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Apple Must Publicly Post That Samsung Did Not Copy iPad
microcars writes "A judge in the U.K. has ordered Apple to post a notice on its website and in British newspapers alerting people to a ruling that Samsung Electronics Co. didn't copy designs for the iPad. This is the same Judge who ruled earlier that Samsung's Galaxy Tab was not as cool as Apple's iPad."
The punch line is in TFA (emphasis added):
Birss said in his July 9 ruling that Samsung’s tablets were unlikely to be confused with the iPad because they are “not as cool.” He declined today to grant Samsung’s bid for an injunction blocking Apple from making public statements that the Galaxy infringed its design rights.
“They are entitled to their opinion,” he said.
It looks like they have to run the ads, but they can still say Samsung copied them.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Have you even looked at the patent in question? Here it is in all its rounded corner glory. They patented rounded freaking corners. If you want to get specific, 4 rounded corners on a rectangle. Like the world has never seen that before.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
How does "loser pays" work when a little guy goes after a big company like Apple, Google, or Microsoft with a legitimate complaint
You are saying that $BIG_COMPANY can afford to hire $BIG_LAW_FIRM_A (or else has its own lawyers that are effectively its own big law firm). $LITTLE_GUY has no chance.
But under "loser pays", $BIG_LAW_FIRM_B can take the case; since you stipulated that it is a legitimate complaint, odds are good that $BIG_LAW_FIRM_B will be paid by the loser ($BIG_COMPANY). $BIG_LAW_FIRM_B is not guaranteed to be paid but the odds are good, since they are as big as $BIG_LAW_FIRM_A and the complaint is legitimate. Contrast to the current situation in America, where $LITTLE_GUY cannot afford to pay any big law firm, so if any big law firm agrees to take his case, they are doing it knowing they won't get paid very much.
So, you have brought up one of the major reasons why "loser pays" is better: the defense can automatically scale if needed to match the offense.
The other major reason why "loser pays" is better: filing lawsuits without merit now actually costs money. Maybe $BIG_COMPANY doesn't even file the lawsuit against $LITTLE_GUY in the first place, which is an even better situation for $LITTLE_GUY than having a big law firm handling his defense.
There, that's two ways that "loser pays" helps in the situation you describe.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely