Apple Inc on Tuesday lost its copyright claims against a Florida company that makes “virtual iPhones” used by security researchers to test for vulnerabilities to its system.
Apple claimed that Corellium LLC copied the operating system, graphical user interface and other aspects of the devices without permission.
It accused Corellium of acting under the guise of helping discover bugs in the iPhone’s operating system, but then selling the information “on the open market to the highest bidder.”
Photo: Reuters
Corellium’s actions fell under an exception to copyright law because it “creates a new, virtual platform for iOS and adds capabilities not available on Apple’s iOS devices,” District Court Judge Rodney Smith in West Palm Beach said in his ruling.
That Corellium sells its product “does not undermine its fair-use defense, particularly considering the public benefit of the product,” Smith said.
Apple has a “bounty program” where it rewards so-called white-hat hackers who discover flaws in its system.
The Cupertino, California-based company argued that the Corellium product went far beyond that, although Corellium said that it evaluates potential customers and rejects some.
Corellium said its customers are government agencies, financial institutions and security researchers, and accused Apple of trying to control security research to limit what the public learns about vulnerabilities.
Apple had been in talks to buy the company, but the two sides could not agree on a price, Smith said.
Apple sued a year later.
Corellium’s virtual product is used on a desktop computer and cannot make phone calls, send text messages, access iTunes or do any of the other things an iPhone can.
“There is evidence in the record to support Corellium’s position that its product is intended for security research and, as Apple concedes, can be used for security research,” the judge said. “Further, Apple itself would have used the product for internal testing had it successfully acquired the company.”
Officials with the two companies did not immediately respond to queries seeking comment.
Apple argued that the case is similar to the billion-dollar dispute between Oracle Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, in which an appeals court rejected Google’s arguments that it had the right to copy Oracle code for inclusion into the Android operating system.
The US Supreme Court is considering the issue.
Smith said that the two cases are not comparable — Corellium transforms iOS and adds new content, and it is not a direct competitor.
It was instead more like the case in which an appeals court ruled that Google’s creation of digital copies of books and showing snippets in search results was a fair use of copyrighted works, Smith said.
The judge said that Corellium might still be in breach of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits tools to circumvent security measures, so he declined to dismiss that aspect of the case at this stage.
He ordered the two sides to submit a status report by Jan. 11 to determine how the case proceeds.
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
TECHNOLOGICAL RIVALRY: The artificial intelligence chip competition among multiple players would likely intensify over the next two years, a Quanta official said Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which makes servers and laptops on a contract basis, yesterday said its shipments of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s GB300 chips have increased steadily since last month, should surpass those of the GB200 models this quarter. The production of GB300 servers has gone much more smoothly than that of the GB200, with shipments projected to increase sharply next month, Quanta executive vice president Mike Yang (楊麒令) said on the sidelines of a technology forum in Taipei. While orders for GB200 servers gradually decrease, the production transition between the two server models has been
ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing supplier, yesterday announced a strategic collaboration with Analog Devices Inc (ADI), coupled with the signing of a binding memorandum of understanding. Under the agreement, ASE intends to purchase 100 percent shares of Analog Devices Sdn Bhd and acquire its manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, a press release showed. The ADI Penang facility is located in the prime industrial hub of Bayan Lepas, with an area of over 680,000 square feet, it said. In addition, the two sides intend to enter into a long-term supply agreement for ASE to
RSS