LegalNews

Apple appealing copyright case it lost against Corellium

Apple has asked a London tribunal to throw out a mass lawsuit valued at around $1 billion brought on behalf of more than 1,500 app developers over its App Store fees.

Apple is appealing a copyright case it lost against security startup Corellium, reports Reuters. The appeal came as a surprise because Apple has just settled other claims with Corellium relating to the Digitial Milennium Copyright Act, avoiding a trial.

Reuters adds that experts said they were also surprised that Apple revived a fight against a major research tool provider just after arguing that researchers would provide a check on its controversial plan to scan customer devices.

Interestingly, it was reported on August 11 that Apple had dropped its intellectual property lawsuit against Corellium, a maker of security tools and virtualization software. The Washington Post, citing court documents, said the two companies have agreed on a confidential settlement to end the lawsuit. However, the Post says that the settlement doesn’t keep Corellium from selling its tools used by security researchers.

In August 2019, Apple sued the virtualization software company with a copyright infringement suit ripping into the developer’s “illegal replication” of “everything” that makes up Apple’s copyrighted operating system and applications.

In the Apple lawsuit, the tech giant says Corellium’s business is based entirely on commercializing the illegal replication of the copyrighted operating system and applications. Apple says the product Corellium offers is a “virtual” version of Apple mobile hardware products that’s accessible to anyone with a web browser. Specifically, the tech giant says Corellium “serves up what it touts as a  perfect digital facsimile of a broad range of Apple’s market-leading devices—recreating with fastidious attention to detail not just the way the operating system and applications appear visually to bona fide purchasers, but also the underlying computer code.”

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.