Apple Has Spent More Than $100 Million Suing Android Manufacturers

Diggester writes with an excerpt from an article at Gizmocrazed about the absurd amount of money Apple has spent suing HTC et al: "The never-ending war on Android has cost Apple more than $100 million, according to latest estimates. While a huge chunk of that money was spent (read wasted) in claims against HTC. So far, 84 claims have been filed against different Android manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, etc.) for patent infringements, out of which only 10 were proved to have been infringed and only one ruling has gone in Apple's favor."

Comments

Does not compute

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, 84 claims have been filed against different Android manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, etc.) for patent infringements, out of which only 10 were proved to have been infringed and only one ruling has gone in Apple's favor."

WTH? What happened in the 9 cases where the patent was proven to be infringed but the ruling didn't go in Apple's favour?

Re:Does not compute

[almitydave]

I don't see it discussed in TFAs, but all 10 could be from the same case, or Apple could have lost the cases for some other reason, such as when filing the paperwork with the court, on the place on the form that says "do not write in this space," they wroke "okay."

Re:Does not compute

[oxdas]

I think the reason is these are not full court cases,but injunction hearings. Only one jurisdiction, Germany, is enforcing any sort of an injunction and they are still allowing third parties to market and sell Samsung products, just not Samsung.

Re:Does not compute

[s.petry]

Groklaw I believe is where I read a brief summary. The judge in at least one of those cases said that while there was infringement there was no possible way that damages were caused because of the nature of the patent. I like smart Judges personally.

In several other cases (again see if you can find them on Groklaw) the MFR was given time to work around the patent. Again no damages were awarded.

Which is which case? No idea off the top of my head. I read way to much to know sources this long after reading them.

Re:Does not compute

[Xeranar]

9 cases of infringement that involved software that was changed in the next update so that while Apple MAY have won court costs they didn't win any profit from the defendant. Winning infringement cases usually means the end of a product in the physical world but since this is design attacks on software they can simply rectify the issue in the next software push and thus negate the whole issue.

Re:Does not compute

[mjwx]

So far, 84 claims have been filed against different Android manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, etc.) for patent infringements, out of which only 10 were proved to have been infringed and only one ruling has gone in Apple's favor."

WTH? What happened in the 9 cases where the patent was proven to be infringed but the ruling didn't go in Apple's favour?

They made minor changes to the software as per court orders.

What you have to remember is that Apple are so afraid of Android that they are suing over anything and everything no matter how petty.

1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[psergiu]

Question is - how much money did they won from that one ruling in favor ?

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Lambeco]

Question is - how much money did they won from that one ruling in favor ?

Any compensation awarded to Apple in these cases is purely icing, and a molecule in the bucket compared to Apple's capital. This is about protecting their brand, trademarks and image. And as we all know, Apple will go to any lengths to do so.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[tripleevenfall]

Question is - how much money did they won from that one ruling in favor ?

As the case wasn't tried in South Korea, I think the award was probably in dollars.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Penguinisto]

I don't think he was asking if suing was a profit center for Apple, but rather asking whether the money recovered via license agreements would cover the costs of all that litigation.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[nomadic]

This is about Steve Jobs throwing a tantrum because Google had the audacity to try and compete with the iphone with Android.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Qzukk]

The real question is: how much money did all the lawsuits (winning or not) cost the competitors?

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Anonymous Coward]

Question is - how much money did they won from that one ruling in favor ?

Zero. HTC just removed the feature and the court where Apple brought the suit can't issue money damages.

.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/21/BU5H1MFCVG.DTL

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[khallow]

The point here is that lawsuits just like anything else done by Apply is a business operation. And it's worth asking just as with anything else such as a product line whether they're getting value for that money. It sounds to me like they sunk $100 million without having much to show for it.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[ArcherB]

Right.

And the OP's point is that it doesn't matter if the money received would only cover 0.1% of the litigation cost or 100.1% of the litigation cost.

The only thing "Insightful" about the GP's post is to question just how biased the summary and article are. It's not hard to read them as being pro-Android and/or anti-Apple (or just indifferent and making shock claims to drive traffic). It's not a bad thing to question the source - whether there's some merit or whether they're just generating FUD headlines. But as the OP points out, beyond the source's integrity, it really doesn't matter.

The summary author could be Pro-Apple-Stockholder and is outrage that the company his retirement depends on has wasted $100,000,000 on frivolous lawsuits.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about Steve Jobs throwing a tantrum because Google had the audacity to try and compete with the iphone with Android.

The tantrum was about someone doing to him exactly what he did to Xerox.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Pieroxy]

The tantrum was about someone doing to him exactly what he did to Xerox.

Do you mean to say Apple offered everything on iOS to Google and said "There. Do what you want with it." ?

That's not the story - at least not the way I remember it.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[MrDoh!]

As we're seeing though,those patents aren't that strong. Can of worms opening up is that the stuff they have isn't that noteworthy, and the people they're attacking appear to have just as many, perhaps more actual meaningful patents.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[teg]

The tantrum was about someone doing to him exactly what he did to Xerox.

Apple licensed the technology, and paid in Apple stock. So not comparable

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Citizen of Earth]

This is about protecting their brand, trademarks and image.

Not really. It's about obstructing its competitors from bringing their phones to market. Apple figured out a year ago that its competitors have better phones than it does.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[siddesu]

If this is the rationale, they seem to be showing a very un-Appleish return on investment, and not only short-term -- every loss seems to permanently remove value from their "intellectual property portfolio".

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[siddesu]

It was not a matter of "properly patenting" their UI or not at all -- at the time they would very likely not have been able to get such a nefarious patent even if they tried very hard. Unfortunately, things have changed a lot since then.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Xeranar]

Some the patents being handed out for the most mundane concepts in computing are out of hand. Just as another said, if Apple had tried to patent overlapping windows most likely they would have either not been awarded the patent or would have been thrown out in court. On top of it all if the patent had held up for the initial 14 years Apple would have crushed the speed of computing under the weight of their proprietary systems. We should be praying everyday that Apple didn't win that fight and they don't win future fights. This is the issue when a manufacturer wants to get in bed with software and hold all the cars.

100 million is piddlings to Apple but I suspect that part of this is driven by the lawyers at Apple being their own shot callers now and the artistic aspects of Apple being fed by their egos. It's not going to crush the company any time soon but it will put a dent in them if they keep picking fights with companies big enough to tango. War chest or not Samsung has the income and the power to roll with Apple and I doubt that the lawyers for Apple truly care about the consequences as they see the massive dollar signs.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[psiclops]

Before the iPhone was first unveiled(January 2007) there was a phone (LG Prada) that actually did look a lot like an iPhone

LG Electronics has claimed the iPhone's design was copied from the LG Prada. Woo-Young Kwak, head of LG Mobile Handset R&D Center, said at a press conference, “We consider that Apple copied the Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006.”[8]

Note: While the LG Prada was not released until after the iPhone, the design and concept were released before we saw any of this from Apple.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[artor3]

So you're saying that Apple should be able to trademark the rounded rectangle? That's stupid. Touchscreen devices, quite obviously, should try to maximize the size of the screen relative to the device. And anything that people must handle regularly shouldn't have sharp corners. The rounded rectangle is simply a case of form following function.

Also, at least one of those photos has been manipulated to make the Samsung phone look more like the iPhone. The Galaxy S and iPhone 3G have different dimensions, including different aspect ratios, yet they appear identical in the photo comparing them. Whoops! Newsflash... if you have to lie to prove your point, you don't have one.

Re:1 ruling in favor vs. $100M

[Simon Brooke]

We are talking about a company that nearly went out of business because they didn't properly patent their UI (And Apple did a lot of improvements over the Xerox design)

Speaking as someone who worked on both Xerox and Apple computers during the mid 1980s, this is rubbish. There were no significant innovations which Apple and its offspring brought to their user interface - at least until NeXT Step - which had not at least been experimentally tried at Xerox PARC before Steve Jobs' famous visit. Even if they had, nothing in this ought to be patentable anyway - it's all reasonably obvious to any practitioner in the field as soon as the technology (bit-mapped screens and a pointing device) becomes available. When I last bothered to track it, there were fourteen US patents for which I personally had created prior art; I'm sure there are many more now.

So much for returns.

[sethstorm]

They could have gotten higher ones investing in manufacturing in the US for US markets versus this unproductive litigation.

Re:So much for returns.

[psergiu]

They did - Samsung will open a new factory in Texas for producing the A? CPUs. Too bad that they will be shipped to China for final assembly as there are no suitable factories in US :)

Re:So much for returns.

[tripleevenfall]

Microsoft's mobile business essentially IS extorting money from Android manufacturers to indemnify themselves against litigation, I'm not sure why Apple wouldn't try their hand at it too.

Re:So much for returns.

[j-beda]

The iPhone still has a hefty market share - which is important for Apple because they make the bulk of their iPhone related money on the iTunes store commissions.

I don't think it invalidates any of your other points, but it looks like iTunes (apps, music, and video) brought in about 1/10 the money as did sales of iPhones in the last quarter, about 1/3 of the amount brought in from iPad sales, about 1/3 of the amount brought in from CPU sales and about the same amount as brought in by iPod sales. My rough estimates from the following graph give about 2.5 billion for iTunes, 2.5 for iPod, 7.5 for CPU, 7.5 for iPad, 25 billion for iPhone.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/24/apple-reports-best-quarter-ever-in-q1-2012-13-06-billion-profit-on-46-33-billion-in-revenue/

They seem to have had a total of 46 billion of total revenue, and 13 billion in net profit. Even if all of the 2.5 billion of iTunes was 100% profit (ie no costs associated with it), that is still only about 1/5th of their total net income. The iPhone would need to have profit rates of less than 10% to get its net profit to be about equal to this. That doesn't sound like "they make the bulk of their iPhone related money on the iTunes store commissions".

Apple is making some pretty big bucks in their content sales businesses, but they still seem to be making the lion's share of their money in the hardware sales business.

Re:So much for returns.

[LordKronos]

They did - Samsung will open a new factory in Texas for producing the A? CPUs. Too bad that they will be shipped to China for final assembly as there are no suitable factories in US :)

Yep. As far as I know, there isn't a single US factory that houses 8000 "workers" on-site, ready to wake up in the middle of the night without warning and work a 12 hour shift with a biscuit and tea as their reward.

Oh, or did you mean that none of the factories are suitable because they all lack the necessary suicide nets?

Money not necessarily 'wasted'

[DickBreath]

A patent troll might consider that money a wise investment, even if it results in a court loss. It still creates Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).

Also, going to court is always a risk. There is some chance that no matter how ridiculous its claims, Apple might win on some minor points, or even some major ones.

Consider this: Apple's Dutch Galaxy Tab ban shot down by The Hague

From that article:

After presiding over wrangles regarding the exact appearance of the two tablets and a thorough discussion of features such as dotted lines, screen icons and thickness of the device, the Dutch judge concluded that the Samsung Tablet gave a different overall impression to Apple's iPad.

Yes folks. Money spent to argue over dotted lines and thickness of the device.

Yes. Thickness of the device. A reasonable design goal to anyone.

That's like arguing infringement of a sports car design based on "goes fast".

Re:Money not necessarily 'wasted'

[Skarecrow77]

at least they looked at the devices. If I recall, Germany provided an initial injunction based on a heavily photoshopped picture, provided by apple, showing the ipad vs galaxy tab that had the tab's dimensions grossly distorted and a non-standard home screen manipulated to appear as close to the ipad as possible.

The car equivilent wouldn't be "goes fast" it would be ferrari showing a simple photo of an F40 next to a lamborghini where the lambo's body has been completely removed and replaced with an F40 look-alike, painted with a ferrari factory color, and had ferrari-esque badges slapped on... except the whole lambo conversion was done by ferrari themselves in order to misrepresent the true appearance of the original car.

Re:Money not necessarily 'wasted'

[Skarecrow77]

Not Trolling. Not FUD.

Yes, it was idiotic, but it did happen.

http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Apple+Caught+Photoshopping+Galaxy+Tab+101+to+Look+Like+iPad+for+Lawsuit/article22459.htm

http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/apple/apple-could-have-given-faulty-evidence-in-euro-samsung-case/

http://pauloflaherty.com/2011/08/16/was-apple-caught-fudging-the-facts/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/15/did-apple-alter-photos-of-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1-in-its-inj/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/apples-evidence-in-european-galaxy-tab-injunction-was-seriously-misleading-as-in-false/

do you need more?

Re:Money not necessarily 'wasted'

[PaladinAlpha]

And where are the explicit measurements and the notification that the image was modified? I have the document right here and will be happy to corroborate.

Of course, I've already read the whole thing, and near as I can tell you're lying through your teeth. There was neither. Also, the image had it's aspect ratio changed, Samsung's label obscured, the front-facing camera obscured, and the software display comprehensively modified from default. It was the only image to show the two devices directly from the front; all other images were at odd angles. It was, in a word, completely dishonest.

Keep fooling yourself, though. Support that company that sues based on decades-old design ideas. Demand that there be no competition to a company that allows only one combination of hardware and software. I almost wish it would succeed, just so you could see the dark ages it would create.

Re:Money not necessarily 'wasted'

[Theaetetus]

And where are the explicit measurements and the notification that the image was modified? I have the document right here and will be happy to corroborate.

Page 29.

Of course, I've already read the whole thing,

Apparently not page 29. Also, you read German?

and near as I can tell you're lying through your teeth.

Now, you're just being rude. Which is unconscionable for someone who has apparently never read page 29 of the document, and has also apparently "lied through his teeth" about having done so. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, you know.

There was neither.

See, e.g., page 29.

Also, the image had it's aspect ratio changed

Not really an "also" considering that I expressly noted that they changed the aspect ratio, and they mention doing so in the text.

Samsung's label obscured

There was no front label, as shown by the other photographs in the document. See, for example, pages 21 and 26. If you really have the document, that is. On the plus side, they're just photographs, so even though you can't read German, you'll be able to clearly see the lack of label.

the front-facing camera obscured

The front-facing camera is visible in the infamous side-by-side shot on page 28. It is directly to the left of the "Pulse" label under the Pulse app icon. Perhaps you're not actually looking at the document?

and the software display comprehensively modified from default.

[Citation needed].

It was the only image to show the two devices directly from the front; all other images were at odd angles.

False. See page 23 for a glorious full-frontal photo of the Galaxy Tab 10.1

It was, in a word, completely dishonest.

Based on the fact that everything you've claimed didn't exist does exist in the document on the above-noted page numbers, there's someone here being dishonest... but it sure isn't either me or Apple.

Keep fooling yourself, though. Support that company that sues based on decades-old design ideas. Demand that there be no competition to a company that allows only one combination of hardware and software. I almost wish it would succeed, just so you could see the dark ages it would create.

Perhaps you'd like to try again? Your rant will be so much more credible if you weren't wrong about literally everything else in your post.

Re:Money not necessarily 'wasted'

[PaladinAlpha]

Oh boy, I love quote games. Here's you circa not too long ago, before I joined this discussion:

but was marked as being modified and the accompanying text explained how it was modified.

So where was the image marked at? Where was the explanation?

Here, let me quote it again:

but was marked as being modified and the accompanying text explained how it was modified.

So where exactly was that? Hmm?

Oh, and blah blah...Obviously the translation is not fully accurate -- I've got better things to do than transcribe documents when I can copy-paste. The rest is just you trying to smokescreen. Apple forging images in a legal document is indefensible. You having your fingers in your ears won't change that. It must be frustrating to not be able to change reality just by not liking it.

Thermonuclear War...

[787style]

"I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong" - Steve Jobs

$100 million down, $39.9 billion to go.

Re:Thermonuclear War...

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve was never one to let the facts get in the way of his view of the universe.

True Evil - Apple

[Spiked_Three]

This article caught me at a good (or bad depending on how you look at it) time. I am so sick of Apple fanatics and how they are willing destroying the personal computer industry. They hold their limp wrists high (no intent to offend gays, but it is such a fitting description) in celebration of their superior operating system, with no clue as to how they are being brainwashed into supporting abandonment of all personal rights.

I gave in a year ago after a stroke and bought an iPad. I loved it, supported it for a year. Then one day Apple decided I was a security risk. Now whenever I turn on my iPad it says it has been 'locked for security reasons'. There is no way to get anything resembling technical support since I didn't choose to pay their extortion, err, support plan. The web has no help. And I'm stuck with a $599 soft drink coaster, and not a very good one at that..

Now, has anyone read about their plot to hold the education system at gunpoint? Give away authoring tools, promise the world, and hahahaha, only sell through Apple, requiring all schools to buy iPads for every student, every time Apple needs a cash influx and upgrades the iPad. That borders on illegal criminal scheming, and due the stupid nature of our government, will probably work..

Fuck Apple, please let them burn in hell.

Grandstanding for future settlements

[Lugor]

What the articles don't point out is this could be all grandstanding and positioning by all parties in a future patent settlement. Current patent laws and process allows too much overlap; they all virtually infringe on each others patent. They will all have to settle at some point, so look at the $100 million not as court costs but investment in future patent royalties or down-payment on future royalty payout.

Re:Numbers

[nomadic]

That's not how it works; you pay a little down to put a lawyer on retainer so when you have to litigate they are available and ready to start right away. Once they start litigating they'll bill you for the time worked and that will typically dwarf the original retainer by several orders of magnitude.

Apple *is* helping American industry

[PolygamousRanchKid]

So, they don't manufacture iStuff thingies in the US. But look how they are helping to build up the strategic American lawsuit industry! The US will be the world's leader and #1 in the lawsuit business!

No need to invade Third World countries any more . . . sue the pants of them!

Re:Fear of Apple

[Terrasque]

It seems everyone's forgotten how different things were before the iPhone. All this "obvious" shit wasn't obvious at all back then, and it was only a few years ago.

Well, you got LG Prada (came out before iPhone, had virtual touch buttons), Samsung F700 (slightly after iPhone), and then you of course got IBM Simon... Launched in 1993, had touch screen controls, a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, and games. And it had less physical buttons than the iPhone.

So... I'd say that all that obvious shit was pretty obvious back then, but the hardware was lacking a bit. Being the first in a race doesn't mean you invented running :)

Why do we make this even possible?

[laughingcoyote]

Doesn't this show one more reason we need to get rid of software patents?

There are a limited number of ways to make a usable smartphone interface, especially when competing with an already-established method. Of course they're going to be similar. There are a limited number of ways to make a handheld device that comfortably fits in the hand and pocket. Of course they're going to look similar.

Didn't we used to require "non-obviousness" as a requirement for a patent? Aren't these things obvious?

Re:So for $100m

[teg]

Could they have just manufactured the iPhone in the USA?

Is that crazy?

1. No. The cost difference is much, much higher. 65 USD/phone has been mentioned - about 2.5 billion USD just last quarter.
2. More importantly, the skills needed don't exist and you have a manufacturing ecosystem in the area - almost all the things in the iPhone are made there too, making logistics[1] much easier. Also, using iSlaves adds tremendous flexibility
3. Apple transformed the mobile market with the iPhone - just look at phones before and after. Protecting as much as possible of this - while taking advantage of other transformations being available RAND - is what they want. The lawsuits is about stopping companies copying Apple, not about getting a share like Microsoft is happy doing.

[1] Logistics is where Apple really makes their money. Few products, little shelf time, no inventory. The actual product is a premium product at a premium price, true - but that costs in build quality and support as well. By keeping few product lines, reusing the same components and being the masters of supply chain management their profits go from "OK" to "incredible". Just witness how much trouble others have in matching the iPad price.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Seriously

[Trogre]

Can the rest of you now please stop giving these clowns money to further abuse our legal system?

Re:Fear of Apple

[psiclops]

as per my reply to your comment somewhere else, the LG Prada's design was unveiled 4 months before the first iPhone was unveiled.