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German Appeals Court Confirms Galaxy Tab 10.1 Ban
New submitter Killer Panda sends word that a German Appeals Court has upheld the injunction prohibiting sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. Apple convinced lower courts to issue and uphold the injunction last year by making the case that Samsung's devices "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad. "Samsung, which is Apple's supplier as well as a competitor, has been trying to have the German decision overturned while also seeking other means to fight Apple. It redesigned the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for the German market only and named it Galaxy Tab 10.1N to get around the sales ban. Apple challenged the reworked version but a German court last month rejected Apple's claims in a preliminary judgment." The European Union announced some more bad news for Samsung: they'll be investigating the company to see whether its use of patent lawsuits is illegally hindering other companies' use of standardized 3G technology. "Under EU patent rules, a company that holds patents for standardized products is required to license them out indiscriminately at a fair price."
Granted, I only read TFS, but to my defense, I got so disgusted that all energy left my body in an instant.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Why is it that the most popular girl at the dance is usually the biggest douchebag?
I've seen this behaviour time and again, if it's pretty or popular, it's easier to let all manner of misdeeds slide.
Apple begins a very anti-competitive, design infringement lawsuit against everyone. Samsung fights back to try and protect it's market share. Samsung gets investigated for anti-competitive behaviour.
Popular kid abuses geek, geek fights back, geek gets sent to the principals office. WTF!?
I expected (not accepted) this sort of blatant ignorance then, but when it comes to an entire governing body (excuse my ignorance of EU policy) this sort of nonsense should not be tolerated.
Isn't there some manner of oversight for something like this.
If my son were to insult another student repeatedly, without offending the teacher, that later resulted in said student having a violent outburst, not only would my son be brought up on bullying charges (legit in my state), but so would the teacher for ignoring the bullying.
But corporations are fully allowed to do this without repercussion.
That upsets me.
Shame on them.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
I thought the EU was moving away from copyright trolls ruining everything through the court system? Seriously, this is a big step in the wrong direction!
This has nothing to do with copyright. On the Apple hand, it's a design patent infringement suit. On the Samsung hand, it's an antitrust violation investigation.
Under EU patent rules, a company that hold patents for standardized products are required to license them out indiscriminately at a fair price.
but the problem with Apple is, they think they are special and want to pay less as all the other companies, as Samsung is having them pay exactly the same as the rest..
Galaxy Tab 10.1 is slimmer, lighter, has a higher res camera, a better screen and longer battery life than IPad 2. Oh, its also cheaper, and unlike iPad 2, can be bought "as is", without being tied to a mandatory 12/24 month dataplan, as is the case with iPad 2 where I live. I don't think Galaxy Tab is a shameless copy of iPad 2. I think that it is a significantly BETTER product that happens to look somewhat similar to iPad 2 (then again, all tablet computers look a lot like each other). Apple is suing because Samsung has produced a superior Tablet Computer. And some crappy court in Germany has decided to uphold this stupid claim. Galaxy Tab is the better tablet of the two, and Apple - being its typical agressive, domineering self - is suing to keep Korean Samsung's superior product out of people's hands, so they have have to go and buy an iPad 2 instead.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Ok, it's a "design patent" on the same level as all the copyright stuff. I can't edit my post, or I'd change it to read "frivolous/bullshit/patenting blatantly obvious stuff that shouldn't be patentable". In any case, I thought the EU was trending away from this crap.
On the one hand, Samsung is getting nailed because they are using pretty standard tablet/smartphone user interfaces that Apple claims ownership of.
On the other hand, they're in trouble because they're not allowed to claim whole and full ownership of certain standard 3G technologies.
Check your premises.
The 10.1 is banned while the 10.1N is allowed.
http://www.mobile88.com/gen/news/articles/2011/11/21/_11212011125638.jpg
Talk about marginal court decisions. If you put a protective case on it, no one could tell the difference. Lawyers for the win!
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rather, it seems like Apple is claiming ownership the entire concept of a tablet.
Check your premises.
Tablet nothing, they invented the rectangular computing device. No computing device from here on may be rectangular in shape for that shape is owned by Apple.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
A few days ago, I was in Best Buy looking for a new external hard drive. While I was trying to get over the insane price markups, a very svelte-looking laptop caught the corner of my eye. It was one of Samsung's newest models, and it was beautiful. Maybe a little too beautiful, as it reminded me up, down and center of the MacBook Pro it was obviously trying to compete with.
Anyone that has good working vision can see that Samsung, more or less, copies Apple's designs wholesale. They might not be complete replicas of their products, but the "nods" they include in their designs are pretty obvious. Not a bad thing when you consider the technological advancements they provide with their clone-killers, but not surprising when Apple throws down the legal gauntlet as a response.
Except that Apple chose to ignore licensing the 3G F/RAND patents for the first several years of the existence of the iPhone, and is now complaining to the courts that they should just be able to pay the same fees that everyone else gets.
So, if this plays out in Apple's favor, the logical end result is that it's the wiser thing for everybody to NEVER license F/RAND patents; worst case for them is that years down the road they might get sued and have to pay the same thing they would have paid anyway, best case is that nobody notices/bothers to take them to court and they get away with it without paying anything.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Apple was fully prepared to pay FRAND licensing. Samsung was being the douchebag by trying to essentially extort a cross licensing agreement with Apple to use patents covered under FRAND. Apple rightfully refused to bend over. Samsung had ZERO right to change the rules. Apple let the case run its course through the court system until it was agreed that Samsung was in the wrong for pulling such a stunt.
So don't try to spin this story in a way that makes it sound like Apple was trying to purposely avoid paying FRAND. They were fully prepared to pay since day one. Samsung was just being a whiny little bitch that thought it could get ahead by extortion.
Except that Apple chose to ignore licensing the 3G F/RAND patents for the first several years of the existence of the iPhone, and is now complaining to the courts that they should just be able to pay the same fees that everyone else gets.
Sort of... but not really. Almost none of the big players pay standard F/RAND patent fees. In almost all cases Samsung (or other holders of equivalent licenses) cuts a side deal where in exchange for the fees being waived or lowered Samsung gets to cross-license other patents. Nokia and Motorola do similar things with standards based on their patents. This is business as usual.
So it was a hell of shock when Apple came to market with a completely new product without having ever approached the license holders to set up this sort of agreement. It was just assumed that any company would prefer to do a licensing agreement than pay the standard fees. It had never even crossed their minds that Apple would (or could) just pay the fees up front instead. It's one of the reasons you hear people talking about Apple bringing the iPhone to market before they had negotiated the licenses. Apple didn't need to negotiate anything because standard F/RAND licenses are automatic, the same way you don't need to negotiate before accepting the GPL license on a piece of software. It's just that everyone does negotiate for a better deal in exchange for concessions. Apple didn't ignore the F/RAND licensing, they ignored Samsung's attempts to refuse payment and cut an alternate deal.
And Sumsung doesn't want the license fee. They would much rather have Apple's patent and IP concessions. So they are in the position of trying to force Apple not to accept the publicly available license terms. That's why they are getting their knuckles rapped by the courts here. No different than if a company that released their code under the GPL and then started trying to sue companies who were using it according to the license. Doesn't matter what the other company might have done to provoke them, it's still not going to fly in front of a judge.
Except they did pay Xerox, and even hired some of the engineers who led the way on PARC's GUI initiatives. Don't reinvent history.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Design patents are hard to enforce. Really, really hard. One of the reasons you don't hear about them much is that they are damn near impossible to violate, except intentionally, and even harder to get a court ruling on. It's one of those things where if the judge doesn't laugh it out of the room int he first five minutes there is probably a good case. This case has been going on for months. At this point I think the better assumption is that the judge has been able to see more evidence and arguments than can be summed up even a dozen Slashdot articles, and he doesn't think it's a waste of his time.
I was under the impression that Apple did not wanted to only pay the licensing from "here-on-out" and get away with not paying any fees for the past sales, whereas everyone else either has paid or had a licensing agreement since the beginning. Samsung wanted to use the back-pay as a leverage point to negotiate a cross-licensing agreement, which I do believe is perfectly legal. It is my understanding that if Apple were willing to pay the normal licensing fee for all sales current and old that there would be no issue and Samsung would agree to the deal, however Apple doesn't want to pay the fees for prior sales. This has been my impression from following the cases at least.
Rather, it seems like Apple is claiming ownership the entire concept of a tablet.
Yes, you can tell how they're going after the entire concept of a tablet by the 25 specific aspects of Samsung's tablet they took issue with.
You really shouldn't develop your opinions by the headlines that fly past on a site that generates revenue from fan wars.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
What is a tablet supposed to look like? A tire iron? I can easilly tell the difference between a galaxy, and an ipad, with my eyes closed.
Furthermore, Apple did not "invent" rectangles, icons, or rounded corners.
Except they didn't, they had some unrelated financial dealings that people love to interpret as paying.
Apple offered to pay FRAND licensing for only some of Samsung's patents, and only covering devices sold in the Netherlands where the case was being heard. That doesn't sound like fully prepared to me. And having made a cross licensing deal with Nokia a few months before, as well as paying Nokia a premium for access to their FRAND patents, who is being the douchebag now by refusing to do the same deal with other phone manufacturers? Cross licensing is what keeps technology moving forward. Taking your toys and going home is good for nobody in the long run.