Samsung drops patent ahead of ITC hearing
A judge overseeing an Apple v. Motorola Mobility lawsuit will allow comments made by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs to be heard at trial in a Chicago federal court, despite attempts by Apple lawyers to block them, Reuters reports. The comments, directed against Google's Android platform, originally appeared in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs. "Our lawsuit is saying, 'Google, you f**king ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.' Grand theft," he said. More famously, he remarked that "Im going to destroy Android, because its a stolen product. Im willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Last month Apple filed to suppress anything from the Isaacson biography to "avoid any potential prejudice to Apple if Motorola attempts to use the book to appeal to the jury's passion." On Thursday, however, Chicago federal judge Richard Posner rejected the request without any explanation. On the same day, Posner additionally blocked Apple from arguing that jurors should favor Apple over Motorola if they like Jobs and/or Apple products. "I forbid Apple to insinuate to the jury that this case is a popularity contest," the judge wrote. For its part, Apple has also promised to ask a California judge to keep references to the Isaacson biography out of an Apple v. Samsung trial, which should start in July.
On Friday, meanwhile, Samsung filed to withdraw a patent from a complaint with the US International Trade Commission against Apple. Gone is US Patent No. 6,897,843, covering a "device and method for storing and reproducing digital audio data in a mobile terminal." Samsung has also withdrawn a single claim, 77, from a patent that will otherwise go in front of an ITC hearing. Patent No. 7,706,348 deals with an "apparatus and method for encoding/decoding [a] transport format combination indicator in [a] CDMA mobile communication system."
In all the ITC will now be looking at four patents, including two alleged to be standard-essential. Samsung earlier filed to prevent Apple from alleging that Samsung failed to make a licensing offer for standard-essential patents on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms, but a judge denied the motion. Samsung is known, though, to have at one point demanded a 2.4 percent royalty from Apple, which courts may consider too high.
The ITC hearing on Samsung's complaint starts today, but a hearing on Apple's earlier complaint began on Thursday. On June 7th, two preliminary injunction hearings will take place regarding lawsuits filed by both companies in the Northern District of California. In particular, the court will look at motions related to Samsung's Galaxy Nexus phone and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Chrysler stops taking wholesale orders for new Fiat 500 Abarth - detroitnews.com
Just over a month after the first models arrived in U.S. showrooms, Chrysler Group LLC has informed dealers that it is no longer accepting wholesale orders for the new 2012 Fiat 500 Abarth, according to company sources.
The high-performance version of Fiat's diminutive subcompact has been selling as fast as, well, an Abarth. And while customers can still find a few in dealer inventories around the country, those who place orders now will be put on a waiting list for the 2013 model, which is expected to ship this fall.
"I put my deposit down back in March and I found out today that I'm being bumped to the 2013 build batch and now have to wait until mid-September," wrote one disappointed customer on an enthusiast website.
The track-tuned Abarth went on sale in late April. By then, the company already had cash deposits from more than a thousand customers — about as many as it had originally planned to build this year. Fiat-Chrysler upped production to about 3,000 units, but sources said that is all the company's factory in Toluca, Mexico could handle.
Demand for the pocket rocket has been spurred by rave reviews in a number of leading automotive publications.
Most Americans had never heard the name "Abarth" before the automaker aired a steamy ad for the hot hatch during the Super Bowl featuring Romanian supermodel Catrinel Menghia.
Fiat sales were up a whopping 432 percent in the United States last month, according to Chrysler.
"Dealer orders for the Abarth, the ultimate high-performance small car, exceeded the production run of this model for the 2012 model year," the company said in a statement.
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