Apple May Use Legal Ruling To Force Motorola To Destroy Handsets Which Infringe On Patents

It seems that if you are the type of person who has a particular interest in watching competing technology companies go head to head in a legal battle, then Germany, or more specifically, Munich Regional Courts is the place where you should be. It is no secret that patent infringement cases have been sprouting up all over the place, with companies like Motorola Mobility, Apple and Samsung all trying desperately to get one up on each other through the legal system and strike a victory blow in the tense battle for smartphone domination.

All of the exciting action in these lawsuits seem to happen in Germany, with regional courts seemingly always in session ruling over one infringement or the other. Most recently it has been Apple and Motorola Mobility Holdings who have been in the litigation spotlight dueling against each other over numerous patents, but the one we are focusing on today is Apple’s EP2059868 patent which spans across the European Union and relates to a “portable electronic device for photo management“.

A local regional court has ended the day by declaring that Motorola have indeed been naughty boys and infringed upon the Apple-owned patent. It may seem like such a minor thing, considering the patent in question relates to the little bounce animation users will see when over-zooming on a photograph through the device’s gallery. The installed software corrects this over scroll by popping the photograph back into view with a nice little bounce-type animation.

The ruled infringement may come from a software-based installation, but the ruling in Germany could hold dire consequences for all of the affected devices that Motorola own, if they don’t come up with a solution pretty promptly. One of the powers including within the ruling effectively gives the Cupertino technology giants the ability to force Motorola to destroy any and all products which infringe upon this patent, within the German borders. If Apple were feeling particularly nasty, they could also force Motorola to recall every affected device which has been shipped to manufacturers, just to make them put the death blow to them as well. It is worth noting that although this is possible, it is extremely unlikely that a company like Apple would force such an action and would much rather come to an amicable, financial solution with MMI.

Because the actual issue is software-based, it means that Motorola can make all of the legal hurt and pain go away via a simple software update, removing Apple’s right to cull the devices in question. So, yet another small victory for Apple in the European courts, but with a number of cases still pending involving various manufacturers, the legal wrangles are far from over.

Apple Seeks Up To $15 Per Every Android Device Sold By Motorola And Samsung In Royalties Over Patent Disputes

It has hardly been a secret that Apple Inc. have been fighting a patent war on multiple fronts against multiple companies, which most notably include the soon to be Google-owned Motorola Mobility Holdings, as well as the Korean based Samsung Electronics. Motorola and Samsung are arguably two of the largest producers of Android-powered handsets, and with Apple believing both companies are heavily infringing upon company owned patents, they have been relentless in their pursuit of justice through the European legal system.

The action that they seek has involved an attempt to have sales of certain devices blocked, as well as rumors that Apple could even demand that Motorola recall certain devices from networks and destroy them, which is unlikely to happen but goes some way to portray the seriousness of the situation. It seems that even though the litigation is ongoing, Apple have also expressed a desire and a willingness to enter into negotiations which would see the legal action come to an end.

If sources are to be believed, Apple have taken it upon themselves to put together business and financial proposals for the attention of Motorola and Samsung, which would more than likely bring to an end some of the ongoing legal wrangling. The proposals are said to involve the two companies making royalty payments to Apple in a deal which would see the company license its patent to those it has accused of infringing them. If Apple believe so strongly in their case, and that these companies have indeed infringed heavily upon owned patents, this may seem like the wrong move, but it would guarantee the company a fee per handset sold as well as bringing an end to the burdensome court cases.

Sources familiar with the issues are claiming that Apple have asked for between $5 and $15 per handset, which relates to those devices which use technologies covered by a specific patent, although at this time it isn’t clear which patent that is. This equates to between 1% and 2.5% of the net sale per device, which may be greeted with distain considering Motorola have previously been publicly slated for asking for the same higher end percentage for the wireless patents it licenses to Apple.

The fact that Apple have acquired such a vast cash amount in their recent run of profitability means that they won’t need to be in any hurry to settle for less than they believe they are owed, meaning we could see this continue for some time to come.

Apple Wants $2.5 billion From Samsung In Patent Claim And Damages

As part of the ongoing court battles with Samsung, Apple is seeking to recover a whopping $2.5 billion in damages for patent infringement, as well as $30 per device sold by Samsung, according to new court filings.

The trial is set to begin on 30th of July, and Apple’s claims are mentioned in the pre-hearing brief.  FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller says Apple pitches Samsung’s infringement costs at $500 million in lost profits, and a further $25 million in “reasonable royalty damages.”

In the document, the Cupertino company also alleges Samsung has been “unjustly enriched” by further, and although that specific amount wasn’t revealed, it would appear as though Apple feels Samsung has yielded a further two billion, hence the total amount being $2.525 billion.

Most of the damages relate to design patents, and Apple feels it’s entitled to around $24 per Samsung device in violation Apple’s design patents or trade dress rights. Apple doesn’t deem software patent issues to be nearly as valuable, and is looking for a lot less in software-based patent infringements. Apple seeks $2.02 per unit for the “over scroll bounce”, $3.10 for the “scrolling API” patent, and a meager $2.02 for the “tap to zoom and navigate.”

Despite the specific sums of money stated, Apple is more in favor of Samsung removing the infringing content as opposed to stumping up the cash, and if Samsung is deemed to be in violation of Apple’s intellectual property, this would certainly make more sense as it would prevent further litigation.

Mueller is a specialist when it comes to intellectual property, and much of the coverage of the continual court battle has been commentated on by him. He does see an end to the debacle, and reckons the resolution will be an out-of-court settlement.

As we reported a while back, a court-ordered meeting was held between Apple CEO and Samsung Vice Chairman Choi Gee-Sung in order to try and find a resolution, but as has been the case prior to many court cases in the past, the mediation session failed in its bid to sort things out.

The pairing are battling on several fronts just now, and it will be interesting to see which way this one sways. Stay tuned for updates as they come through.

Forget Apple Vs. Samsung, Motorola Wants Import Ban On iPhone, iPad And iPod touch

Apple maybe riding on a wave of unprecedented pre-release interest in their next-generation iPhone that is due to be announced next month, but it isn’t all sunshine and happiness for the Cupertino-based technology giants. Although the next few weeks represents an extremely exciting time for Apple and all those who are involved in the iPhone project, legal representatives of the company are still locked in an ongoing patent battle with Samsung with proceedings set to come to an end at some point next week.

Although Apple has presented evidence that points out three different loss of sales scenarios that is seeing them claim up to $2.8 billion in damages from Samsung, there is by no means any guarantee that the judge or jury will see the situation from their point of view, meaning it is in no way the foregone conclusion that some people seem to think it is. As if Tim Cook and his team didn’t have enough to worry about, Google-owned Motorola Mobility have let it be known that they are less than happy with some of Apple’s products and want to contest their validity in court.

To show that they are serious about their patent infringement claims, Motorola Mobility has filed a new complaint with the United States International Trade Commission. This isn’t the first time Motorola has attempted to have some shackles slapped onto Apple’s extremely popular iOS devices with an earlier attempt this year being thrown out before they even got started. Something has obviously changed in the Mobility ranks considering they have a new found confidence in their case that they claim sees no less than seven of its owned patents being infringed upon.

We don’t have any official word from Apple about this latest attempt to drag them through the courts, but Motorola is claiming that attempted talks with Apple to work out some kind of license agreement for their innovations have failed, leaving them with no other option but to pursue this legal avenue. The case focuses on Apple’s major mobile devices like the iPod touch, iPad and iPhone as well as their range of Macs will reportedly be brought into question whether or not technologies like Siri and location-based reminders are entirely Apple’s own work.

Not a great deal more information is available at present and we will know more as it progresses and we actually see some kind of retort from the fruit company, but with Motorola attempting to get some kind of import ban on the iPhone, it is certainly a headache that Apple could do without.

Apple expected to earn the highest profits by any public company

The idea that Apple could go on to become the first trillion-dollar company seems closer than ever, with market analysts predicting that the Cupertino based tech giant might earn record profits this year, the highest ever by any publicly traded company in history.

In a note to investors on Monday, Brain White of Topeka Capital Markets said that he has heard analysts and market pundits over the last several weeks discuss the point of $500 billion market cap as a barrier to further price upside at companies in the past. Some of the analysts and pundits believe that companies that exceed $500 billion in market capitalization have trouble growing much beyond that $500 billion mark and fear that a similar scenario could prevent Apple from going much further past the $500 billion mark. As of Monday morning, Apple was positioned at the $545 billion mark. White believes that Apple’s market cap has potential to touch a trillion dollars and he firmly believes that Apple could be well on its way of achieving the trillion-dollar mark soon. This is what he wrote:

We went back and analysed five U.S-based companies that at one time enjoyed market capitalisation of (about) $500 billion or more, but found little similarities with Apple

The five companies that were analysed were Cisco Systems, Exxon-Mobile, General Electric, Intel and Microsoft. Except for Exxon each of these companies had rich price-to-earning ratios when they crossed the threshold $500 billion mark, and according to White each of these tech companies had a monopoly-like market share position. Apple completely differs from these companies in this case as it doesn’t have a stranglehold on All markets where it competes, in fact there is plenty of room for growth for Apple in the booming smart phone market.

White further went on to add that:

Microsoft held over 90% market share for PC operating systems at the peak cap, while Cisco had over 70% share in the networking market and Intel had over 80% of the PC processor market. By comparison, IDC estimates that Apple held just 4.7% of the PC market in (the first quarter of 2012) and 8.8% share in the mobile phone market.

Apple’s iPad does indeed dominate the tablet market, with an estimated 68 percent share in the first quarter of 2012, but this fact was ruled out by White noting that it’s a market category that Apple itself invented. White expects that this year Apple is all set to generate highest profits of any publicly traded company ever. According to him compared to the Big Three tech companies that exceeded the $500 billion market cap Apple’s income will be over six times higher on individual basis to when those companies were at their respective peaks.

In addition to its relatively low market share, Apple stock is currently trading at just 8.4 times White’s estimates for calendar year 2013 earnings per share, excluding cash. In comparison, the three technology companies that have crossed the $500 billion threshold — Microsoft, Intel and Cisco — had price-to-earnings ratios of over 80 times signalling a more stable situation for Apple and making Apple a likely candidate to touch a trillion dollar market share.

Apple releases more than 100 WWDC session videos for registered developers

This year WWDC tickets got sold out in just a record two hours and many developers missed the chance to understand new Apple technologies and get hands on lab sessions and feedback sessions which could have aided them in their trade. For all those disgruntled developers, On Tuesday Apple released session videos of the World Wide Developers Conference that took place earlier this month.

WWDC videos for registered developers.

Registered developers can now view more than about 100 videos from the conference. The videos are available for download on iTunes through iTunes U and they require a Developer Program login for access.

Videos in iTunes U

The session videos are divided into the following sections: general, essentials, app services, developer tools, graphics, media and games, Safari and Web and Core OS. The topics mainly focus on app development for iOS and OS X platforms with special focus given to Apple’s services and apps like iCloud, Game Center and the recently released PassBook.

People who are not registered developers with Apple, can just view the keynote address video which is now available on Apple’s website, YouTube and iTunes. The 2012 WWDC keynote address was marked by the announcement of iOS 6, new features of Mountain Lion and unveiling of new hardware. This effort by Apple to release WWDC session videos for developers clearly signifies how important the developer community is for Apple and also its contributions to Apple’s success story.

App Store now present in 155 countries, Surpassing the World Health Organisation, which Operates in 147

During WWDC, Tim Cook stated that the App Store was present in 123 countries already and promised that it would launch in another 32 countries this month, to take the total number of countries in which the App Store is available, to a whopping 155 countries. This means, that the App Store is present in more countries than the countries in which WHO (World Health Organisation) operates in.

Registered Mac and iOS developers received an email today, in which Apple stated that they were launching the App Store in the following countries:

The new countries who got App Store include: Albania, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Fiji, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

We can confirm, that the new countries are now accessible in the iTunes App Store region selector.

How Apple is using iOS 6, in its fight against Google

The day Android came out, the smartphone world was never to be the same again. Apple accused it of being a spin off of its hugely successful iOS mobile platform. Every maker had its own rendition of the Android interface, HTC’s Sense being touted the most usable. But irrespective, each had its fair share of features copied from iOS, either directly or indirectly.

Fast forward to 2011: Steve Jobs, before passing away told biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he was willing to go in to a thermonuclear war with Google over Android because it was a stolen product. The first signs of this war, were the lawsuits Apple filed against the popular manufacturers of Android Smart-Phones. However, it is clear that this war is not going to be won or loss through the justice system – Apple is taking things in their own hands.

Apple’s Redesigned Maps app in iOS 6

During WWDC, Apple announced iOS 6, which introduced amongst other things, a redesigned Maps app. The all new Maps app, has been completely re-built and sports a whole lot of new features such as all new cartography, vectors, a 3D flyover view, Turn by Turn navigation, business cards and more. Apple also partnered with global navigation leader Tom Tom, and made several acquisitions, in order to rid its dependence on Google for its Maps app. This will not only help Apple in its battle to bring Google down, but will also help them save a whole lot of money, that they were paying Google in order to use the Google Maps API.

Then there is also Siri, which may not be a major threat right now, but definitely has the potential to make Google’s search engine redundant on Apple’s iOS devices. Don’t think that makes sense? Well, Siri has already learnt a few neat ricks like reading out sports scores, booking movie tickets and being able to find and make a reservation at restaurants (Tasks for which, users would do a Google search before). I don’t think its going to take long, till it does most things that we use Google for.

Apple also introduced Passbook, an application that promises to be a better Google Wallet. With Passbook users can keep their tickets, passes, gift-cards, loyalty cards all organised. Passbook goes the extra mile too, by telling you where your seats are, when your coupons expire, the balance left on them, In-fact Passbook is location and time aware, so it pops up with your boarding pass, once you are at the airport. Even Deeper Facebook Integration is an indirect jibe at the Google Plus service, which is conveniently left out.

All these features, that have been introduced in iOS 6, pose the biggest threat to Google, in the form of Apple having reduced the dependence of all its devices on Google, making sure that Apple customers use the least possible Google products and services and considering the way Apple customers are growing, its going to hurt Google a lot.

Installing iOS 6 beta 1 without UDID registration

Activate iOS betas without UDID registration:

Apple place restrictions on who can install the iOS betas, The only way you can legitimately install iOS betas is if you get your UDID (Unique Device Identifier) registered with an iOS developer.

UDIDead bypasses the need to either purchase the iOS developer program or get your best hacker friend to register your UDID by simply using a redsn0w bundle.

This tutorial assumes you’ve updated to iOS 6 and your device is ≤A4 (equal or less than).

Prerequisite:

• If your iOS device is currently jailbroken, you’ll need to backup everything and do a fresh restore of iOS 5.1.1 and complete the setup and restore your backup.
• Download iOS 6 Beta 1.  Google it or download it here.
• My recommendation is that you back up your iDevice and save SHSH blobs for your device(you can use redsn0w to save your SHSH blobs).

Step One:

You’re going to need to download the latest version of redsn0w (Win or Mac) and run it with the argument -S* (make sure it’s a capital S).

Click ‘Extras’ then ‘Select IPSW’ and browse for the iOS 5.1.1 firmware for your device.

Download links for iOS 5.1.1 and other important tools will be available here.

Step Two:

Download the UDIDead bundle for your firmware version from the Download box*

Then in redsn0w, click ‘Jailbreak’, Follow the instructions to enter DFU mode, then wait until presented with the option to select a custom bundle.

When given the option, browse for the UDIDead bundle you just downloaded and click ‘Next’.

After redsn0w has finished, your device will reboot.

Step Three:

Open up iTunes and connect your iOS device using your USB cable.

Once you see your iOS device on the left panel, click it.

Hold down on the Alt+Option (Alt+Ctrl or Shift for Windows users) buttons and click the Check for Update button on the main panel.

Select the .ipsw for iOS 6 Beta 1 you just downloaded from the mirror.

Click OK and let the iTunes do all the work.

Help:
Windows Command Prompt:C:\Users\boz0n>cd C:\redsn0w_directory_here && redsn0w.exe -S_
Mac Terminal:boz0n-Mac:~ boz0n cd /redsn0w_directory_here && ./redsn0w.app/Contents/MacOS/redsn0w -S_
Windows Command Prompt: Press Win+R, type cmd then press enter.
Mac Terminal: Click Applications, Utilities then click Terminal.

Downloads:
Bundles: iOS 6 beta 1 bundle.
redsn0w: redsn0w 0.9.12b2  – Win or Mac
iTunes 10.6.3 apple.com/itunes/download

“If a new version of a beta comes out, I’ll make a bundle and put it here as soon as I can!”