7 famous legal disputes in recent years
As an international law firm and consultancy we receive daily the news on the legal disputes that arise in the emerging and innovative environment that surrounds us today.
Given the global nature of our current world, we perceive that some of them, whether more or less accurate given the “Fake news”, receive a much greater media impact and therefore, when reaching a larger audience, are trending topic and create greater diversity of opinions and lessons.
These trending legal disputes are usually the most interesting to analyze and to open the conversation. This is our compilation of the most viral legal disputes of recent years:
1. The Winklevoss brothers against Zuckerberg on Facebook
The brothers began a legal battle years ago to prove that they really invented Facebook, and that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them when he was studying with them at Harvard University, a story that was collected in the film The Social Network – film that we recommend and that is available on Netflix.
In 2008, the Winklevoss reached an agreement to close the dispute with Zuckerberg in exchange for receiving $ 20 million in cash and $ 45 million in company securities, however, later they petitioned the courts to reopen the case considering that they were scammed. After being rejected and later asking for a review, the brothers decided, after careful thought, to withdraw the appeal.
2. Coca Cola vs Pepsi for the naming “zero”
Coca Cola and Pepsi in a legal battle over naming is a long-standing issue: Coca-Cola’s attempt to seize the rights to the word ‘zero’. The American multinational received a setback in 2016, when the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) rejected Coca-Cola’s application to register said brand name for its various beverages – among which are Coca-Cola Zero, Sprite Zero, and Powerade Zero – after Pepsi presented its opposition to this measure.
3. Apple vs Samsung in a legal battle for patent infringement
The legal battle between the two parties began in 2011, when the Cupertino people accused Samsung of violating several patents related to the iPhone. Although Apple won the lawsuit with compensation of $1.049 million in 2012, the Asian company rejected the verdict several times until 2018, when both companies reached a mutual agreement of which no details were given.
4. Inditex wins the lawsuit and registers Zara as a food brand
Zara won the lawsuit against her Italian word ‘twin’, Le Delizie Zara. The European Court of Justice (CJEU) agreed with Inditex, which had asked the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to register its most famous trademark for products related to food and hospitality in 2010. But it already existed another Zara specializing in fresh, dry, frozen and prepared pasta in Italy, which was not amused by the intention of the textile giant and therefore did not succeed until 2019.
5. The Glovo worker, who achieved the first Supreme Court conviction of a digital platform for his work model.
Glovo is a Spanish start-up whose service is an on-demand courier that purchases, picks up, and delivers products ordered through their mobile app. Isaac Cuende worked at Glovo at the beginning of the company in Madrid. Cuende explained that the conditions that they had mentioned at the beginning were getting worse and worse, he did not work when he wanted but they were all controlled by an algorithm that if you did not work when they wanted you would run out of orders. After several years he achieved the first conviction of the Supreme Court to a digital platform for his work model.
6. Uber vs Waymo for the theft of intellectual property
A legal dispute between Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, and Uber, a private transportation service, over the theft of key intellectual property for the development of autonomous driving technologies came to an end after a year of disputes. The case was seen as a battle between companies to take ownership of autonomous driving, a technology that is expected to transform business models in the automotive production and transportation sector.
7. Liebeck vs McDonald’s Restaurants (McDonalds coffee case)
This was a 1994 defective product liability lawsuit that became a focal point in the debate in the United States over liability reform. Although a New Mexico civil jury awarded $ 2.86 million to plaintiff Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman who suffered third-degree burns to her pelvic region when she accidentally spilled hot coffee on her lap after purchasing it from a McDonald’s restaurant, finally Liebeck alone received $640,000. Liebeck was hospitalized for eight days while she underwent a skin graft, followed by two years of medical treatment.
Liebeck’s attorneys argued that, at 180-190 ° F (82-88 ° C), McDonald’s coffee was defective, claiming it was too hot and more likely to cause serious injury than coffee served elsewhere. McDonald’s had rejected several previous occasions to settle for the payment of less compensation than what the jury finally awarded. The jury awarded $160,000 to cover medical expenses and compensatory damages and $ 2.7 million in punitive damages. The trial judge reduced the final verdict to $ 640,000 and the parties finally agreed to a confidential amount.
