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Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium

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Re: Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium

#3
Here is the actual ruling:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16064642/784/apple-inc-...

The judge found that Corellium's use of iOS is fair use, in large part because Corellium's emulator satisfies the "transformative" test and is not a market substitute for normal uses of iOS. Interestingly, he explicitly mentioned Oracle v. Google, where Google's use of Java APIs was considered non-transformative, but distinguished this case from that one.

Note that, like most cases involving novel legal issues, this is all but certain to be appealed by the losing party.

Also, the judge only granted summary judgement on Apple's copyright infringement claim, not their DMCA anticircumvention claim, which he held involved a "genuine dispute of material facts" and thus would have to go to jury trial.

Re: Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium

#5
post #2

This is huge. But it's not over yet. Hope Corellium is ready for Round 2.

What is this supposed to mean? If Apple even tries touching them again, the courts will probably toss out their hearing for fear of double jeopardy. Apple will do the same thing it's always done, which is wince and smile for the camera. Apple might hate emulation of iOS, but they hate controversy even more.

Re: Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium

#6
post #5
post #2

This is huge. But it's not over yet. Hope Corellium is ready for Round 2.

What is this supposed to mean? If Apple even tries touching them again, the courts will probably toss out their hearing for fear of double jeopardy. Apple will do the same thing it's always done, which is wince and smile for the camera. Apple might hate emulation of iOS, but they hate controversy even more.

This is just a district court ruling. The case is almost certain to be appealed. (Also, the DMCA claims aren't settled yet.)

Re: Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium

#7
post #5
post #2

This is huge. But it's not over yet. Hope Corellium is ready for Round 2.

What is this supposed to mean? If Apple even tries touching them again, the courts will probably toss out their hearing for fear of double jeopardy. Apple will do the same thing it's always done, which is wince and smile for the camera. Apple might hate emulation of iOS, but they hate controversy even more.

Double jeopardy applies to criminal prosecution by the state, not civil matters between non-state entities.

Re: Apple loses copyright battle against security startup Corellium

#10
post #9

A small victory for the little guy.

Isn't the issues that Corellium allows you to side step the passcode brute force lockout? aka...... https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-fbi-is-secr...

Not really, by my understanding. Corellium is effectively providing a hosted virtual machine, presumably running on their own custom hypervisor, with their own management stack to give a convenient user experience.

You "spin up" VM-based instances of emulated devices (i.e. booting an emulator from a filesystem image), and can then research vulnerabilities and explore, and downgrade/upgrade iOS versions rapidly, like you can with VMs. Real devices are fused to prevent downgrades.

Side-stepping brute force lockouts on passcode would be irrelevant, since that's enforced on physical devices via the Secure Enclave - even if you dumped the flash from a real device, you'd not be any further forward as you would need the enclave's contents to derive the correct keys to do anything.

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