lawsuit

2018 was a big year for privacy and not in a good way. It was a year where privacy violations were exposed left and right and not all of them involved Facebook. Just as scandalous was the revelation that the four major US carriers have, at one point or another, sold their customer's location data to third-parties, which then ended up with bounty hunters and illegal users. Although AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon have promised to stop that practice, customers are still taking them to court for it.

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The Nexus line has long been dead but the ghost of its bootloops continue to haunt Google and its partners. They may finally be willing to do do anything to put a close to that last chapter, even if it means paying millions. That does seem to be the case for the almost two-year-old class action lawsuit filed against Google and Huawei over Neuxs 6P bootloop problems, both of whom have decided to settle it out of court and put an end to the saga once and for all.

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It seems that Apple continues to have battery headaches but this time it isn't about iPhones. You'd think that considering their size, Apple Watch batteries would have very little problems other than having to be recharged every day. It turns out, however, that some have experienced potential safety hazards due to swollen Apple Watch batteries and they are now taking Apple to court for allegedly knowing about the problem and still pushing through with sales of the wearable device.

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Last week, Spotify filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission against Apple. While the complaint is a multifaceted one, the long and short of it is that Spotify claims Apple has an unfair advantage when it comes to competing on the App Store. Since Apple gets the final say when it comes to what's published on the App Store, it can use that power to disadvantage competitors while giving its own apps (Apple Music in this instance) a leg up.

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Huawei has finally had it with the US government and it's taking the bait. Whether it will emerge victorious or humiliated is something the tech industry will be watching closely. In an unprecedented but not unexpected move, Huawei has filed a lawsuit in Texas suing the US government over a new law that banned Huawei's products from use in federal agencies. It has labeled the ban as unconstitutional and seeks to have that part of the law overturned.

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BlackBerry has slapped Twitter with a patent infringement lawsuit, alleging that the social network copied its technology related to mobile messaging apps. The new lawsuit follows a similar legal complaint filed against Facebook last year, that likewise alleging the company had infringed its patent. In this case, BlackBerry claims Twitter has infringed upon half a dozen of its patents.

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Swatch filed a complained against Samsung for their part in allegedly infringing on trademarked watch face designs of many sorts. Filed with the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, both Samsung Electronics Co. LTD. and Samsung Electronics America, INC., were on the defendant side of the document. On the plaintiff side of the equation were a set of brands that are collectively referred to as the "Swatch Group Companies": Blancpain, Breguet, Glashütte, Hamilton, Jaquet Droz, Longines, Mido, Omega, Tissot, and Swatch proper.

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In one of several court battles around the world, Qualcomm's win against Apple resulted in some iPhones returning to sale where they'd been banned. This battle was fought in Germany, where the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 were banned from sale temporarily pending the outcome of a court case. The versions that've returned to sale in Germany did so with a change unique to this country: They've created iPhones with only Qualcomm hardware inside where elsewhere in the world they're also using tech from Intel.

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You often hear news of high-profile cases being settled with some large fines, including those that were filed by consumers as a class action lawsuits. You seldom here, however, about that settlement reaching affected consumers. In addition to having to file a claim, people have to first know they're even entitled to that part of the settlement. Fortunately, Vizio, which was probably required by law, is now displaying on its Smart TVs information on how users can grab a part of its spying settlement, which could amount to as much as $31.

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The American Civil Liberties Union has sued multiple US government agencies in a bid to learn more about its social media surveillance practices. The lawsuit follows a string of Freedom of Information Act requests that sought info on the surveillance, requests that ultimately went nowhere. The ACLU sued a total of seven government agencies, including the FBI, which had responded to the FOIA request with a general "can neither confirm nor deny" statement.

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It may not be spying for the Chinese government but it could be spying on other companies for its own gain. No sooner had Huawei’s CEO gone public with his praise of US President Trump and the company’s commitment to customers’ data privacy than a new report pops up claiming that the US is training more guns on the Chinese OEM. This time, however, the US Department of Justice’ investigation isn’t focusing on some grand national security threat but on the Huawei’s repeated theft of trade secrets from US companies.

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You win some, you lose some, as they say. Though in the court of law, even a single loss can be devastating. But Apple can breathe a bit easier now that at least the regional court in Mannheim, Germany has verbally declared that it doesn’t infringe on the patents that Qualcomm insists it does. While that doesn’t immediately affect an earlier ban imposed in Munich, it could at least give Apple some legal leverage to have that decision reversed soon.

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