December 15, 2009 - In October, Nokia filed suit against Apple, alleging that the iPhone makes use of Nokia's GSM/UTMS patents - ten patents that relate to 2G and 3G wireless connections, as well as WiFi used in mobile phones.
December 15, 2009 - Starbucks Corp. has sued the Black Bear Micro Roastery in Tuftonbury, New Hampshire, for diluting its trademark. At issue is the family-owned company's "Charbucks" coffee blend. The name of the blend is an obvious play on "Starbucks" that also highlights the dark-roasted characteristic of the coffee.
December 9, 2009 - Last week it was reported that the judgment has been finalized in the lawsuit between Apple and OPTi Inc. In April of this year, a jury found in OPTi's favor and Apple was ordered to pay $19 million.
Now that the judgment has been finalized, Apple has been ordered to pay an additional $2.7 million in pre-judgment interest.
November 29, 2009 - Jacob Krippelz, of Aurora, Illinois, invented and patented a sideview mirror light in the early 1990s and attempted to license it to Ford and Mercedes, which both turned him down. In 1997, Krippelz discovered that Ford had used his invention anyway - without paying a dime in royalties.
November 27, 2009 - Accenture has filed suit against its competitor Guidewire Software, alleging that Guidewire's Insurance Suite and ClaimCenter software products infringe one of its patents.
November 25, 2009 - Apple, no stranger to patent lawsuits, is on the plaintiff side of the case this time. Apple has sued a company called Media Solutions Holdings for infringing the company's patent on power adaptors for Apple laptops, such as the MacBook.
The Media Solutions adaptors are alleged to infringe an Apple patent called "Power Adaptor."
November 15, 2009 - Following years of antitrust and patent disputes, Intel Corp. has agreed to pay Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) $1.25 billion.
November 9, 2009 - Motorola prevailed in its patent dispute against WLAN vendor Aruba Networks, who agreed to a one-time payment of $19.8 million to Motorola and its subsidiaries, Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications.
November 2, 2009 - Red Bend, a company based in Israel, has filed suit against Google in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Red Bend alleges that Google's Chrome browser, specifically the Courgette method Google uses for shrinking updates to reduce bandwidth requirements, infringes its patents on a compression algorithm.
October 26, 2009 - On October 22, mobile phone giant Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the iPhone infringes 10 of Nokia's patents.
The patents cover technologies related to wireless data, security, speech coding and encryption.
Apple has shipped over 34 million iPhones to date, so the company could end up paying Nokia anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion in a settlement, according to some analysts in the IT / smartphone business.