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Samsung Sues Aussie Patent Office In Apple Suit, Apple Sues Back
schliz writes "Samsung has sued the Australian patent commissioner — and by extension the Australian Government — in an attempt to force a review of patents key to its global battle with smartphone rival Apple. The Korean manufacturer claims that the commissioner should not have been able to grant four patents used by Apple in its case against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1. The Government solicitor will face Samsung in court on June 25." Not to be outdone, niftydude points out that Apple has filed a motion in a California court to prevent Samsung selling its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S III in the US.
Apple claimed that the new phone, which is yet to go on sale in the US but went on sale in Australia last week, could cause it "irreparable harm," citing press reports that mobile companies had already sold more than nine million units in pre-orders.
Hardly surprising that Apple is worried, according to the Telegraph the Samsung Galaxy S3 has now overtaken the iPhone 4S as the UK's most popular phone.
Apple is the aggressor here. They started the war, they are the ones trying to get Samsung products banned from sale. Samsung mostly tries to defend itself by getting patents invalidated, with occasional and IMHO misguided attempts at having Apple products banned in retaliation.
There need to be severe consequences for failed patent litigation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I've been a pragmatically happy iPod owner, but one of the reasons I bought an Android phone was Apples behavior wrt patent lawsuits. If they want to continue to shoot their own foot, so be it.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Yes, because we didn't have rectangular stuff with round corners before Apple. But talking about copying stuff, when did iOS get notification bar? Or multitask? Dictating and voice commands? Shall I continue on? Get over it, Apple copies as much as the next. The question is what is and it's not patentable (and I won't even go to the argument if Apple has the right to announce existing tech as new tech when launching "new" stuff or not).
Compare the iPhone 1.0 to the LG Prada phone. Apple was not the first capacitive touch phone. It came up with a similar design to the LG Prada. It's convergent evolution - once they realized that capacitive screens are better (because no-one wants to mess around with a stylus) then a few common solutions (big screen, no buttons, big icons, smooth dragging) cropped up. Apple just did it a bit better.
Apple fans love that version of events but it just isn't so. The Blackberry-esque device was only one prototype. There were fully touch enabled prototypes being tested in the same time frame:
http://www.osnews.com/story/25264/Did_Android_Really_Look_Like_BlackBerry_Before_the_iPhone_