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.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
RSS