Looks like Apple’s going on the warpath, kids. Just a few months after Cupertino got into it with Nokia over phone patents, Apple’s filed suit against HTC, alleging that the company is infringing 20 patents “related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware.” Steve, you have something to say?

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

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Hey, if you’re a New Jersey AT&T subscriber and you paid a flat-rate ETF between January 1, 1998 and November 4, 2009, you’ve got a tiny bit of $18 million coming your way. That’s the settlement amount AT&T’s agreed to in this latest ETF class action — as usual in these cases, it’s far cheaper for AT&T to just throw out some cash than it is to fully litigate this thing, especially with the FCC breathing down its neck. Expect individual settlements to be relatively minor, while all the Read the full story

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Looks like AT&T’s not getting its holiday wish after all — a federal judge just ruled against Ma Bell’s request to have Verizon’s Map For That ads pulled off the air. That doesn’t mean that this whole thing is over, though: the judge called the ads “sneaky” and said that it was possible people might misunderstand them because “most people who are watching TV are semi-catatonic.” Whether or not that’s enough to support a legal conclusion that the ads are misleading is a fight for another Read the full story

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Well, well. Apple’s won its copyright infringement claim against would-be Mac cloner Psystar in California. Anyone surprised? As we’ve been saying all along, the key argument wasn’t the OS X EULA or Psystar’s failed monopoly claims, but pure, simple copyright infringement, since Psystar was illegally copying, modifying, and distributing Apple’s code. Psystar was also dinged for circumventing Apple’s kernel encryption in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but that’s just another nail in the coffin, really. There’s still some legal fireworks to come, as Apple’s various other claims like breach of contract, trademark infringement, and unfair competition weren’t addressed in this ruling, but those are all Read the full story

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Boom. Nokia’s just hit Apple with a patent infringement lawsuit, claiming that “all iPhones models shipped” infringe on ten of Espoo’s patents relating to GSM, UMTS, and WiFi. According to Nokia’s press release, the patents in question have been licensed by some 40 other companies, “including virtually all the leading mobile device vendors,” and Apple’s refused to agree to “appropriate” license terms. That’s pretty vague, actually — it could either mean that Apple was willing to license Read the full story

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Skype might have been sloughed off of eBay into its own entity, but lawsuits, regarding its core Skype to Skype technology, might put them in trouble unless it has a backup plan of new VoIP tech.

TechCrunch is saying that Skype is looking to buy Gizmo5, a SIP-based service that isn’t quite as popular as the former, but works pretty well. SIP is an open standard that works with many, many devices—Gizmo 5 works with Google Voice even—so this could be a Read the full story

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