Apple Inc, no stranger to patent lawsuits, has another escalating fight on its hands.
On Friday, Swedish telecom manufacturer LM Ericsson raised the stakes by suing Apple for reportedly infringing on 41 of its patents that are used in iPhones and iPads. Last month, the two companies sued each other over Apple’s use of a number of Ericsson patents related to wireless technology.
Apple claimed in a lawsuit filed in California that Ericsson was demanding excessive royalties, while Ericsson said in a separate suit filed in Texas, where the company has its US headquarters, that Apple was continuing to use its patents after a license to use them expired in mid-January.
Ericsson on Friday said that it had filed two additional complaints, this time with the US International Trade Commission, seeking to block Apple’s mobile devices from being imported into the US until the patent issue had been resolved. Ericsson also filed separate lawsuits with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas related to what Ericsson said was Apple’s misuse of its intellectual property.
Along with the potential ban on iPad and iPhone imports to the US, Ericsson said it was also asking for payments for any potential damages caused by Apple’s using its patents without a license.
Apple said in January’s filing of counterclaims that it rwould be willing to offer a fair price for the Ericsson patents.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained