Back in Cupertino's legal sectors, let's talk today about how Apple was fined almost $ 500k for breaching US sanctions against a Slovenian developer about five years ago.
In addition, the historical judicial war between Ma and VirnetX has gained a new chapter recently, but it is not possible to say that the process is advancing.
Finally, the company won the best in a class action involving the Apple music it's the iTunes, getting rid of another imbroglio, as we will see below.
Sanes violation
A flawed failure by Apple caused the United States Foreign Asset Control Agency (OFAC) to fine the company $ 467,000, as reported by Wall street journal.
The reason? Ma has breached US sanctions against Slovenian developer Savo Stjepanovic in 2015, when OFAC put it on the list of people with whom no US entity should do business.
According to the OFAC report, Stjepanovic has been accused of forming an international steroid trafficking network. As a result, the US has filed a complaint against him and his development company, SIS, until May 2017.
Between 2015 and 2017, however, Ma made 47 payments related to the company's apps that were available on the App Store, including amounts paid directly to the company, the agency said. During this period, the company also raised about $ 1.2 million in purchases on apps from the Slovenian developer. Because of this, the agency inferred that Apple was "reckless."
As we said, what caused it was a malfunction: when the sanctions were imposed on Stjepanovic, Apple made the proper assignments to suspend the distribution of these apps; however, a failure of the company's screening tool did not identify the correct developer name as its name had been listed as “SIS DOO” instead of “SIS d.o.o”.
The Cupertino giant was also unable to associate Stjepanovic's name with the OFAC list because, at that time, the company did not have a list of all users associated with an App Store developer account.
According to the entity, Apple has agreed to pay the fine and has made the appropriate changes to its compliance program with US regulators.
Apple vs. VirnetX
After a while without much news, the (not at all loving) affair between Apple and online security technology and software company VirnetX has reached the next step. Or rather: back one step. According to a new report from Reuters, the appeals court reviewed the case and decided to send it back to a lower court for reconsideration.
The situation is neither positive nor negative for Apple, as the court claims that there is only a possible partial reversal of the $ 503 million fine decision, but the case deals with only one of the two alleged infringement charges. Apple patent.
The other case, in which VirnetX requires payment of $ 440 million for patent infringement, remains under review by the appeals court; Therefore, we are likely to see an update on this soon, too.
By press conference against Apple Music and iTunes
Amid bad news for Ma and not so much, finally good! A lawsuit against the Cupertino giant for allegedly "selling and exposing" data from users of Apple Music and iTunes was dismissed as "unfounded" by US justice after the plaintiffs filed no substantiated complaint.
The lawsuit was filed last May by three users: Leigh Wheaton, Jill Paul and Trevor Paul. They claimed that Apple had allowed third-party application developers to access the iTunes and Apple Music library and collect the metadata of each user's listening habits.
The trio claimed the payment of fines of up to $ 5 billion (not only from Apple, but also from the developers of the apps that accessed this information), in addition to prohibiting access to personal listening information and "repairing the risk of identity theft." Apple then filed a motion to deny the appeal, which was granted. The judge then gave the accused time to state the complaint, which did not happen.
Because it was dismissed as unfounded, those responsible for the case are prevented from filing new claims against Apple in a future action in other words, the collective action died and was buried.
via 9to5Mac, MacRumors, AppleInsider
