Lawsuits

Apple stock (NASDAQ:AAPL) stayed in the doldrums last week, with prices remaining under $100. Since the last earnings report, investors have been concerned about iPhone sales. Shares opened Monday at $93.91 and peaked during Wednesday trading at $96.31 only to slide, bottoming out Thursday morning at $92.60. AAPL gained its footing on Friday, closing at $93.99, up eight cents per share over the week for virtually no change.

Samsung is about to hand over a billion dollars in damages to Apple after being found guilty of infringing on several of the Cupertino-based company's patents. Weeks of drama ended in the jury awarding Apple with a major win that will impact tech company patent cases for years to come.

Of course as AppleInsider points out, there are still a number of major patent suits around the world that have yet to be settled between the two companies. In this case, Apple won damages on not only its utility patents, but on design patents as well.

Two different iPhone 4S owners sued Apple for "false and misleading" advertising in March, which helped kick off a few different class action lawsuits. David Jones filed a complaint with a U.S. District Court alleging "Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature." Other complaints ranged from not being able to recreate Apple's the ‘Rock God’ Siri commercial in real life, and Siri not giving proper directions.

Apple has responded with a motion to dismiss the class-action lawsuits:

"They offer only general descriptions of Apple’s advertisements, incomplete summaries of Apple’s website materials, and vague descriptions of their alleged—and highly individualized—disappointment with Siri. Tellingly, although Plaintiffs claim they became dissatisfied with Siri’s performance “soon after” purchasing their iPhones, they made no attempt to avail themselves of Apple’s 30-day return policy or one-year warranty—which remains in effect. Instead, they seek to take an alleged personal grievance about the purported performance of a popular product and turn it into a nationwide class action under California’s consumer protection statutes. The Complaint does not come close to meeting the heavy burden necessary to sustain such claims."

UPDATE: The U.S. has officially filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple as well as publishers Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. - via Bloomberg

UPDATE 2: The Department of Justice has released a PDF of their complaint. It's a really interesting read!

The Department of Justice plans to launch an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five major publishers for alleged price-fixing. In March the The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Justice Department warned Apple and the publishers that it planned to sue them for raising the price of electronic books. The Justice Department believes that Apple violated federal antitrust laws by jointly raising the prices with the five publishers.

"The Justice Department is investigating alleged price-fixing by Apple and five major publishers: CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster Inc, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, Pearson and Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH. A lawsuit against Apple, one of the parties not in negotiations with the Justice Department for a potential settlement, could come as early as Wednesday but no final decision has been made, the people said."

Is Apple misleading customers by advertising a beta product on TV? Two different iPhone 4S owners think so. Frank Fazio filed the first California class action suit against Apple for "false and misleading" advertising, and now a second person has also filed a claim.

According to the Los Angeles Times, David Jones filed a new suit in a U.S. District Court alleging "Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature."