We hope you had a wonderful weekend. This week’s podcasts are sponsored by PDFelement 6 from Wondershare,and today those stories include the following:
- A river diver recovered an iPhone X that had spent two weeks underwater, and it’s just fine, thank you
- Apple vs. Samsung isn’t over yet. Although a court ruled in late May that Samsung owes Apple $533 million, Samsung basically accused the jury of being unreasonable and wants a retrial and $145 million
- Three upcoming hearings in the Apple vs. Qualcomm battle will decide if Apple has to pay up to $4.5 billion in unpaid license fees, or if Qualcomm really is overcharging for what is now basic cell phone technology
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Monday, June 11th, 2018. This week’s podcast is sponsored by PDFelement 6 from Wondershare. It’s the most powerful and popular PDF creation, editing and sharing app for Mac and iOS, and you can download a free trial. Read all about it on Apple World Today.
Apple doesn’t say much about the water resistance of the iPhone X and some of its other newer phones, but let’s just say that a YouTuber just demonstrated how good it really is. Dallas runs the Man + River channel on YouTube and does what he calls “river treasure dives”. On his latest video, he found some sunglasses, a 10 karat ring, some other valuable items and a silver iPhone X. He was able to open up the device and dry it out, power it back on, and got it back to its owner — a woman named Alyssa. Alyssa is a new mom and was thrilled to get her iPhone returned to her, because she hadn’t backed up a ton of newborn photos. Here’s the interesting fact — she lost her iPhone X in the river two weeks before it was found, and she did not have a waterproof case on it. That being said, don’t try this at home…
So, you thought that the latest ruling in the Apple vs. Samsung smartphone design patent lawsuit was going to be the last word, right? This lawsuit has been going on for years, and in late May a federal court ruled that Samsung owes Apple more than $533 million. Samsung has now filed a 34-page post-trial motion with the court asking it to throw out the verdict and pay the Korean company $145 million. Samsung also says that the judge should grant it either summary judgment or a new trial, saying that the verdict wasn’t supported by the evidence. The company went on to say that “no reasonable jury could have found that any of Apple’s asserted design patents was applied to Samsung’s entire accused smartphones.” This isn’t the first time that Samsung’s lawyers have accused a complete jury of being morons. Apple has ten days to reply to the new filing, and a hearing will be scheduled for July 26. If I were Federal judge Lucy Koh, who has presided over most of this ongoing case, I think I’d throw out the motion and fine Samsung $500 million for wasting my time.
And speaking of lawsuits, the fight between Apple and Qualcomm is getting nasty. The fight is over what Apple says is Qualcomm’s charging unfairly high fees for what should be “free and open source software”. Apple has just been refusing to pay the fees, and if it loses out in three hearings to be held in the US, China and Germany, it could be on the hook for up to $4.5 billion in unpaid licensing fees. One of the hearings will be with the International Trade Commission in Washington, DC next week; in t his one, Qualcomm is arguing that Apple is infringing on three patents and asking for the ITC to ban imports of all iPhone 7 models that don’t have Qualcomm chips inside. If the ITC does rule in Qualcomm’s favor, Apple will most likely work to a resolution favorable to both companies. If Apple looks like it’s going to prevail, Qualcomm’s favor with investors will likely go away as its licensing business will be in question for the future.
Join me tomorrow afternoon for the next edition of the AWT News Update.
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