Samsung Tries To Ban Import of iDevices To US

tekgoblin writes "The battle between Apple and Samsung has just heated up again. Samsung has filed a complaint to the International Trade Commission to ban import of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod products to the U.S. From the article: 'Samsung, the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones whose Galaxy devices compete with the iPhone and iPad, claims Apple is infringing five patents, according to a filing with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington yesterday. The ITC, which can block imports of products found to violate U.S. patents, must decide if it will investigate Samsung’s claims.'"

Comments

Dumb move. Really dumb move.

[jcr]

If Samsung succeeds in obtaining this ban, then that's billions of dollars they lose in sales of flash memory to Apple. Who's in charge of that outfit?

-jcr

How is Samsung Wrong?

[paulsnx2]

In fact, *Nobody* can produce a smart phone without infringing on *Somebody's* patents.

You want IP reform? Take EVERY infringing product off the market. Let's see congress and the Executive branch do without their Blackberries and their iPhones. It is stupid to allow the thousands upon thousands of bogus patents to be used as a patent thicket to protect a few big companies. These are NOT inventions, in the sense viewed by the framers of the constitution. Most are little minor tweaks obvious to anyone working in the industry. But the costs to consumers in more expensive products and less competition and slowed innovation is huge and vast.

It is time we limit tech patents to 3 years. But regardless of the reform, reform is needed.

Re:How is Samsung Wrong?

[whisper_jeff]

These are NOT inventions, in the sense viewed by the framers of the constitution. Most are little minor tweaks obvious to anyone working in the industry.

I see this argument all the time but let's be real for a second here - in the smartphone category, there's a very distinct "pre-iPhone" era and "post-iPhone" era. It may seem obvious _now_ but, until the iPhone came along, it clearly wasn't that obvious because damn near nobody else was doing it. Now? After the iPhone? Yeah - everyone and their cousin is producing a smartphone that looks and acts like an iPhone so it all seems so obvious. Until the iPhone came along, however, it wasn't obvious at all.

Here - I'll make it even easier to understand with an car analogy. Well, a minivan analogy, to be exact. At one point, minivans had one sliding door on one side of the minivan. That's what they all looked like. All of them. It was a holdover from the minivan's utilitarian predecessor - the cube van. Then, one day, someone got the bright idea of putting a sliding door on the other side of the minivan as well. And, low and behold, everyone started doing it because "it's so obvious." But, until the first one appeared, it wasn't obvious - if it had been, everyone would have been doing it. It wasn't obvious at all.

While many people want to believe that the iPhone is not inventive and is just a collection of obvious ideas, that's not even vaguely true because, if it was obvious, there would have been a ton of iPhone-like phones already on the market. It wasn't until the iPhone came along that suddenly "it's so obvious" happened followed by everyone doing what Apple had done because, you know, "it's so obvious."

Sliding doors on both sides of a minivan. iPhone. Obvious, only after you see it done.

Re:Dumb move. Really dumb move.

[Omnifarious]

Personally, if I had a customer as insanely and stupidly litigious as Apple, I wouldn't much care about losing them.

How are they going to get an unbiased judge?

[Liambp]

They are going to have a hard time finding a judge or jury who isn't addicted to some Apple product methinks.

Re:Dumb move. Really dumb move.

[shutdown -p now]

Of course Samsung will not succeed in obtaining the ban; it's not the goal. Everyone knows that it's going to end up as a settlement and a cross-licensing agreement, they're just haggling over who pays and how much.

Re:Gee Apple, how'd that lawsuit work out for ya?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shake your head at Apple? Why not shake your head at Samsung for ripping off the mobile device designs of one of their biggest clients? What did Samsung *expect* Apple to do? Sit there and take it?

Oh right. This is Slashdot, and you're a fanboi of a different sort.

Re:Not too bright

[sayfawa]

Hmm, seems like all the patents I see Apple getting are software and design patents that can be worked around. Whereas the other big cell-phone companies like Nokia, Samsung, SE, etc, have patents that you need to license to actually, you know, make a phone.

Re:Dumb move. Really dumb move.

[icebike]

Doesn't matter. They have nowhere else to go, because only Sammy can handle their orders.

Besides, just because the 20 Android manufacturers do not individually exceed Apple doesn't mean much.
They easily exceed Apple do when lumped together. If iPhone were banned from import
they would still sell elsewhere Android would surge in the US. Those phones use just as much
memory as Apple.

So Sammy wins either way.

Like I posted Android is outselling iPhone today and Android tablets are just starting
to come on line from dozens and dozens of companies.

Re:The whole industry

[FSWKU]

Pretty much all the big players are being sued by somebody.

What else are you going to do with all of those lawyers? Feed them to the sharks?

Can we? Please???

Re:Apple is gambling that Samsung would fold.

[Phleg]

Apple are suing because Samsung smart phones are taking sales away from Apple phones.

Apple is suing because that's how the game is played at this point. Trot out your patents, so does the other guy, and settle on some cross-licensing agreement that (if you've calculated right) puts you in a better position than your competitor. Or encourages your other competitors to follow suit in licensing your patents. You clearly do not understand this level of "business chess". That's alright, but you just really ought to shut up about it until you learn more.

...they've got a lot to lose if phone sales are threatened, namely their astronomical share price.

Share price is an arbitrary value without knowing market cap. If you actually meant "share price", you have no idea how the stock market works. If you actually meant "market cap", you might understand how the market works, but are laughably far from reality. AAPL is currently trading at a 15.92 P/E ratio, compared to a 19.32 P/E for GOOG, an astronomical 2,424.63 P/E for LNKD, and 10.15 P/E for MSFT. However, AAPL has (as of last quarter) nearly 10% of their share price in cold, hard, liquid cash. Assuming a zero growth rate, AAPL will have more cash on hand than its current share price in less than five years.

So tell me, please, how Apple's share price is astronomical.