that claimed that Apple was infringing on five different patents that were related to some of Samsung’s wireless network technology.

Apple then came back with some more complaints at the beginning of July. They attempted to block the import of Samsung Galaxy S phones as well as the Galaxy Tab tablets.

Apple recently was informed by the ITC that its Mac OS X operating system is in violation of patents from S3 Graphics related to graphics chips; however, its iOS is fine. Bloomberg said that the ruling on the case could possibly lead to a U.S. ban on the imports of certain Macs.

FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller mentioned the fact that S3 is in the middle of being bought out by HTC, another company that is dealing with patent issues involving Apple. He did say, however, that he did not think that the S3 ruling would help HTC out at all.

"It looks like HTC is going to have to use patents other than the four at issue in that proceeding in order to put Apple under serious pressure," Mueller wrote.

"Right now it seems that the validity of those four S3 patents is uncertain, and even the worst-case scenario for Apple may just come down to a need to equip its Macintosh computers with Nvidia chips."

"The iPhone, iPad and iPod product lines aren't even affected at all. Against that background, Apple can apparently keep pursuing its multiple lawsuits against HTC," he said.

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Apple Sued Over Privacy Issues

Apple is being sued by a California man due to the privacy issues with some of their apps.

Jonathan Lalo filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California on Thursday, December 23, because he says that Apple produces devices that give access to ad networks to allow them to track a user’s app activity without the consent of the user. The complaint that Lalo filed mentions names like Pandora, Paper Toss, The Weather Channel and Dictionary.com.

Lalo claims that this ad network tracking occurs on Apple’s iPhone and the iPad, and it allows the networks to see which applications people are downloading, how often they use them, and how long they are using them. Lalo also claims that both iPhones and iPads feature a Unique Device Identifier (UDID), a number that is specific to that device, which users cannot block, alter or delete.

According to the suit, the UDID "is now being used by ad networks to track Plaintiffs and the Class – including what apps they download, how frequently they use the apps, and for how long. Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users' location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views."

It continues saying that due to this, Apple and the app developers both “invaded their privacy, misappropriated and misused their personal information and interfered with the operability of their mobile devices." According to Bloomberg, the suit claims that it is seeking justice on behalf of all of the Apple iPhone and iPad users who have downloaded an app between December 1, 2008 and last week.

"None of the defendants adequately informed plaintiffs of their practices, and none of the defendants obtained plaintiffs' consent to do so," one plaintiff of the lawsuit alleged.

So far, Apple has made no comment concerning the allegations.

Issues over privacy have been prevalent of late. Just last week, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that discussed how mobile apps send certain information out without the user’s consent or knowledge and that the use was “widely and regularly” practiced by companies. The article focused on a study that examined 101 different mobile applications. It found that iPhone apps gave out more personal information without a user’s consent than Android apps did.

The Journal also included a list of the “leakiest” apps that included Pandora, Paper Toss, and TextPlus 4. These apps send out information including age, gender, ZIP codes and user IDs to several different ad networks. The information that is released the most often, which is usually either sent back to the app manufacturer or sold to an ad network, is the device’s UDID because this information allows companies to see what the owner does with his or her device.

The article in the Journal spurred the Mobile Marketing Association to decide that new, more specific privacy guidelines need to be devised that inform consumers about what information is being released to advertisers and how it is being utilized.

Right now there are two separate suits going on. One deals with the
iPhone, and the other deals with the iPad. A partner in the Fears & Nachawati law firm and the attorney of one of the complainants Majed Nachawati said that he would not be surprised if at some point the cases were consolidated into one case by the judges that are presiding over the cases.

Nachawati also said, "We are also looking at Google's Android platform and a lawsuit against them has not been ruled out.”

After these privacy issues have been made known to the public, there now seems to be a growing concern about users' privacy on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Despite the filing of the two separate lawsuits, some experts are predicting that the court cases will not be successful.

In April Apple did amend its developer agreement to ban all apps from sending user data to third parties unless it was information that was directly necessary for the functionality of the app.

The lawsuits say though that Apple really hasn’t taken any steps to implement or enforce the changes that they have made due to the criticism that they received from advertising networks.

Trip Chowdhry, a research analyst for Global Equities Research, said that he does not think that the lawsuits will have a big impact on investors.

“If this were a major issue, all web browsers would have to shut down and there would not be any advertising on the Internet,” Chowdhry said.

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