Apple is back in court assailing Samsung with two patents it obtained in December of last year. In documents filed Tuesday in the San Jose federal court, Apple used freshly-granted US Patents 8,074,172 and 8,086,604 to seek a temporary injunction against Samsung. From the patent descriptions:

According to this VentureBeat report some customers are so upset over Apple using Chinese labor to assemble their products under substandard working conditions that they have decide to protest with a petition. This effort isn't just a handful of people either - a group of consumers will deliver a petition signed by 250,000 customers to the company's store at Grand Central Station in New York City tomorrow and in other locations around the globe.

Apple is apparently cracking down on applications that they consider to be clones of other popular apps on its App Store. Evidence of such a crackdown comes from web site VideoGameWriters, who noted that one particular app developer - who is fond of using "familiar titles" for his apps - seems to have less of them available on the APP Store today.

According to a Touch Arcade forum user, a company has been offering to boost the ranking of free apps using bots on Apple's App Store. According to a user named "walterkaman," the unnamed company will set up automated and repeated downloads of a client's app in order to push it into Apple's Top Free charts. While the company was not named and the story has - as of yet - remained unverified, it has caught the attention of Apple.

Apple has hired a former Xbox Live marketing person to head up its app business in Europe. The latest top executive to land at Apple is the former head of Xbox Live marketing Robin Burrowes. Burrowes who joined the company earlier this month, will serve as the company’s new head of App Store Marketing for iTunes Europe.

Burrowes worked at Microsoft for seven years, handling the product, business, and marketing for Xbox Live in several regions including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Responding to a recent and rather extensive report on the horrific working conditions at Foxconn in the New York Times, Apple's CEO Tim Cook came out strongly against it in a memo purportedly sent to the entire company. The article, at least in Apple's view, came to the conclusion that the iPad maker either knew about the abuses at these assembly plants in China and ignored them, or they simply didn’t care.

Apple continues to prove that whoever runs its approval department for iOS apps may not be paying attention. As this C&VG story points out the latest offenders is a Mario Kart rip-off called 'Mole Kart.' Available for right around $2, Mole Kart looks suspiciously like Mario Kart.

Atari says that, while it admires the work of independent developers, it must defend its intellectual property. The company made its comments after it was revealed yesterday that it had been using its tight relationship with Apple to take down games that had a "passing resemblance" to games in its extensive back catalog of classic games arcade games. Black Powder Media claimed that it took its games Vector Tanks, Vector Tanks Extreme, and Vector Tanks 3 off the app store after Atari claimed the games infringed on its Battlezone IP.

According to new data released by app analytics firm Flurry, 1.2 billion applications were downloaded for Android and iOS devices between December 25 and December 31. Earlier in the week the group predicted that in that same period it expected new Android and iOS device activations to be right around 6.8 million. Now they are saying that the number is probably closer to 20 million.

According to iOS game developer Black Powder Media, Atari is removing games from the App Store (with the help of Apple, of course) that resemble anything from its extensive back catalog of classic games. The company developed a game called Vector Tanks 3, which bears a slight resemblance to Battlezone. Atari has also threatened legal action against iOS developers who are developing games that it deems are rip-offs of its owned IPs.

According to this TechieBuzz report, analysts are telling Apple that they should collect up to $10 per device in royalties from companies that are using technology that they hold patents for. Kevin Rivette, managing partner at intellectual property firm 3LP Advisors LLC, said in an interview with Bloomberg that Apple could probably collect up to $10 in royalties for every Android device sold and that would be twice what Microsoft is believed to receive for each HTC Android device sold.

According to this Ars Technica report, Apple has allied itself with a known patent troll to take out its enemies. The company has had some covert dealings with Digitude Innovations, a company that enjoys being paid in patents so it can beat the hell out of companies in court.

Samsung should be happy today as Australia’s High Court removes the country-wide ban that was put on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet - the result of an injunction in its continuing trademark disputes with Apple. The tablet had been under an injunction since July of this year.

Australia’s court froze sales of the device earlier this year after Apple filed an infringement suit against the Galaxy Tab. At the time Samsung called the court's ruling "grossly unjust." The thrust of Apple's lawsuits is that the Galaxy tab shares many similarities with the iPad.

While Apple managed to get a number of preliminary injunctions against Samsung in other countries in their ongoing battle of trademark disputes related to iOS devices, it looks like the US courts aren't playing ball. US District Judge Judy Koh has denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction that would have barred Samsung from selling its Galaxy brand tablets and smartphones on Friday. While thing could go Apple's way eventually after a full trial, the decision allows Samsung to continue to sell its Android-based devices without interference from the courts or Apple.

The ESRB and the CTIA detailed a new ratings systems for mobile games this week - backed by such companies as AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless. Two companies that were curiously absent from that list hold the lion's share of the market when it comes to platforms: Apple and Google.

EPIX, the premium entertainment service that is a joint venture of Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM, will soon be on some pretty familiar devices. The premium programming is already available on a number of platforms including Android and the iPhone. Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer for the company, says that the service will be available next month on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Apple's iPad.

Marketing firm BlueKai has compiled the profile of the typical iPad buyer, listing three traits that land in the "highly likely to buy" category. The data shows that the typical iPad buyer owns a pet, is male, and is a frequent purchaser and player of video games. Health care professionals, international travelers, apartment dwellers and organic food fans also scored high on the list. The firm also found that vitamin takers, domestic business travelers, married couples and college graduates had common attributes of iPad owners.

According to new data from Nielsen, iPad and iPhone are the most wanted devices for gaming and entertainment. The iPad is the most wanted consumer electronic among children ages 6-12 for this holiday season, according to Nielsen. Interest has increased in Apple's iPad over the last year too; close to half (44 percent) of children have expressed interest in the product, which is up from 31 percent in 2010. Other popular Apple devices are also wanted by kids including the iPod Touch (30 percent) and iPhone (27 percent).

The 2012 Harris Poll Youth EquiTrend study by Harris interactive is making Nintendo very happy today. While game systems in general receive higher scores than other technologies surveyed in Harris Interactive's annual survey, Nintendo Wii earns the overall highest score among all technology brands included in the study.

Bloomberg reports that Samsung Electronics has finally overtaken Apple in the last quarter to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor. Both companies have been embroiled in legal battles all over the world because of various patent infringement claims. Samsung shipped 27.8 million smartphones in the last quarter, taking around 23.8 percent of the market, according to Milton Keynes from U.K.- based Strategy Analytics. Apple’s 17.1 million shipments equated to 14.6 percent of the market. Nokia maintained a third-place position.

A Shanghai activist is accusing Apple's Beijing store of passing old iPhones as brand new. According to a story in the Shanghai Daily, activist Wang Hai - who is representing two citizens - filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Chinese court accusing the firm of selling refurbished iPhones. Both purchases were made at the company's store in Beijing, China.

Lots of interesting tidbits are being revealed about Apple founder Steve Jobs this week - all related to interviews he conducted prior to his death for an upcoming authorized biography. A couple of the juiciest quotes relate to his animosity concerning Google's Android mobile operating system. In one interview he made a vow to spend all of Apple's $40 billion to destroy Google’s rival smartphone operating system.

Jobs told biography author Walter Isaacson that he considered Android "grand theft" of his idea for a mobile operating system.

Valve front man Gabe Newell fears that Apple will release new hardware that could render traditional gaming consoles obsolete. At least that is what he said during a game panel at the WTIA TechNW conference - as reported by the Seattle Times.

"I suspect Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear," said Newell.

Newell also called the rise of "closed" platforms like Apple's iOS and Xbox Live "ominous."

At the fifth annual T3 Gadget Awards last night Microsoft won two of the night's biggest awards, along with the Razer gaming laptop.

Apple is reporting that over a million pre-orders have been taken for its latest iPhone model, the new iPhone 4S. The company claims that these pre-orders came in the 24-hour-period after the company announced the new phone last week. The pre-orders came from its online store as well as third-party service providers that will offer the phone when it is released.

The Westboro Baptist Church pretends that it supports morality, but it's hard to take anything away from what the group does other than to draw the conclusion that they are in it for publicity and controversy. If you need an example of this, then I refer you a recent tweet by top church member Margie J Phelps. This morning she tweeted via her iPhone that the church planned to protest Apple founder Steve Jobs' funeral:

While the short term future of Apple may be safe in the wake of Apple luminary and founder Steve Jobs' death, some are concerned that its long-term future may be in jeopardy. An ABC News report on that topic picks the brains of various analysts familiar with the company's culture and way of doing business.

Apple's long-time front man and co-founder Steve Jobs has died. He was 56 years-old.

"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," Apple said in a statement today. "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

A fake Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for iOS has managed to piss off a lot of consumers and many are wondering how Apple allowed a game that has been in the App Store system for nearly six weeks to get past its approval process. The bogus game app claims to be an official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and is the work of a Vietnamese developer known as Dang Van Phuong. The license for the popular franchise is currently held by Nickelodeon, who are working on a brand new animated property to be released in 2013.

According to research from Strategy Analytics released earlier this week, the iPad captured 80 percent share of tablet shipments in North America during the second quarter of 2011. The research firm claims that Apple has a tight grip on the American tablet market that companies like Amazon will find hard to break.