Apple Inc. is no alien to lawsuits and counter lawsuits. The most talked about lawsuit the company has been involved in is against Samsung. Time and again we hear that companies sue Apple for alleged infringement in the U.S.. However, this time Ericsson has beefed up its attempt to make Apple pay royalties by suing the company in Germany, the U.K, the Netherlands in addition to U.S. filings.

Kasim Alfalahi, Ericsson’s chief IP officer said, “Everybody needs to take a license for the technologies we are providing to them”. He further added, “It’s a very serious thing, regardless of who the company is.”

Apple Inc. had singed a licensing agreement with Ericsson and paid royalties for use of its intellectual property until the license expired in mid-January. Failed talks over renewal fees is likely the cause behind Ericsson now seeking court ruling in this matter.

When the news about this lawsuit broke Ericsson shared took a huge leap of 6.3 percent. The company ‘s market value has risen to $38 billion.

Apple in its complaint in January mentioned that Ericsson, “seeks to exploit its patents to take the value of these cutting-edge Apple innovations” and referred to their tactic as “abusive licensing practices.”

Legal battles aren’t new in tech industry and we will just have to wait and see how this one turns out. Many intellectual property activists have highlighted the need to reform patent litigation given the massive scale and implication of these lawsuits.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung have been fighting the legal battle of patents in the courts in many countries. AAPL won a significant lawsuit against Samsung last year where the court awarded $1 Billion to Apple after finding that Samsung products infringed Apple’s patents.

On Wednesday the U.S International Trace Commission reached a decision {PDF} on Samsung Patent No, 7,706,384 described as “Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system” and ruled that Apple had infringed on Samsung’s patent.

As a result of this ruling the ITC has issued a “cease and desist” order that would prevent Apple from selling the products that infringe the patent. The devices that would be affected are AT&T iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G.

Under the modified constructions, the Commission has determined that Samsung has proven that the accused iPhone 4 (AT&T models); iPhone 3GS (AT&T models); iPhone 3 (AT&T models); iPad 3G (AT&T models); and iPad 2 3G (AT&T models) infringe the asserted claims of the ’348 patent.

The Commission has further determined that the properly construed claims have not been proven by Apple to be invalid and that Samsung has proven that a domestic industry exists in the United States with respect to the ‘348 patent.

Apple would most definitely appeal this decision. The ban won’t come into effect immediately as this is a preliminary final ruling. Apple will take this matter up to the Federal Circuit Courts to review this decision.

The legal battles between tech companies in recent years is being viewed as a means to prevent competitors from grabbing a large market share by securing bans in the court. However, Apple’s view on its legal battle is to prevent Samsung from “blatantly copying” its products.

{via MacRumors}

In an interesting turn of events in the ongoing legal battle between Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung a U.K court ordered the Cupertino based company to publish notice saying that Samsung didn’t copy the iPad.

AAPL lost a patent lawsuit against Samsung in a London court on July 9 and Judge Colin Birss ordered a ruling which stated that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets don’t infringe Apple’s iPad design. The Judge has now ordered Apple to post the notice on it’s U.K website for a period of six months and also run advertisement in several newspapers and magazines to correct Samsung’s impression in the eyes of the customers.

Bloomberg was first to report on the developing story and has published a statement by Richard Hacon, a lawyer who is representing Apple in the U.K courts.

The order means Apple will have to publish “an advertisement” for Samsung, and is prejudicial to the company, Richard Hacon, a lawyer representing Cupertino, California-based Apple, told the court. “No company likes to refer to a rival on its website.”

The latest development in the international patent lawsuits between the two tech giants comes as an embarrassment to Apple as the company has repeatedly said that Samsung ‘slavishly’ copied it’s iPad and iPhone. Apple is free to appeal the decision and will most likely do so.

Competition in the tablet market is heating up as Android market share is on the rise and Galaxy Tablets finally beginning to see some success. Apple is clearly in the lead with its iPad being a major success in all major international markets however, the ruling by U.K judge could put some pressure on Apple and think of alternate ways to tackle and defend it’s intellectual property rights.

It will be interesting to see how Apple lawyers respond and appeal this decision in the U.K. This ruling could also be seen as first major victory for Samsung. The South Korea-based company had to face injunction against its Galaxy Tab in Australia and the U.S.

This week is no exception. VirnetX has filed a patent infringement suit against several companies, including Apple.

The specific patents that VirnetX claims have been infringed are specifically associated with all of Apple’s mobile devices; iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch, and their implementation of certain network communication protocols.

What is seedy about these cases is that these companies tend to have patents for very broad implementations, and lie in wait until enough big fish have fallen foul of them.

VirnetX even describes itself as “engaged in commercialising its patent portfolio by developing a licensing program.”

Loosely translated : “We are a Patent Troll”.

What is worrying, for Apple, is that the case has been filed in a district of the US state of Texas which is known to be sympathetic to these cases, and Microsoft set a precedent by settling with the company some time ago. VirnetX’s haul there was a cool $200 Million!

Do you think Patent Law is confusing, unfair and open to abuse? Or is it OK that these companies can have a business model based around suing over ideas? Let us know your view on this in the comments…