May 16 - 10:10am EDT   More frequently a target in legal disputes, Apple has filed a lawsuit of its own against general manufacturer Atico International. Atico is accused of a variety of patent infringements related to iPods, including ones for remote controls, the Universal Dock and three dock adapters; it is additionally accused of trademark infringements, involving the iPod mark and image, and perhaps most importantly the Made for iPod trademark, as Atico is said to be operating outside of the official Made for iPod program. [full story]

May 15 - 1:30pm EDT   The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will have to pay $107,834 in legal fees as a result of a failed lawsuit, a US federal judge has ruled. For two years, running until June 2007, the RIAA pursued a case against Tanya Andersen, accusing her of illegal file sharing; that case was dismissed with prejudice however, and Andersen and one of her lawyers were allowed to seek compensation for their defense. At points in the case, as many as six attorneys for Andersen were present in court. [full story]

May 8 - 1:30pm EDT   Movie studios are the latest group to launch a legal assault on Swedish BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, filings indicate. The Motion Picture Association, an international extension of the MPAA, has filed a 93kr million ($15.4 million) lawsuit against Pirate Bay, which it accuses of hosting illegal torrent trackers for movies such as The Pink Panther and Syriana, as well as 13 episodes of the TV show Prison Break. Damages are said to amount to between 222 and 261kr ($37 and $43) per movie, and 415kr ($68) for each Prison Break episode. [full story]

April 28 - 4:20pm EDT   The music site Project Playlist has been hit with a lawsuit filed by the record industry, Reuters reports. Some nine labels, including companies owned by Warner, EMI and Universal, have filed suit in the US District Court of Manhattan, accusing the site of numerous copyright infringements. The site lets users search for songs and create streaming playlists, in a much more targeted fashion than services such Pandora or Last.fm; the site does not, however, have a license for any of the content it offers, even though it makes money on advertising. [full story]

April 24 - 3:05pm EDT   CEO Steve Jobs is among a number of Apple officials that have been ordered to appear in court regarding a new lawsuit, reports say. The summons were issued by the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara, and are connected to a suit from the Boston Retirement Board, alleging that over $105 million was lost on backdated stock options granted to Jobs. Backdating involves picking a favorable stock value from a time before options are actually granted; though this is technically legal, it can harm other shareholders and the rest of a company, and must be declared with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apple leadership is accused of failing its duty in this regard. [full story]

April 22 - 3:10pm EDT   Apple is coming down hard on UK vendors of iPhone clones, reports say. Most such clones are produced in China, where copyright law is less restrictive and an imported iPhone is too expensive for all but the upper classes; the clones nevertheless attempt to reproduce superficial features of the iPhone, in some cases including Apple's own logo. As a result of these problems Apple is said to be pursuing legal action against a variety of UK importers, such as Digital Playworld. [full story]

April 17 - 1:20pm EDT   Verizon has filed a lawsuit against Sprint in a federal court in Delaware, reports say. The former company alleges that Sprint has not only failed to pay almost $10 million in interconnection charges, but has in fact repeatedly refused to cooperate, despite numerous attempts to avoid going to court. These offers were "made over many months and through both written and personal communications," according to a Verizon filing, but have ultimately been "fruitless." The charges in question are said to be mainly for eastern states subject to tariffs filed with the FCC. [full story]

April 15 - 1:00pm EDT   Seagate has begun the first of what may be several lawsuits against makers of flash memory, show filings from the US District Court in San Francisco. It has accused STEC, formerly known as Simple Technology, of violating four patents it owns, connected to the creation of flash memory -- should it win, Seagate could be granted an injunction against STEC products as well as unspecified damages. Seagate CEO Bill Watkins argues that compensation would be well-due, as it has invested heavily in developing technology for SSD drives, and it has tried to persuade other companies to license its patents. [full story]

April 11 - 4:15pm EDT   The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has once again denied an appeal by the Dish Network in light of a legal victory by TiVo, filings show. TiVo contends that Dish DVRs violate a software patent it holds, connected to split recording and viewing; the latter company has protested this however, and fought not only the initial verdict of a lower court, but also the outcome of its first federal appeal. In the wake of this second appeal, the Federal Circuit's decision is final and Dish has little to no legal recourse. [full story]

March 26 - 10:05am EDT   Apple has agreed to an out-of-court settlement in a long-running lawsuit over the MacBook and MacBook Pro, writes the Chicago Tribune. Two California photographers, Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley, filed the class action suit in May of last year, over Apple's claim that the Pro could display "millions of colors." According to the filing, the reality is that Apple fakes the notebooks' color range through software dithering, and yet offers the extended color option in a Mac OS X drop-down menu, without any mention of software emulation. [full story]

March 25 - 4:15pm EDT   New lawsuits have been filed by Typhoon Touch Technologies against the makers of tablet PCs, accounts say. The company first gained attention in December of last year, when it accused prominent computer builders Dell and Motion Computing of violating patents used not only in tablets, but also in smartphones and UMPCs. The new suits are targeted exclusively at makers of tablet PCs though, and name Electrovaya, Xplore Technologies and Sand Dune Ventures (a.k.a. TabletKiosk) as the defendants. [full story]

March 21 - 9:35am EDT   Apple is now facing its first lawsuit involving Time Machine, court filings show. The Texan company Mirror Worlds has accused Apple of infringing on four patents: three of these relate directly to a "document stream operating system," while the fourth covers an attached information management system. The document streams depicted group many different file types together, arranged chronologically and in piles; this most closely resembles the Time Machine backup software in Mac OS X Leopard, but may also cover the sorting system on iPods and iPhones, for chronological items like podcasts. [full story]

March 17 - 12:55pm EDT   The US Supreme Court has denied a Microsoft appeal aimed at defeating an antitrust lawsuit, writes the Associated Press. The suit was originally launched by Novell in 2004, and accuses Microsoft of having "deliberately targeted and destroyed" WordPerfect and Quattro Pro with the purpose of preserving the monopoly of the Windows operating system. Both applications continue to be sold under the aegis of Corel, but no longer hold the marketshare they once did. [full story]

February 25 - 4:05pm EST   Cellular giants Nokia and Qualcomm have taken steps towards lessening the damage of their legal battle, reports say. The companies have announced that they will not start any new patent infringement cases, and will place some current ones on hold, consolidating the rest into a licensing case scheduled for July 21st in the US District Court for Delaware. The case could thus take on monumental importance. [full story]

February 20 - 3:20pm EST   A new lawsuit has been filed against Comcast, once again accusing the cable company of improperly handling peer-to-peer file sharing. In contrast to a previous suit filed in November, the new one specifically accuses Comcast of false advertising, for claiming that it offers "unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer." Plaintiff Sandford Sidner observes that if he attempts to run a P2P application, his connection will "slow to a crawl," rendering it useless. [full story]