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Apple Can't Block US Sales of Samsung Devices
An anonymous reader snips this good news (for Samsung fans) from Edible Apple "In April of 2011, Apple kicked off what would soon become a global and complex series of litigation disputes when it sued Samsung in the U.S. claiming that its line of Galaxy smartphones and tablets infringed upon Apple's intellectual property and were nothing more than 'slavish' copies. As part of its suit, Apple requested a preliminary injunction that would bar Samsung from selling said products in the U.S. This past Friday, Judge Lucy Koh denied Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction."
Finally some judges are realizing they are being used for judgements to enforce business ^H^H^H^H^H...monopoly by via litigation.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Ok, I'll bite on the bait.
A Samsung fan is just a regular person who doesn't have a deeply compelling brand loyalty. Or at least in the usage in this article summary on Slashdot that is the meaning.
It means, anybody who isn't a Steve-fan.
This is similar to the recent reversal of the Apple-Samsung injunction in Australia - there, the court said that an injunction was unwarranted, but that Samsung would have to keep detailed records of every penny earned on the products, because they could be on the hook for all of them. Same thing here - if the patents are found valid and Samsung is found to have infringed, they'll owe damages to Apple... but there's no reason to preemptively make those damages $0 by stopping the sale of the product.
Plain and simple.
"Oh my god, their tablet is like ours! Ban it!"
Phone Arena:
Apple gives Samsung advice on non-patent infringing designs
In order to disprove Samsung’s claim, Apple needed to provide alternate design options to prove that Samsung did, in fact, blatantly copy Apple’s design. Some samples from these suggestions include:
Smartphones:
* Front surface that isn't black.
* Overall shape that isn't rectangular, or doesn't have rounded corners.
* Display screens that aren't centered on the front face and have substantial lateral borders.
* Non-horizontal speaker slots.
* Front surfaces with substantial adornment.
* No front bezel at all.
Tablets:
* Overall shape that isn't rectangular, or doesn't have rounded corners.
* Thick frames rather than a thin rim around the front surface.
* Front surface that isn't entirely flat.
* Profiles that aren't thin.
* Cluttered appearance.
They also have a great depiction of what such a tablet may look like
I don't want some muslims ripping off American technology and implementing a Muslim Caliphate. Did you know that in the Muslim World, women are raped if they drive a car? That young girls cannot go to school or their heads are cut off and fed to dogs?
This is what is at stake, when terrorist groups like Samsung attack our American values. We have to defend America first, and to hell with everyone else.
The worst part of these preliminary injunctions is they kill the biggest sales time - pre-Christmas.
While there may be merit on both sides, aborting the product in it's first large sales growth period is a sure-fire way of killing off a competitor.
What Apple has done, is polarise a significant portion of people against them. It's almost as if they modelled themselves on Microsoft...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
In other words "everyone who isn't like me is a fanboy".
Apple is scared to death, because they know Samsung is making a better product.
Apple can control its sheeple users, but they have no right to control other companies or the right to block buyers from the competition.
When will Apple be called out for doing all the horrible shit people think Microsoft does?
What a bunch of horseshit. It would be come immediately clear how stupid those guidelines were if Apple ang Samsung were both car designers squabbling over a car model. I mean, you don't see Bentley suing Chrysler.
When you're pimping a Chrysler, people know it's a Chrysler. Despite the similarities, there's no way in hell anybody with half a brain would confuse a Chrysler with a Bentley. And Bentley, being classy, is aware of that and that suing Chrysler would be a very tacky and un-classy move.
Apple could learn a few things from that little case study, but they want to be tacky and don't have enough faith in consumers to be able to distinguish the two.
Oh, I just clicked preview and saw that you're now at +5 funny and I've been trolled. I may be too dumb to get sarcasm, but I'm still not dumb enough to confuse a Galaxy with an iPad.
Basically the claim is that all phones and tablets after the iPhone and ipad must look nothing like the phones and tablets that existed prior to the iPhone and iPad. Apple has retroactive inventors rights.
Pity really, I like Apple products (other then iOS which is too restrictive for me) but they seem to have some crazy people working there these days.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
this is how Hitler was allowed to invade the Sudetenland, annex Austria, and crash those planes into the Trade Towers.
>do they make ceiling fans or something?
They do make fans. And per ROK specifications, they come with timers.
Because, you know, fan death is a leading killer of Koreans.
--
BMO
You know that "fan" comes from "fanatic", yes?
Actually according to Wikipedia it could come from the word fancy: "Paul Dickson, in his Dickson Baseball Dictionary, cites William Henry Nugent's work that claims it comes from fancy, a 19th century term from England that referred mainly to followers of boxing." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_(person)
I'm a steelers fan, but I certainly wouldn't get into any arguments or flamewars about them. Does that mean I'm also a Steelers fanatic?
When I was in university, I had a CS assignment in an assembly language course. The prof. accused about 15 people in the class of plagiarism. I got 100% on the assignment, but wasn't one of the ones accused. The assignment was quite specific about expectations, and the code size was small (about 15 lines of code). The prof. openly accused one guy, and the guy asked: is there another way of writing this code and getting a correct result? The prof. stopped and thought for a minute, then said 'no', at which point he stopped. There are lots of ways of making a cell phone. Round corners isn't proprietary. Colorful icons aren't proprietary. Clicking once or twice isn't proprietary. Apple is hoping for a judicial monopoly, but developing a market doesn't mean you get an instant monopoly on that market.
Her husband was born in Mexico and lives in the US since childhood, and she was raised in Mississippi and Oklahoma. And her mother is from North Korea, only the father is from South.
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That's because I was in a hurry and couldn't readily find a picture of an older, boxier Bentley. Here are the obvious similarities:
- The headlights are recessed from the Grille. Think of the center grille section as kind of a "nose" between the "eyes."
- The fender areas are tightly "wrapped" around the wheel wells and there is a small distance between the top of the wheel and the hood. Also note that both vehicles have big, spoked rims and small street-tires, all contributing to both models' "low-slung" appearance.
- On both vehicles, the angle of the front windshield is larger than the angle of the back windshield, and the roof itself is sloping downward toward the rear.
- Both vehicles are black with silver trim, and are generally intended to evoke a luxury appearance. Chrysler is obviously paying homage to Bentley.
- An obvious difference between the two pics I provided is that the Chrysler's grille extends to the bottom, and there are fog lights on its bumper. However, using this bentley pic as a reference, once again there is more similarity.
- While we're talking about the fronts, take into consideration the logos of the Bentley and the Chrysler here. Both logos are encapsulated in an oval, adorned with wings, and located on the top center of the grille.
I was saying earlier that Apple should appreciate that others are paying homage to them instead of trying to stop their shipments. It is apparent to anybody with half a brain which is which, especially when the GUIs are visible.
If Apple still wanted to stop Samsung, they could have at least compared the radius of the corners rather than just saying, "rounded corners," for example.
Looks like you've got Samsung's lawyers beat, then: Even Samsungâ(TM)s Lawyers Can't Tell the Difference Between Its Tablet and an iPad
You act like that's Samsung's problem.
I wonder if they (or Apple's lawyers) could tell this apart from the front of the Galaxy Tab... because if not, Apple has a serious problem, because that's a Samsung Digital Photo Frame from 2006, predating the iPad by 4 years.
Now, the back looks nothing like a Galaxy Tab, but that's not likely to be the part the court was showing when asking the question.
Here's a tip: If you rip off someone's design, don't sue the person you ripped off for ripping off said design in a different product.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You know, one of the great things about the Internet (and the slashdot posting system) is the relative anonymity it provides.
I'm glad because it has limited my embarrassment for making such an ill-considered statement without doing the most cursory investigation. (If you Google "Lucy Koh", the very first listing is the Wikipedia entry with her bio.). At least I don't have to face up to my mistakes in my "real" public life.
However, the other nice thing about the anonymity the Internet provides is that it helps keep one's ego from getting in the way of an admission of being wrong.
So, boy I was wrong to imagine that Ms. Koh might have been unduly influenced; with her upbringing, education and qualifications, it is very unlikely that this would've happened. My apologies to all the other posters who wasted their time on this thread.
Next, the Court considers whether Samsung’s products, in the eyes of an ordinary observer, would likely be deemed substantially the same as Apple’s iPhone. To this end, the Court finds that an ordinary observer would, in fact, find the Samsung Galaxy S 4G to be substantially the same as the iPhone.
But I thought the criterion was obviousness to one skilled in the art?
You're confusing the obviousness clause for granting utility patents with the consumer discernment criteria for design patents. To be granted a utility patent it cannot be obvious to a normal person skilled in the relevant art. To be granted a design patent you have to have a combination of appearance features distinct to your product which, if copied significantly, could confuse a normal consumer about which product was which.
Hmm. I looked at a whole bunch of flat screen monitors and generally preferred the picture from the Samsungs, so I bought one. I looked at a whole bunch of Android phones August of last year, and wound up buying a Galaxy S because I liked the AMOLED screen and disliked Motorola's policy on requiring signed kernels on their droids. I since haven't been too thrilled with how long it's taken to get Android updates, but now that the warranty is expired, I'll probably switch to Cyanogen soon when it supports Android 4 for the Galaxy.
So technology wise, they seem to be above average, although their update support leaves something to be desired. When I next have to buy home electronics, I'll probably take a close look at anything Samsung has to offer, keeping in mind their supposed limitations. You could call me a Samsung fan because I have bought two of their products and would consider buying more, or you could call me a careful shopper. I'm willing to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt that he just appreciates the good qualities of their products.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Particularly since the "design patent" they are whining about it violating is stupidly broad. More or less it is "A black rectangle with rounded corners." Oh wow. What an amazing design. I haven't seen that anywhere before except TVs, computer monitors, computer cases, picture frames, speakers, furniture, and so on.
I think Apple is really scared right now because Android is a major threat. It has been making big inroads on their iToy market and that is where all their money has come from. I mean they have a computer market, don't get me wrong, but their were a smaller company when that was what they did. Consumer electronics are where they've risen to massive profitability. Android is threatening that and I don't think they have a "what's next" a different market to move in to that they can try and dominate.
So instead they try and shut down competition.
I've got two of their LED TV's (47 and 55 inch), four PC monitors, two Blu-ray players, an Epic (Galaxy S) phone, and a home theater. They all go great together, and updates seem reasonable to me. The home theater could be a little easier to use, and using the phone as a remote for the TV could use a little work, but overall it's good stuff and has been quite reliable. Way better than that Sony nonsense - the stuff just plugs together. Recommended them to Mom, and when she got it she was like "Oh. Wow."
About half of the HDTVs you can buy now actually have Samsung displays, as well as all the iPhones and iPads. It's getting hard to get away from their products because more and more if you don't buy the gear from them, the people who made it buy their parts from Samsung.
Asus is totally kicking their ass on the Android tablet front with the Transformer, and now the Transformer Prime, but everything else looks like good gear so far.
We'll see if the lifecycle holds up. I expect a TV or monitor to last ten years or more. That's why I bought LED rather than plasma or LCD. It will take a while before I know if it was a good bet. For now I'm happy, so I guess I'm a Samsung fan too.
Quite as an aside, the prevalence of inexpensive LED displays in 1080p resolution has degraded the availability of higher-resolution displays that used to be common. It's nice that movies look nice, but sometimes we want to do wide spreadsheets or other stuff that calls for more pixels and setting up 4 monitors in a grid is really a pain.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Stupid you. Google for "sony tablet" or for "toshiba tablet" and you will find two nice tablet designs that are rectangular and look nothing like an iPad. If Sony and Toshiba can do it, then surely Samsung can do it.
Then why did Apple feel like they should copy the design of tablets/phones that existed before iPhone/iPad?
They could have invented some new design too.
The law doesn't and can't define where the line is between patentable and unpatentable designs; that is for the courts to sort out, and they are trying to sort it out.
The reasons this is coming up now and is such a problem are twofold. First, product cycles and market opportunities are very short lived. Samsung had a few months to turn a profit on the 10.1 and Apple killed that. Now, the Transformer Prime is coming out and the lawsuit doesn't matter anymore. Second, most companies focus on making good products and don't, as a habit, go around suing each other over trivialities--it wastes everybody's time.
The last point may also be the solution to this problem: Samsung and everybody else being sued by Apple should tie up Apple's designers and executives in court, for years. Given how marginal Apple's claims are, the court should grant wide latitude to the defense to depose and question these people. When Apple's employees spend more time in court than doing work, maybe they'll figure out that these kinds of lawsuits are not productive for anybody.