lawsuit

A federal jury in San Diego, USA, ruled on Friday that Apple must pay over $5.7 billion in damages for using patented technology from the haptic patent company Taction Technology, according to Caixin. This is the highest patent compensation amount in U.S. history. Taction sued Apple in 2021, claiming that its sales of devices infringing on touch technology improperly utilized related innovations; the case was dismissed in 2023 but was later reinstated by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.Apple issued a statement strongly opposing the verdict and the amount of damages, stating that the ruling lacks factual basis. Apple stated that its haptic engine is fundamentally different from Taction's technology, and tests conducted during the trial confirmed this, asserting that it did not use Taction's technology and would appeal. Taction's chief attorney, Lance Yang, thanked the jury and mentioned that the company waited five and a half years for the case to go to trial.The core of the lawsuit revolves around two vibration-based haptic sensor technologies designed to allow users to perceive the device's response to input. Taction claims that Apple’s haptic engine in the Apple Watch and iPhone used its inventions without authorization. Apple's haptic engine was launched in 2014 with the Apple Watch and was used in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus the following year, replacing the older vibration motors. Since Apple insists on appealing, the amount of damages will need to be determined first by the presiding judge before entering the appeals process for final confirmation.

According to Caixin, poker master and seasoned cryptocurrency investor Hu Zheweng made significant bets during the three waves of cryptocurrency frenzy involving ICOs, algorithmic stablecoins, and AI tokens, but faced consecutive failures. Hu Zheweng claimed to have invested in the blockchain project Stratis, achieving a return of "over 1000 times."According to disclosed information, Hu Zheweng invested approximately 80 million USD in algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and its sister token LUNA from May 2021 to May 2022, with the peak market value of his holdings exceeding 800 million USD, but the price of LUNA subsequently nearly dropped to zero.In addition, Hu Zheweng has filed a lawsuit in Chicago, USA against the globally renowned quantitative trading firm Jump Trading and its related companies and executives in the cryptocurrency business, seeking at least 500 million USD in damages. After experiencing Stox and Terra, Hu Zheweng has not left the cryptocurrency market; last January, he bet on a new project by a Chinese computer professor Zhang Yongfeng. Zhang Yongfeng entered the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University in 2007 and is currently a tenured associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University in the USA. He has been sued by Hu Zheweng on multiple charges including "securities fraud." It is reported that the tokens issued by the organization founded by Zhang Yongfeng, in which Hu Zheweng invested millions of dollars, have fallen over 99.6% from their peak in 2025.

KelpDAO stated on platform X that it has filed a lawsuit against LayerZero and its co-founder Bryan Pellegrino, seeking accountability for the rsETH cross-chain bridge attack incident that occurred earlier this year. The lawsuit claims that LayerZero failed to adequately disclose its inherent technical weaknesses and risks; failed to prevent its security infrastructure from being compromised; and that LayerZero had previously reviewed and approved Kelp's deployment and configuration in writing.Officials stated that LayerZero has publicly attributed responsibility to itself in recent months. Since the occurrence of the attack, the team has taken action to ensure the safety of user assets, including migrating the rsETH cross-chain bridge to a more secure cross-chain standard.LayerZero co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino tweeted that KelpDAO's related claims lack basis and that he will respond and defend in Vancouver.Previously, LayerZero released an incident report indicating that on April 18, 2026, the KelpDAO rsETH cross-chain bridge built on LayerZero was attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately 116,500 rsETH, valued at around $292 million.

Two ChatGPT users from California filed a proposed class action lawsuit against OpenAI in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California this month, accusing the company of failing to adequately inform users that their real conversations were being handed over to external contractors for processing. The lawsuit was served to OpenAI on September 2, focusing on its internal initiative Project Lily. According to the complaint, "AI data reviewers" and "chatbot evaluators" recruited through a third-party staffing company read real ChatGPT prompts and complete conversations, summarize user intent, and score and comment on responses from four models on a scale of 1 to 7.This process is known in the industry as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which is a fundamental method for enhancing chatbot capabilities. The complaint states that users were never explicitly informed that a person, rather than a machine, might be reading their conversations. OpenAI filters conversations through an automated system before human review, but the complaint alleges that the filters cannot intercept all content, and personal details sometimes still reach contractors. 404 Media first reported on the project on September 14 and found that the reviewers' dashboard included "user memory summaries," which could expose users' approximate locations, occupations, or private life information, even though usernames had been removed.OpenAI stated that such reviews aim to reduce two behaviors: chatbots behaving too much like humans and overly catering to users, referred to by researchers as "flattery." The complaint raises eight legal claims, including violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, Consumer Privacy Act, and common law claims for intrusion into private affairs, with the plaintiffs seeking damages, restitution of unjust enrichment, and punitive damages.

The social media platform X has filed a lawsuit in London against two British residents, accusing them of defrauding the company through the Creator Revenue Sharing program. X Internet Unlimited Company and X Corp. stated in the lawsuit that Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa, and unidentified accomplices operated multiple X accounts in collaboration, using likes, retweets, and replies to create a false impression of genuine interaction to increase their share of revenue from the program. X was acquired last year by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI for $33 billion.The plaintiffs named a total of 9 accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest, and @PolyBackTest. X accused several accounts of posting identical or highly similar cryptocurrency-related content within minutes of each other, with one post interval being only 11 seconds; at the same time, these accounts had overlapping financial and identity information, such as the Stripe account associated with @Bitcoin_Teddy being registered under the name "Stefan Mann," while the associated bank account and email both belonged to Sen.X claimed it suffered a loss of £207,384 (approximately $277,000) due to program expenditures and is seeking at least £75,000 (approximately $100,000) for investigation, analysis, remediation, and prevention of further violations.

ESS Frontier LLC filed a lawsuit on September 4, 2026, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, case number 1:26-cv-07645, against Ostium Foundation, Ostium Labs Co., Deltax LTD., DX Group Limited, Ostium co-founder and CEO Kaledora Kiernan-Linn, and John Doe Transferees 1-10. The nature of the case is arbitration matters under other statutes, with the cause of action being a petition for a mandatory arbitration order and the appointment of an arbitrator pursuant to 09 U.S.C. § 206.The plaintiff also submitted a complaint, a motion for a temporary restraining order, a motion to seal limited materials, and related declarations. Public reports indicate that the lawsuit involves approximately $15 million in crypto loans, with ESS Frontier LLC suing as the assignee of the debt owed by Hong Kong lender Minghui Zheng. On September 14, the plaintiff submitted the first amended complaint, adding Minghui Zheng as a co-plaintiff. The court is scheduled to hold a hearing on September 17. Ostium is an on-chain perpetual contract protocol deployed on Arbitrum, providing leveraged trading for stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, and crypto assets.

The liquidator of the bankrupt cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network has sued BitMEX, accusing it of fraud and market manipulation during forced liquidations in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking the return of 6,360 BTC, equivalent to approximately $495 million at current prices. The lawsuit was filed on September 12 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York by the litigation manager appointed in the Celsius bankruptcy case, Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium.The defendants include five entities: HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings, and HDR Global Services, registered across Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Seychelles, and the United States. Celsius claims it lost 1,325.84 BTC during a liquidation on March 12, 2020, and is seeking to recover debts transferred by the investment fund JST, which lost 5,034.33 BTC the following day. The positions held by both could only be profitable when Bitcoin was rising or stable, and the lawsuit alleges that BitMEX simultaneously controlled the system that decided when customers were liquidated and the insurance fund that profited from the liquidations.The allegations have not yet been verified, and this is the second lawsuit BitMEX has faced since announcing its liquidation in July; the exchange will cease trading on September 23.

Market news shows that OpenAI and GitHub have won the copyright lawsuit regarding AI programming tools.

Court documents show that Elon Musk's company X and xAI have resolved the antitrust lawsuit against Apple (AAPL.O).

F2Pool co-founder and stakefish founder Wang Chun tweeted that Oleksii Trofimchuk filed a lawsuit against Lido Finance and stakefish on September 8 in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, accusing them of allowing competing MEV bots to submit high-priority fee transactions to claim the ETH after his wallet was hacked.

According to Hyperliquid News, the Hyperliquid Policy Center has submitted a legal opinion to the federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) against the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).The lawsuit involves the CFTC's prior approval of the launch of regulated cryptocurrency perpetual contracts in the U.S. through Kalshi. CME had previously filed a lawsuit regarding the related regulatory decision, while the Hyperliquid Policy Center supports the CFTC's side, arguing that the court should dismiss CME's lawsuit.

According to CoinDesk, the Crypto Innovation Committee (CCI) and the Blockchain Association filed a preliminary injunction motion on Wednesday in the Sangamon County Circuit Court of Illinois, requesting to suspend the enforcement of the state's digital asset transaction tax during the litigation. The tax rate is 0.2% and applies to entities headquartered in Illinois or providing services in the state with total revenue exceeding $100,000, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2027.The two lobbying organizations, along with the Digital Chamber, filed a lawsuit against Illinois last month, claiming that the tax violates the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the U.S. Constitution, and that Illinois's approach to taxing digital assets differs from other financial services.CCI CEO Ji Hun Kim stated that businesses are forced to spend millions of dollars to build compliance systems, yet basic issues such as the tax subjects and timing remain unclear. Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger warned that if the law is enacted, Illinois will not be the last state to attempt this.

According to Bitcoin News, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has requested a Washington D.C. court to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) against Kalshi regarding Bitcoin perpetual futures contracts.Kalshi's cash-settled BTCPERP contract was approved on May 29, which has no expiration date, employs a funding rate mechanism, and tracks the spot price of Bitcoin. CME argues that contracts without a delivery date that continuously generate funding payments should be classified as swaps, not futures. In response, the CFTC stated that CME's lawsuit is "making a fuss over nothing" and pointed out that CME could also list similar products. Furthermore, the CFTC noted that CME's Bitcoin futures trading volume in June and August was higher than in May, indicating that related business has not been significantly affected. CME must submit a response by October 2.

According to Politico, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has long advocated for strict enforcement of gambling laws, but after his political action committee received a $5,000 donation from the prediction market platform Kalshi in May 2025, and he personally received a $7,000 donation from Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour in June of the same year, he did not participate in several legal actions initiated by other state attorneys general aimed at restricting Kalshi's operations.

According to a report by Reuters, Apple Inc. is facing a class-action lawsuit in London, with claims amounting to £2 billion (approximately $2.7 billion). The lawsuit was filed today in the London Competition Appeal Tribunal by Ann Pope, a former senior official of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, representing app developers.The core allegation is that Apple's "App Tracking Transparency" (ATT) feature, launched in 2021, imposes stricter restrictions on third-party developers than on its own services, giving Apple's own advertising ecosystem an unfair competitive advantage. Ann Pope stated that Apple's policies "have caused very significant harm to businesses that rely on Apple as a gatekeeper."Since its launch, the ATT feature has been a focal point of concern for global regulators for several years. Apple's official stance is that the feature is designed to allow users to control whether to permit apps to track their activities across other companies and websites.However, the plaintiffs argue that the actual enforcement of this rule has a double standard—tracking requests from third-party apps require strict pop-up authorization, while Apple's own personalized ads and services can bypass the same restrictions. This lawsuit represents the latest legal challenge Apple faces regarding its ATT policy and is the first large-scale private antitrust lawsuit initiated in the UK market against Apple's app ecosystem rules following scrutiny from regulators in the EU, the US, and several other countries.

According to lawyer Ariel Givner, cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger is facing a class-action lawsuit in the United States due to a security incident in 2023. The plaintiffs claim that the incident led to the leakage of personal identification information such as customer names, email addresses, and phone numbers, and that Ledger failed to timely and adequately disclose the relevant situation.The lawsuit also points out that hackers subsequently used this contact information to impersonate Ledger, tricking users into approving fraudulent transactions and stealing cryptocurrency assets.

Hyperliquid Policy Center CEO Jake Chervinsky disclosed on the X platform that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a motion to dismiss CME's lawsuit regarding crypto perpetual contracts.The motion states that CME lacks standing to sue, arguing that CME itself can also offer perpetual contracts, so any harm is self-inflicted. Chervinsky relayed the CFTC's wording, stating "this lawsuit is just making a mountain out of a molehill."

On September 1, 2026, TCL filed a lawsuit against Samsung in the federal court in Los Angeles, accusing it of false advertising regarding some televisions using Mini LED technology. The lawsuit claims that Samsung marketed its M series televisions as Mini LED products, but these televisions actually come from a recycled standard LED product line and do not contain Mini LED-related technological advancements.TCL stated that it surpassed Samsung in Mini LED television sales in the United States between 2023 and 2025, while Samsung launched the M series at prices below TCL's lowest price and falsely labeled them, resulting in damage to TCL's market share. TCL seeks an injunction to prevent Samsung from using the Mini LED designation and unspecified monetary damages.Samsung stated that it will vigorously defend itself and insists on the quality and accuracy of its product descriptions. The report was written by Blake Brittain.

OpenAI countered Apple's allegations of stealing trade secrets in a late-night legal document. OpenAI stated that the lawsuit is baseless and aims to hinder its recruitment of new employees, ultimately delaying its efforts to develop competitive technology.OpenAI claimed that many of the allegations stem from Apple's poor internal departure procedures, and the lawsuit is "the chaos caused by Apple itself." Previously, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had shared a table with Apple's then-CEO Tim Cook at a White House tech leaders dinner.

Changxin Storage filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense on August 28, Eastern Time. Changxin Storage stated that the company filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the U.S. Department of Defense of mistakenly listing it as a "Chinese military enterprise," with the company first being named in January 2025. Changxin Storage is not a military enterprise; it only researches and produces DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) products for commercial and civilian use, and they are not used for military purposes.