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Apple Launches New Legal Attack On Samsung

Posted by samzenpus on from the history-repeating dept.

walterbyrd writes "Apple Inc has asked a federal court in California to block Samsung Electronics Co Ltd from selling its new Galaxy Nexus smartphones, alleging patent violations. In a suit filed last week in San Jose, Apple said the Galaxy Nexus infringes on patents underlying features customers expect from its products. Those include the ability to unlock phones by sliding an image and to search for information by voice."

17 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. Voice Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ....has been on Android long before it was on iOS. I guess we know Apple is going to use their warchest to be anti-competitive.

    Yay software patents.

    No slide to unlock? Perhaps we should make a "place genitals here" unlock mechanism. At least that may not be patented yet.

  2. Facepalm by __aajfby9338 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like my Apple products, but this endless pissing match between them and Samsung doesn't endear them to me.

    1. Re:Facepalm by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No. The alternative is that they win the market BY BUILDING A BETTER PRODUCT.

      You're the perfect example of what's wrong with the current state of corrupt corporate culture. Actually competing on merit is something that isn't even considered.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Facepalm by realityimpaired · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The alternative is that they and similar companies silently cooperate with each other with practices like price fixing, cross licensing of patents and behaviour befitting a cartel.

      Cross-licensing of patents is actually a good thing, and something everybody in the cell phone market (except Qualcomm) was already doing for decades before Apple decided to enter the market. Price fixing, bad. But using ridiculous patents like "sliding an image to unlock the screen" is worse. They want to drive the competition out of business, and when they realized that they can't do that on the actual merit of their product, they have decided to resort to litigation. When they finally do establish the monopoly they seem to want, gods help us all.

      The amusing part of it is that Samsung has a very large number of patents they can bring to bear against Apple, if they really wanted to go for a full on trade war. Samsung is trying to cooperate with them, but when they finally do realize what Apple's game is... how long do you suppose Apple could last if Samsung and LG decided to stop selling them LCD's? For anything, including their desktop and laptop computers. You do realize there's only two companies producing anything approaching a significant number of LCD panels in the world today, and that everybody else is just reselling either a Samsung or an LG panel?

    3. Re:Facepalm by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're the perfect example of what's wrong with the current state of corrupt corporate culture. Actually competing on merit is something that isn't even considered.

      More to the point, I don't think it's even possible.

      Between all of the players, damned near everything is patented. And anybody who owns a patent (no matter how absurd) wants everyone else to pay them crazy licensing fees (Microsoft gets paid something like $5 for every Android device), and sues to keep you out of the market if you don't.

      Sadly, it seems like innovation has taken a back seat to lawyers, and it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of getting better.

      If you designed a better product, unless you were already a company with deep pockets, there's simply no way you could bring it to market.

      I blame the patent system more than I do the players -- it's been set up in such a way as to encourage lawsuits more than creating actual products. And, since we're talking about markets in the billions, I doubt companies can afford to purely compete on the merit of their products.

      Since the USPTO has now changed it to "first to file" instead of considering prior art, it's only going to make this worse. Pretty much every company is going to have to try to patent the most trivial ideas in order to give themselves something to fight back with. Because they no longer care if you've taken someone else's idea ... only that you filed first.

      If patents are still filling their role of fostering innovation, it's sure as hell hard to see it.

      --
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  3. Searching by voice? by nitsew · · Score: 5, Funny

    That has been going on since the advent of language. Walk into a crowded room... "HAS ANYONE SEEN MY KEYS?!?"

    Nothing new... :)

  4. More to follow? by jamesl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This will become interesting only when Apple files suit against Microsoft (one if Apple's largest shareholders) for searching for information by voice -- a long time feature of Windows phones.

    1. Re:More to follow? by andydread · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Android OEMs are an easy target due to Google's lack of indemnification and apparently lax attitude towards patent issues, but I suspect Microsoft would already be in the clear with licensing even if there were valid patent issues there.

      Lax attitude towards patents? SOFTWARE SHOULD NOT BE PATENTED. Google just happens to be on the right side of that issue. Software is authored works and hence should be protected by copyright which it already is. Just like books and movies and music. So do you have a lax attitude towards the patenting of book story concepts? Or are you in favor or patenting the concept of a love story or wars in space or whatever. Lets just say the concept of wars in space was patented so no one could write a book about wars in space regardless of the content. Would you be lax about those patents? or would you support and cheer for them? Do you write software? would you like your code to become subject to trivial patents that claim wholesale ownership of your code?

  5. Apple, please just help stop the Patent Insanity by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the end, this only benefits lawyers and kills future innovation.

    I don't see how Apple is benefitting long-term from this mentality and cultural mindset. It's a shortterm win at best and then a death by a thousand cuts as any of it's own innovations will be dealt with the same way by other companies.

    I don't particularly blame Apple for this, but they certainly could afford a few lobbyists to turn this crap system around.

  6. BS by Murdoch5 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple should of never been allowed to get that patient! I would say the ability to unlock a phone through touch motion is active public domain knowledge and should fall outside the requirement for filing a patient. I think it's time for some major change in the US patient office. Technically Apple can now block EVERY single touch screen phone on the market and being developed. They have been allowed to secure a monopoly in a growing field, how on earth it that fair? Whats next is Apple going to patient toilet paper and go to court with everyone who goes to the bathroom?

  7. Re:Yawn. by Moheeheeko · · Score: 5, Funny
    You havent seen anything yet

    Wait till Apple finds out that Samsung phones "allow people to communicate via text and voice"

  8. Ars puts the story in some more context... by IrrepressibleMonkey · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/apple-launching-sidelong-attacks-against-google-with-new-lawsuits-in-us.ars

    Including a breakdown on FOSS Patents blog:

    http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/02/apple-requests-us-preliminary.html

  9. Didn't ork in the Netherlands, let's try CA? by icebraining · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Slide-to-unlock patent in question: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7657849.PN.&OS=PN/7657849&RS=PN/7657849

    It's important to mention that a Dutch court where Apple tried to claim infrigement on the same patent has already ruled it as invalid, after Samsung presented the Neonode N1m as prior art.

    --
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  10. Re:They can't stop the insanity by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most of the property they're "defending" is not really theirs.

  11. Blame Apple 100% by walterbyrd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please do not blame Samsung, that is just not fair. If a guy gets mugged in an ally, and tries to fight back, do you blame the victim or the mugger? Apple is the mugger.

  12. Re:hmmm by Trent+Hawkins · · Score: 5, Funny

    I believe that patent is held by Professor Scott from Edinburgh.

  13. Re:hmmm by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no excuse for issuing patents that are not properly vetted. If you don't have the resources to properly vet patents, stop issuing patents.

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