German Court Issues Injunction Against iPhone & iPad

angry tapir writes "A German court has ruled that Apple's iPhone and iPad devices infringe a Motorola patent and issued an injunction against sales of the products in Germany, in the latest move in a long series of legal battles between the companies. It's the latest stage in the international patent conflict that's been raging over mobile devices, which has included the recent Samsung victory over Apple in an Australian court and a defeat for Samsung in a Dutch court."

Comments

Great!

[Daetrin]

Maybe if _all_ the big players suffer enough then there will actually be some support for real patent reform.

(Not to mention of course that it's nice to see Apple get nailed after all the patent crap they've pulled on others.)

Re:Great!

[wvmarle]

Patents are supposed to work the same all over the world. They may differ in details such as amount of penalties, back-penalties, etc - the basics (what is covered, and what constitutes infringement) should be roughly the same. So indeed if one courts rules one way, likely courts in other countries will rule the same.

But to come back to your statement about war: mind that there are no winners in war. There are only losers. In WWII the allied forces were considered the winners, but the rest of Europe was as much in tatters as loser Germany was. Both sides lost huge in form of people killed or seriously wounded and disabled, buildings destroyed, infrastructure destroyed, economic losses due to the high cost of warfare and the lost production, etc. It took enormous financial support from mainly the US to help get Europe back on its feet.

In these patent wars there will be no "Marshall plan" when the dust settles. Both Samsung and Apple (I think they can be considered the main parties here) may end up seriously crippled. Samsung has much more than just phones and tablets (they produce many other consumer electronics, and also parts for them, including parts for Apple products), Apple otoh is more reliant on their phone/tablet business, and losing too many of this kind of suits may cause them to go bankrupt in the end. And for side players like Google the mobile phone business is merely a way to expand/protect their core business, so they don't have much to lose there.

Checkers anyone?

[metalmaster]

If these patent wars continue the map of Europe will look like a checkerboard. White country gets the Google product while black gets the Apple product

Serves Apple right.

[unity100]

They not only tried to prevent samsung on grounds of 'rectangular shapes', but they also transferred their patents recently to a proxy company to sue ALL mobile phone providers.

All is the result of the strategy jobs laid out. 'theft' my ass. theft of rectangular shapes that is.

anyways. what goes around, comes around.

What goes around comes around

[Billlagr]

Did Apple seriously think that they could get away with their asshole-ish behaviour forever without any repercussions? It was seriously short sighted of them to think that there wouldn't be an eventual backlash, or that they underestimated how much of a backlash once it got up some momentum. Just my own observations too, the backlash seems to be trickling down to the consumer level, I've heard quite a bit of talk around the office of jumping ship to Android when phone contracts expire from people who previously wouldn't part with their iPhone. YMMV.

Re:What exactly costitutes an expert?

[exomondo]

The linked article refers to Florian Mueller as a patent expert. What exactly constitutes one?

Whoever wrote it likely made the mistake of searching for antonyms rather than synonyms when searching for an alternative word to 'incompetent' to follow 'patent'. Florian Mueller is the bumbling idiot that has made countless idiotic assertions (most disproved with just a cursory look at the evidence) to drive hits on his blog, he's the JarJar Binks of the patent world.

Re:P0WN3D!

[PopeRatzo]

The poetic part is that they fired the first shot, with Samsung. Will be fun to watch where the dominos end up.

At this rate, nobody will be able to buy a handheld tablet until sometime the 22nd century, and then it will have to be trapezoidal in shape, no multi-touch and nothing resembling a screen on one side and a back on the other.

But at least by then it will almost certainly be all open source, hardware and software, because if the human race is going to survive to the 22nd century, it will only be because we've finally jettisoned the obsolete notion of patents and copyrights.

Re:What the hell?

[anonymov]

Defensive - "Lay down and take it like a man! Why do you even need that Xoom and whatnot anyways?", offensive - "OMG, why are you hitting back, you bully!"

Doling out power

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Make it like jury duty. Select leaders at random. Maybe have a test for specialized positions, or a general civics exam.

I'm not sure I believe in this myself, but it would have advantages over the current system.

Re:Doling out power

[isorox]

Make it like jury duty. Select leaders at random. Maybe have a test for specialized positions, or a general civics exam.

I'm not sure I believe in this myself, but it would have advantages over the current system.

In the UK there are very powerful, unelected, civil servants that run the country (see Yes Minister for an exagerated example). I assume the same happens in the U.S.

I genuinely believe most new politicians (at least the UK) have principles. I might not agree with them of course. After a few years on the job they're brow-beaten, same as in any large organisation. They're allowed to make the occasional grand gesture for PR purposes, but generally the ship keeps steering the course with noone at the helm.

Re:P0WN3D!

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention we already went through this in the states with them over 20+ years ago. Anybody remember "look and feel"? because that is pretty much EXACTLY what we are talking about here. Just as with look and feel Apple is claiming that generic thing A plus generic thing B equals patentable and makes about as much sense as saying "Well you can build a car with square wheels, or motorcycle handlebars, but you build a car with round wheels and a steering wheel that's mine". There isn't a damned thing on the iPad that wasn't done somewhere else first. grid of iCons? Palm. Squarish tablet? Samsung and Sony and Toshiba ALL had WinTablets with the same dimensions they just weighed more. Touch screens? older than dirt. the only thing I'd give Apple is the gestures although even with those i'd want to compare them to the gestures Opera had back in the day before i'd issue a patent.

Personally I predicted this would happen when Jobs died. like it or not apple has always been "The house that Jobs built" and just like before without a dictator running the shop and putting their foot down things break down over there. I predict they'll file more lawsuits trying to hang onto what they have, but there won't be anymore of those "holy shit, where'd THAT come from?" brand new hot products just popping out of Apple. Again like him or not you had to give the man credit, as Jobs had a vision of what he wanted and stuck with it, but I just haven't seen anything from Cook to make me think he has that same overarching vision. Instead just like under the pepsi guy they'll just be updating existing lines while suing like crazy trying to hold onto share.

They probably have one or two at the max products left in the wings from Jobs tenure, after that I bet the well runs dry.

Re:P0WN3D!

[R3d M3rcury]

Not to mention we already went through this in the states with them over 20+ years ago. Anybody remember "look and feel"? because that is pretty much EXACTLY what we are talking about here.

While I agree, keep in mind that Apple lost those cases not so much because Apple was in the wrong but because Apple had actually granted rights to Microsoft to use the "look-and-feel" in Windows (Apple claimed that Windows 2.0 used things that Apple had not granted a license to, but the judge found otherwise).

There is no licensing here.

There is a solution

[aepervius]

I think it was even done by ancient greek : democraty by lottery. Any adult at 20 is forced to pass a small test (nothing great, and certainly the test must not be allowed to filter out the population majority, only that you can count, basic litteracy stuff, and mental healthy, aka no life breaking psychose). Once the test is good, you are OK for the next 40 years to be in the lottery (forced in the lottery). Then each 4 or 5 years at election, a college of people is elected at random under hefty surveillance that no cheating happen with sheets of paper thrown at random and taken out for each seats of representative. Then those people are given a 2 or 3 hours refresher on constitutionality of law, the constitution , bill of rights etc... After that they are thrown in to vote for laws. For the next 30 years after their investiture they are looked at by tax, law representative, anti corruption team, whatnot to make sure there is no "gift" coming after their investiture.

There would still be cheating and corruption, but it would be a tad bit more difficult than with the elected pigs aristocraty we have right now.

Another solution would be that laws are not anymore voted by representative, but open for the whole folk to vote for/against electronically.

Re:P0WN3D!

[VortexCortex]

Cars are not allowed design patents or copyrights; Neither does the fashion industry. Transportation & Clothing are "too utilitarian". I'm having a hard time in this day and age NOT classifying computing devices as utilitarian.

I mean: I wan REQUIRED to use a computer to get tax forms -- They were out of stock. I could have filed an extension, but now you're just being silly. College kids are REQUIRED to use computers for learning -- In fact, I had to repair my 12 year old nephew's computer SO HE COULD DO HOMEWORK (he attends US public school). There are no pay phones in a 10 mile radius of my home (where most accidents are said to occur), I must have a mobile cellular computing device (even feature phones run Java!). I've seen government subsidization for cellular phones, and talk of Internet access being a "human right" akin to having access to water. Even if you do not argee today that computing devices are utilitarian, you will soon (this, or you'll be too dead to care).

Before you point out the fallacy that access to this technology is not NEEDED to live, I would direct you to examine 3rd world countries which are rapidly adopting my views. Furthermore, You could live without toothpaste, agriculture, CLOTHING, or AUTOMOBILES as well, this does not mean these things are not utilitarian.

We don't have to get rid of technology design, hardware & software copyright & patents altogether, just do so for consumer electronics -- People need to be free. The market will survive, indeed the fashion industry and automotive industries are some of the most successful yet least protected by copyright & patents. Trademark law still applies, which is just enough to keep counterfeit knockoffs off the shelves.

THIS IS THE INFORMATION AGE. Would you not agree stone tools were utilitarian in the stone age? Would you not agree iron tools were also in the iron age? Automobiles were revolutionary once, and are utilitarian now. Computing was revolutionary once, and now is as commonplace as any essential advancement has become in the past.