A German court affirmed a preliminary ruling on Thursday that determined Samsung’s reworked tablet does not look so much like the iPad that it should be banned. The ruling comes as another blow to Apple, which is in the midst of several other lawsuits with rival smartphone and tablet makers over intellectual property. The court said that there were “clear differences” between the Galaxy Tab 10.1N and the iPad, reports Reuters. Apple and Samsung have been tangled in what seems like an endl...

The Munich Regional Court in Germany on Wednesday rejected Apple’s request to ban Samsung’s local subsidiaries from selling the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet. “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection,” Judge Andreas Mueller said. In September, Samsung’s local retailer arm was banned from selling...

A judge with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled Monday that HTC is guilty of infringing Apple’s patents in several devices. The ITC also ordered a ban on the import of several of HTC’s smartphones although it is unclear which models are affected. The ban will take effect on April 19th. “Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has found a violation of section 337 in this investigation and has issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting ...

The United States International Trade Commission recently said that it would review a judge’s decision from earlier this year, which cleared Apple of violating four HTC patents. An ITC judge ruled in October that Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch did not violate HTC-owned patents related to phone dialing and power management. The ITC announcement came just ahead of a decision in a separate case surrounding a complaint filed by Apple alleging that HTC’s smartphones violate several of its ...

A judge with the United States International Trade Commission has ruled that Apple is not infringing on four of HTC’s patents related to phone dialing and battery power management, Reuters said Monday. HTC originally filed the lawsuit in May of last year when it sought a ban on the import of Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The final ruling in the case will occur in February when the verdict of a full commission is revealed. Apple and HTC have been locked in a number of legal battles. Apple fi...

The Düsseldorf regional court in Germany announced on Tuesday that it is partially lifting its original injunction that banned Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in all of the European Union except for the Netherlands. Samsung is now allowed to sell the tablet in the whole of the European Union except for Germany. According to The Wall Street Journal, a court spokesperson said that it was unclear if it was even possible for the German court to stop Samsung from selling its tablet outside of Germ...

Apple has been fined by South Korea’s telecommunications regulator following the “Locationgate” scandal that caused public outrage earlier this year, Dow Jones reports. This marks the second time Apple has had to pay penalties resulting from the iOS location-tracking snafu. A South Korean lawyer sued Apple and was awarded $1 million won, or approximately $945 at the time, by a court this past June. It was discovered in April that the iPhone and some iPad models were secretly tracking user...

A judge with the U.S. International Trade Commission on Friday ruled that HTC’s Android phones infringe on two of ten Apple patents covered in a complaint filed by the Cupertino-based company last year. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement at that time. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not s...

Last week, the FCC ruled in favor of AT&T in a complaint it filed against VoIP home-phone service provider magicJack. For those of you that don’t own a television, magicJack advertises — relentlessly, via infomercial — that its VoIP service will provide unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada for just $19.95 per year. Users are instructed to plug the USB dongle (pictured above) into their computer, connect any touch-tone phone to the dongle’s opposite end, and start dialing. AT&T has, h...

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of a new set of rules that will force larger cellular carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T to provide roaming access to their data networks at prices set by the FCC. The move will allow smaller regional carriers to take advantage of the large investments made by national carriers at a mere fraction of the cost of building out their own data networks. Immediately following the FCC’s vote, Verizon Wireless’ executive vice pre...

A federal judge ruled on Monday that Apple, Inc. did not infringe upon the patents of company Mirror Worlds in the creation of its Cover Flow interface. Mirror Worlds filed its initial lawsuit in 2008, claiming that Apple copied technologies protected by its “document stream operating system” filing from 2004. Back in 2010, a U.S. District Court ruled in the plaintiffs favor and awarded Mirror Worlds $625.5 million in damages. Apple appealed, and the ruling was overturned by a federal judge citi...

An International Trade Commission panel on Friday ruled on a patent infringement suit filed by Nokia against Apple in May 2010. In the suit, Nokia alleged that Apple’s iPhone infringed on multiple Nokia patents covering wireless data transmission, data encryption and other related technologies. The ITC found that Apple did not infringe on any of the five patents named by Nokia in its complaint. The suit was one several patent-related suits exchanged by Nokia and Apple in recent years in the United Stat...

Remember how Kodak filed suit against Apple and RIM a year ago alleging patent infringement? Well, late yesterday, a U.S. International Trade Commission judge ruled that Kodak’s case — which related to low resolution previews of videos that are displayed on-screen while recording full resolution video — is invalid. Kodak had previously won claims against LG and Samsung, after which it was able to put a licensing deal in place worth a reported $864 million. Things might not turn out that well this...

France Telecom is not in a good place right now. Imagine the time, negotiations and bags of money resources it took to score iPhone 3G exclusivity on Orange for a five-year term all to see things evaporate thanks to the scrappy Bouygues Telecom. Appealing to the Competition Council, Bouygues contested that this exclusivity agreement seriously undermined competition in the mobile space due to the excessive length of the agreement. Despite obvious opposition from both France Telecom and Apple, the Competition C...