In the latest round of the ongoing legal battle between the three tech giants, Apple has scored a scheduling victory on Tuesday in Florida. The disparate trials including patent violation charges by Apple against the other two parties as well as counterclaims for them were consolidates partly due to a lack of legal cooperation between the companies. The new combined trial has been scheduled for April of 2014.
Robert N. Scola, Federal Judge of the Southern District of Florida, upheld Apple’s consolidation request, although Motorola and HTC objected the decision. Pushing back the suit has hindered Motorola from enforcing any patent claims against the Cupertino device maker in the short term. Apple has accused Motorola of infringing on 12 of its patents in this filing. In response, Motorola has lodged 6 patent counter-complaints.
However, the company gains the ability to sue Apple with six other patent infringement claims regarding the iPhone 4S and iCloud, which are currently included in a separate lawsuit. That would potentially bring the total number of Motorola counter-filings to 12.
Rescheduling is also beneficial for HTC, as the consolidated trial will take place long after December 2013 proposed by Apple, and later than Motorola’s date of March 2013. HTC had been seeking to have the complaints transferred to Delaware, known for its slow court hearings.
Judge Scola reproached all three parties for demonstrating a complete inability to compromise on anything, which is hindering the progress of their cases. Similar patents are involved in lawsuit filed by Apple against Samsung in the Northern District of California, which will be heard this summer.
In many blogs we always can find a lot of interesting rumors about Apple. And one of the most popular rumors of the week was the news about new high-definition television from Apple, its designers and builders, common characteristics and features. Terry Gou, president of Foxconn has recently announced about his hard preparations for new iTV claiming that his company is ready to create a flat panel TV especially for Apple.
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Apple is said to be in talks with Loewe AG, a company making and selling TV sets, integrated entertainment systems and audio parts. Although Loewe’s financial advisor has recommended the company to accept the offer, a final decision will be announced by May 18th.
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Apple seems to have come up with a solution to complaints that it is misleadingly promoting the new iPad as LTE- or 4G-aware outside North America. The company’s online stores now list the LTE-compatible tablet as “iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular,” even in the U.S. and Canada. The models in question are also being renamed in other stores, including Australia and the U.K.
Both countries asked Apple to market its LTE iPad in a different way, since the radio used by the company for LTE connectivity only supports LTE frequencies in North America. In other countries, LTE includes a range of different frequencies, and a radio capable of handling them all was found to be unfit for the new iPad design.
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According to iMore, Apple is planning to equip its next-generation iPhone with a new, smaller dock connector. The website has offered reliable information in the past and correctly forecasted the launch of an LTE-aware iPad. iMore also said the iPhone 5 is still in the prototyping phase.
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HTC One X has hit the stores recently. This 4.7-inch screen, Android 4.0 based, sensor-packed “superphone” has 1.5 GHz, quad-core processor inside. Notably, there is a LTE version, with dual-core processor. The latter is for USA and select countries. While HTC fans are impatient to get their fingertips on novice’s HD 720p touch display, many think of the market effect the new device will have.
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As Apple is preparing to axe its MobileMe servie in June, MobileMe subscribers can take advantage of an extra 20GB of free iCloud storage throughout the entire summer. The offer dates back to last year, when the company started luring users away from the dying service. All MobileMe users also got a free subscription until June 30th, 2012, the last day of the service.
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On April 27, the local resident of Aspen, Colorado, Jerald Bovino complained that Apple had violated his rights for a ‘portable computer case’ patent. The United States patent in question was 6,977,809 and the man said this one was his property.
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Sixth iPhone said to get smaller dock connector, no change in display aspect ratio confirmed. 
Colorado Resident Calls Dibs On Indemnity from Apple 
Apple reportedly willing to obtain German HDTV producer Loewe 
Pegatron reported to receive orders for iPad 3 ahead of March launch 
Free 20GB of iCloud storage for MobileMe users extended until September 
