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U.S. Judge Grants Apple Injunction Against Samsung Galaxy Tab
Bill Dimm writes "Apple scores a win against Samsung over a design patent. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a ruling granting Apple's request for a preliminary injunction preventing Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States. She wrote, 'Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly by flooding the market with infringing products. ... While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung’s infringing products outweighs Samsung’s harm in light of the previous findings by the Court."
Not a patent case?
On December 2, 2011, this Court issued an order denying Apple’s motion for a preliminaryinjunction. Apple sought an injunction based on Samsung’s alleged infringement of Apple’sDesign Patent Nos. D618,677 (“the D’677 Patent”), D593,087 (“the D’087 Patent”), D504,889(“the D’889 Patent”), and based on Samsung’s alleged infringement of Apple’s U.S. Patent No.7,469,381 (“the ’381 Patent”).
Certainly sounds like a patent case to me.
This is just more evidence of how the system is broken. I can see the difference between an iPad and Tab. It's fucking ridiculous to own "rounded edges" and bullshit like that.
It's so completely obvious that you would want a tablet shaped like that, and to be thin.
You asked for an example of where a company was not "lazily" duplicating designs. Well, I would argue that is not duplicating something tremendously fucking obvious.
That's like somebody being able to say with a straight face that is non obvious to make paper, that you want to write, on, "like all flat and shit".
Yes, your honor. We feel we should be protected and be the only ones to have flat paper. Thank you.
It's not really a patent. Much closer to a trademark. Design patents are what stops all the other drink companies from selling cola in those distinctive Coke bottles. Doesn't mean that Coke has a patent on glass bottles, or on bottles with rounded bits, although I'm sure variations of both those are part of the design patent. They have a specific design that is protected.
Apple does not have a patent (or even claim to have a patent) on rounded corners. They have a design patent on a specific design that happens to include rounded corners.
R'd the F.A. I don't see anywhere it says that a design patent is not a patent.
OTOH, there is USPTO which disagrees with you when they say:
"A patent is an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.
There are three types of patents. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. ... Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture. Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant."
Note the three types: design, utility, and plant. Design is most assuredly a type of patent.
Apple already spent 10 years suing Microsoft over "look-and-feel". Now they're IP butt-buddies and share patents and other bodily fluids.
Seems the Apple reality distortion field didn't die with Jobs. What really happened is that the lawyers the judge was questioning said he couldn't tell them apart, but when the judge asked if the others could, another quickly supplied the correct answer. In other words, they could tell the difference.
But of course what really happened is rather inconvenient for Apple fans' theory that the Galaxy Tab's design must be a ripoff of the iPad, instead of taking its design cues from another Samsung product. So that last sentence gets cut out from their retelling of the story, thus creating an alternate reality which better fits their predetermined view.
As for the lawyer who couldn't tell them apart, she's in her mid 50s, so probably doesn't have the best eyesight.
Ask your self this: Why did Apple's lawyers have to photoshop the picture of the Samsung tablet so they could hold it up in court as 'evidence' of infringement.
Also, if you see the registered design it's about as vague as you can get. Nowhere does it specify the roundness of the corners, the bezel, the aspect ratio, etc. It's just a very rough pencil sketch.
Here ya go: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61944044/Community-Design-000181607-0001
Look at that then look at a picture of an iPad. Check the bezels, etc., they're not even the same as the original 'design'. The actual iPad is probably as far from that sketch as the Samsung is.
No sig today...
Worse, the iPad isn't even the same as the original registered design.
Here's the design: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61944044/Community-Design-000181607-0001
Here's an iPad: http://www.tablettweet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/dimensions_20100127.jpg
The roundness of the corners, the width of the bezels, the thickness of the pad...all completely different.
Apple is arguing over exactly this sort of detail but they don't even follow it themselves. The Samsung is at least as different from the registered design as the iPad is.
No sig today...
Taking a quick look at this makes me realise just how insanely similar they are, and just how much apple has a point.
...apart from the way they're being carefully held so they look like they're the same size and aspect ratio and the Samsung logo appears to have been photoshopped out and the border seems to have changed color from black to silver, then, yes, they're quite similar.
A more accurate photo might show them like this
No sig today...
That's not a galaxy tab 10.1, it's the smaller cousin... Which is why it looks less similar.
Ok, here's the Galaxy 10.1 shown with Samsung logo and true aspect ratio: http://www.techdigest.tv/2011/08/did_apple_fake.html
No sig today...
1993 Apple early tablet
2006 Samsung digital photo frame
2010 Apple iPad
2006 Samsung digital photo frame viewed from other angles.
Well, there is Windows Phone 7 and the Nokia Lumia. And while I don't personally care for either, their approach is fairly fresh and distinctive and, unlike the galaxy, does not slavishly imitate the iPhone.
Oh wait. Apple's not suing Microsoft and Nokia over WP7 and the Lumia, are they?
Apple's patents on the look and overall design of their iPad are basically null and void. There's prior art galore and they're just imitating what scifi tv and movies have been using for decades before the first idea about an iPad lit up the empty space between the ears of the Apple designer that 'invented' it.
I'm not sure you know what design patents are. Never mind, eh?
They're not the same as a patent on a widget that has never been seen before, such as the patents that go into the 3G standard, or the patent on the original triple expansion engine. Design patents have a more general focus and are not necessarily invalidated by previous designs - in actual fact, they exist among other design patents that are very similar.
Consider Chevrolet's Corvette. They have a design patent on the design of the car. If you made a visual copy of the Corvette without their permission they could sue you. Nothing about the Corvette is "innovative" or invalidated by prior art - the car is a mature and well understood product with thousands of variations, but even so, the law protects Chevy if you try to sell a knock-off Corvette.
Apple's design patents on the iPad are not invalidated by the prior existence of tablets, and there are many, many other tablets before and since that are not the subject of lawsuits. What you can't do is make a copy of the iPad (within certain limits - that's what the lawsuit is for) without being sued. This goes right through the product line, from the way it looks to the way it is packaged (the "trade dress", which Samsung also copied uncannily). It is not just about having rounded corners, or the fact that Patrick Stewart used a prop version of a tablet on the TNG set in 1995 means no one can file design patents.
The Corvette is still covered by design patents even though there's plenty of prior art to "invalidate" the "non-innovation" that went into making what is a very common product - a sports car.
Now, if there's a unique innovation on that car (and I picked a bad example - I think the Vette still has a live axle, so even the Amish consider it obsolete technology), but let's say they innovate a new form of suspension. They *can* patent that if no one has done it before, beyond a simple design patent, and sue people who use that patented technology in another car, even if it looks nothing like the Corvette.
TL:DR; there's a difference between a design patent and a method/hardware patent.
But looking at their history its obvious that if it wasn't for Apple, they likely wouldn't have changed the designs of their tablets which, prior to the iPad 2010 release, were completely different:
Blah blah blah blah. You're completely avoiding the point. Just because Samsung changed their designed (I don't know if that's true, since I didn't bother to read the non-sequiteur links you posted) doesn't make the iPad an innovative shape.
Go read the iPad patent.
They even cite the TC1100 as prior art. How on earth can the iPad be patentable with the TC1100 having existed.
It is a rectangular slab with rounded corners. It has 3 buttons on the front instead of 1 and was the thinnest and had the smallest bezel that was actually practical to make when it came out. Oh and it's grey.
So, the iPad is thinner (due to a bunch of innovations I would note that people other than Apple have petented to do with TFT, backlight battery and fabrication design), a differrent colour and slightly more featureless.
So, where's the innovation?
You don't understand what a design patent is, do you?
We'll wait while you go and find out, and why previous patents can be cited in the new filing. You might then understand why the iPad is patentable, in the same way that a Ford Mustang is patentable, even though it was not the first car.