Dutch Court Rejects Samsung Patent Claims Against Apple

angry tapir writes "A judge at the district court in the Hague has rejected claims that Samsung had made against Apple regarding four patents. Samsung wanted Apple to pay for licensing the patents in question, and the court to issue an injunction banning the import and sale of Apple's iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2, as well as upcoming products, until licensing terms are in place. But the latter won't happen at this point. The ruling came in the in the same week that an Australian court blocked sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1."

Comments

Re:FRAND process

[beelsebob]

No, Apple negotiated, and indeed owns a license for the 3G RAND patent pool. Samsung's patent that they're now saying apple doesn't have a license for is required to implement 3G, because of this, they were legally obliged to put it into the patent pool. That's where they failed at negotiating –they didn't disclose the existence of the patent, and tried to submarine the whole 3G standard.

spreading ...

[TESTNOK]

Samsung is not backing down because of that Australian ruling: here's an article that they have now also filed suite against the iPhone 4s in Australia and Japan (following existing cases in France and Italy)

All your code are belong to us.

[andydread]

The real story here is that Apple and Microsoft are on a coordinated campaign to own all your code.

The notion that you cannot sit down in front of your computer and write code without needing a massive legal department to go up against the likes of Apple and Microsoft as they come to either ban products based on your code or demand a license from vendors based on your code is chilling to say the least

These companies rose on the backs of others. These companies became successful using ideas of others and writing lots of code that was unchallenged by patents for decades. Now they want to use software-patents to raise the barrier of entry so high that even Samsung is having trouble in the marketplace

The companies are also on a mission to use software-patents to make the use of open source software more expensive than their own.

The fact these companies are using the legal system against open source and free software shows that they can no longer compete in the marketplace based on the merits of their own products.

The sad thing here is that they will win and open source will lose and they will become the gatekeepers to all development in the future. The days of free software innovation are coming to an end.

Re:All your code are belong to us.

[andydread]

Sure. Software-patent on swipe to unlock. They sued Samsung in the Netherlands over this., software patent on scroll bouncing and other effects. Effects that have been around for decades. Software-patent on "a picture viewer that displays thumbnails and when clicked displays the picture in an image viewer" They got an injunction against Samsung in the Netherlands for this. I could go on and on and on but that should be enough.

Now let me break it down for you ok? Software is already protected by copyright. That means that if I write a feature and you write a feature and the features are similar they are protected by copyright. If I copy your code then that is a violation. however if I file a software-patent on what my code does and your code though completely different from mine solves the problem in a similar way then I can then claim ownership of your code by suing the shit out of you until you 1) pay me a license to use/distribute your totally different code or 2) you remove your code from the marketplace. get it?

Re:All your code are belong to us.

[joh]

Sure. Software-patent on swipe to unlock. They sued Samsung in the Netherlands over this., software patent on scroll bouncing and other effects. Effects that have been around for decades.

Have these really been around for decades? I mean, it looks totally obvious when you see it (which is the point of implementing it this way) but very often what looks totally obvious and the only right way to do it with hindsight is everything else than obvious before that. And if you work hard to come up with great and totally intuitive ways of doing something you're not happy if others just copy it without any effort spent on it. Without protecting it in some way everybody could just copy it and nobody would ever bother to put much effort into coming up with own solutions. You'd get mediocre half-assed solutions all over the place.

Well, maybe this is wrong. But evidence seems to support that view. If you look at copies and ripoffs from China and elsewhere how often do you see products where someone intelligently and carefully picked the best ideas from the products he has stolen from? He should be able to afford this, or not? He doesn't has to pay licenses and can freely chose whatever he wants to copy. But what you invariably see is just badly ripping off from the currently best selling products, nothing else. Small wonder: it's much cheaper, it takes much less effort and it's much faster -- and if there is no protection, being on the market a few weeks earlier than others is imperative.

No, I think we've taken a long time to get us into that mess and we will have to take a long time and careful measures to get out of it again.

Re:FRAND process

[JAlexoi]

FRAND != patent pool. Those are totally different things.
Since 3G patents aren't actually in a pool, Apple owns no such thing. Remember the issue with Nokia? Same thing.

I hate to say it, but Mueller has this one right

[JAlexoi]

I hate to say it, but this time I have to agree with Florian Mueller... This decision, on it's own, is a win for the industry. Simply because it reaffirms the fact that you can't use FRAND'ed patents for an injunction.

Re:FRAND process

[Anonymous Coward]

What stinks here is regardless of FRAND and negotiations is that one company can get another's products banned based on something utterly arbitrary and which took no amount of effort or imagination to produce (the concept of a rectangle with rounded corners) but that when that company tries to strike back using patents based on actual real solid research that cost real money to come up with and produce in the first place they're told they don't have a case.

There's something very wtf about that, Samsung's patents are based on real R&D, Apple's aren't yet Apple's warrant a ban from the marketplace and Samsungs don't? seriously?

I suspect the real issue here is that Apple is just as good at lobbying and giving backhanders to the right people as it is marketing, and Samsung, not so much.

I just simply struggle to see how this ruling is in any way fair relative to the ruling in Apple's favour, how can their ludicrous patent be upheld but Samsung's real actual patent not?

Re:FRAND process

[msobkow]

From the article:

The patents are standards-essential, which means they are incorporated in internationally accepted technology standards -- in this case 3G. Standards-essential patents are licensed under so-called Fair, Reasonable, and Non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, which is what Samsung has to offer Apple.

Not that it means the article or the judge were necessarily using the right terminology.