July 18, 2018 Intellectual Property / Litigation / NFL

NFL Enterprises LLC Settles Patent Dispute

On July 10, 2018, NFL Enterprises LLC reached a settlement with OpenTV Inc. While the details of the settlement were not disclosed, the two parties did terminate their ongoing proceeding before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board and their ongoing lawsuit in the United States District Court of California. Back in May 2017, OpenTV and Nagravision SA filed eight patent infringement claims against the NFL Enterprises claiming that various video content used by the NFL Enterprises viewers on their …

June 17, 2015 Antitrust

Amazon Investigated For E-Book Antitrust Violations

Oh how the tables have turned for retail giant Amazon.com. Three years ago, Amazon pushed for an antitrust investigation of Apple for e-book price fixing. Now, however, regulators in the European Union have opened an e-book anti-trust investigation into Amazon.

On June 11, 2015 the European Commission announced that it was formally investigating Amazon’s business practices related to its e-book business. Of particular focus are Amazon’s contracts with European publishers. Under the terms of those agreements, publishers are required to inform Amazon if the publishers …

December 21, 2014 Antitrust / Music

Apple Wins $1 Billion iTunes Antitrust Case

After only three-hours, the jury in a 10 year old dispute reached a verdict favoring Apple. The federal jury found that Apple’s iTunes 7.0 software was a technological improvement for iPods rather than an attempt to monopolize digital music.

Along with improvements such as the addition of games and movies to iPods, iTunes 7.0 included FairPlay. FairPlay was a digital rights protection system that only permitted songs purchased through iTunes or on CDs to play on iPods. Songs purchased from competitors would not work. …

September 5, 2014 Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Trademark / TV

Apple Faces Lawsuit Over Half of Breaking Bad’s Final Season

On Friday, August 29, Judge Davila of the court of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed two of three consumer class action claims against Apple stemming from its sale of the final season of AMC’s Breaking Bad.

Angry Apple customer, Dr. Noam Lazebnik, was irritated to learn that his $22.99 purchase of the final season of Breaking Bad only included the first 8 episodes. In 2012, Apple advertised the price for “all current and future episodes of Breaking …

July 30, 2014 Intellectual Property / Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Trademark

Apple Acquisition, Beats, Sued by Bose

In Delaware court on Friday, headphone innovator Bose Corporation filed a complaint against Beats Electronics LLC, claiming a loss of business profits from infringement on five patents related to their noise cancelling technology.

This lawsuit comes just two months after Apple announced its intent to purchase Beats Electronics for $3 billion. Approval of the acquisition is anticipated in September. In addition, Bose has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Beats and others for allegedly infringing on the patents of technology Bose …