Lawsuits

Judge Lucy Kho, the federal judge which presided over Apple vs. Samsung, has today vacated a little more than $450,514,650 from the over $1 billion judgement awarded to Apple at the end of that trial. Kho determined that the jury had made an error in calculating the damages owed from fourteen of the devices. Florian Müller of FOSS Patents reports:

According to a court filing made public yesterday, Steve Jobs threatened Palm with a patent lawsuit in order to stop them from attempting to hire employees away from Apple. The communications between then-Palm CEO Edward Colligan and Jobs took place in 2007. The emails became public as part of a civil action brought against Apple, Google, Intel by five workers that alleged that these companies illegally conspired to end competition for one another’s employees. The threat from Jobs didn’t phase Colligan.

Apple and Motorola Mobility, owned by Google, are seeking arbitration on part of their patent disputes. The two companies would agree to a binding arbitration in order to reach a licensing agreement over standards-essential patents

Apple has been fined $368 million after their video calling feature, FaceTime, was found to infringe on patents owned by a company called VirnetX, a company that provides solutions for secure internet communications. A US court ruled that Apple’s FaceTime product infringes on four patents by VirnetX. One of the patents at issue involved the ability to establish a secure communication link. Apple apparently has no option for appeal in this matter. VirnetX has also brought suit against a number of other larger companies over its patent portfolio.