Fight Over iPad Name Spills Into U.S. Court

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Proview Electronics Co. has taken its legal battles with Apple Inc. to a U.S. court, claiming the iPhone maker used deception in buying the iPad trademark and shouldn’t be allowed to keep it.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California in Santa Clara County on Feb. 17 but previously unreported, claimed that Apple had committed fraud when it used a company set up by one of its law firms, called IP Application Development Ltd., to purchase the iPad trademark from Proview on Dec. 23, 2009 for 35,000 British pounds ($55,000).

Price of the iPad Name: $55,000 to $2 Billion

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What’s in a name like iPad?

Apple Inc. agreed to pay Proview International Holdings Ltd. £35,000 ($55,494 at current exchange rates) for the iPad trademark, according to a cache of documents that includes emails and a contract detailing an agreement between the two companies.

The newly unearthed documents come as Apple has been battling Proview over whether it purchased rights to the iPad name from Proview in 2009—a key issue in a dispute between the companies.

Proview defended its claims to the trademark in China, and suggested on Friday that the company could be due as much as $2 billion from Apple.

Apple Asked Standards Body to Set Rules for Essential Patents

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SAN FRANCISCO—Apple Inc. has asked a telecommunications standards body to set basic principles governing how member companies license their patents, an increasingly contentious topic for rivals in the smartphone industry.

In a letter to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Apple said the telecommunications industry lacks consistent licensing schemes for the many patents necessary to make mobile devices, and offered suggestions for setting appropriate royalty rates that all members would follow.

Many mobile technology companies, such as Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., hold patents that became part of industrywide standards. Standards bodies often require the patent holders to offer to license their patents to any company on a basis known as Frand, or fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory. Questions about such commitments have arisen amid a flurry of patent suits between rivals in the mobile-device market.

Beyond the Password

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One day five months ago, Karim Hijazi saw an unusual sight while reading his work email. A message that had been marked as “read” was suddenly marked “unread.”

What the founder of Unveillance, a computer-network security firm, soon learned was that hackers had broken into his account.

The hackers gained access to his email by stealing log-in information from an insecure website, which they then matched up with a password they found on the Internet. After downloading all of his emails, the hackers sent Mr. Hijazi a message demanding he share sensitive security information with them. When he refused, the hackers released his emails on the Web.

“It was like a baby with a gun,” he says.

The Play by Play On Sony’s Massive Data Breach

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On a Tuesday afternoon last month, engineers working for Sony Corp. were baffled when several servers running the company’s PlayStation Network suddenly turned themselves off and then back on.

At the time, the unexpected rebooting seemed like an odd malfunction. The next day, however, the engineers found the first evidence that an intruder had penetrated Sony’s systems, prompting the Japanese company to take what it calls “the almost unprecedented step” of shutting down the popular online gaming network.

Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer issued a public apology this week for what the company later disclosed was a data breach that compromised more than 100 million user accounts on three public networks, and a delay in informing users of the theft. Sony says the loss included users’ names, birthdates and passwords. It also hasn’t ruled out the loss of credit card numbers associated with the Sony PlayStation network.

Sony Brings In High-Tech Sleuths

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New details emerged about Sony Corp.’s investigation into one of the biggest data breaches in history, as the company attempts to piece together who stole personal information from more than 100 million accounts on its online game networks.

At least some of the attacks came from a Malaysia-based server, a person familiar with the matter said, though it wasn’t clear if any of the hacking was actually done from there, or whether only the server there was used.

Sony Faces Suits Over PlayStation Breach

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Plaintiffs lawyers are targeting Sony Corp. with class-action suits after a breach of the company’s online-game network compromised the personal information of millions of users.

In one lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court’s Northern District of California, videogame player Kristopher Johns said Sony’s security was negligently poor and the company failed to encrypt personal information.

Apple Sues Samsung Electronics Over ‘Galaxy’ Phone, Tab

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Apple Inc. filed a lawsuit claiming Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. copied the look and feel of its popular iPhone smartphones and iPad tablet computers, the latest in a series of legal skirmishes that underscore the increasingly high stakes of the mobile computing market.

The lawsuit, filed on April 15, alleged that Samsung’s smartphones, including the “Galaxy S 4G,” “Epic 4G,” “Nexus S” and its “Galaxy Tab” touchscreen tablet, violate Apple’s intellectual property. The 38-page lawsuit was filed in the U.S. court’s northern California district.

“Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products,” Apple said in the filing.

Apple, Microsoft Hire Linguists in App Feud

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Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. have both hired linguists to serve as experts in the tech titan’s ongoing battle over whether or not the government can grant a trademark for the term “app store.”

Microsoft on Tuesday filed its latest argument with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which included the opinions of a linguistic expert who supported the software giant’s argument that the term “app store” was generic and shouldn’t be trademarked by Apple.

“The compound noun app store means simply ‘store at which apps are offered for sale,’ which is merely a definition of the thing itself—a generic characterization,” linguist Ronald Butters wrote.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.