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Apple Wins EU Ban of Smaller Samsung Tablet, Demands $2.5 Billion In Damages

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

walterbyrd writes with news that Apple has won a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 across the European Union, thanks to a decision in a German regional court today. At the same time, the court re-affirmed the denial of an injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a version of Samsung's 10.1" tablet that was modified to avoid infringing upon the same patents Apple had asserted earlier. The two companies are still fighting on the other side of the Atlantic as well. In a filing today in a San Diego, California court, Apple is claiming $2.5 billion in damages. "Samsung's infringing sales have enabled Samsung to overtake Apple as the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world. Samsung has reaped billions of dollars in profits and caused Apple to lose hundreds of millions of dollars through its violation of Apple's intellectual property." Samsung, of course, thinks it should owe much less — $0.0049 per unit per patent — if anything.

36 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. Why foss patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The story links almost entirely to FOSS Patents, which is the Microsoft-paid Florian Schillers website. Did no one else report this story ?

    1. Re:Why foss patents? by RanCossack · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The story links almost entirely to FOSS Patents, which is the Microsoft-paid Florian Schillers website. Did no one else report this story ?

      Seriously. This is *slashdot*. We should know better.

    2. Re:Why foss patents? by Baloroth · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ars Technica did as well, but it isn't terribly in-depth.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:Why foss patents? by kervin · · Score: 4, Funny

      Because Florian is one of the best and most prolific law bloggers on the web today. I read his site just about every day and I haven't seen a pro Microsoft slant as yet.

    4. Re:Why foss patents? by CowTipperGore · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because Florian is one of the best and most prolific law bloggers on the web today.

      Florian is not a lawyer, not a patent expert, and not a good law blogger. He is a paid shill and prolific blogger. I avoid his site these days but I've read a lot of his stuff over the past few years and it is generally trash. During the Google v. Oracle case, he routinely misrepresented what was said by the judge, the attorneys, and the witnesses. His analysis was obviously shoddy to anyone not relying on FOSSpatents for 100% of their reporting. His predictions did not pan out. He is a shill paid by Microsoft and Oracle. He is an enemy of FOSS and a proponent of software patent abuse, exactly counter to what he claims. His background is in software marketing, not legal, and it shows.

      Anyone quoting him or linking to his blog is demonstrating their ignorance of who he is and what he represents.

    5. Re:Why foss patents? by CowTipperGore · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not everyone that disagrees with you is dishonest or bought and paid for.

      Absolutely, but Florian is. I'm sorry if you are somehow completely unaware of Florian's status as a paid shill who is terrible at his supposed job. That doesn't mean everything he says is wrong, but his well-funded bias makes him a worthless source of actual information. It is public information that he is paid by Microsoft and Oracle. It is relatively simple to read his blog for any amount of time and see that his opinions driving his analysis do not square with his claimed support of FOSS and opposition to software patents. You can review his history and see that he moved from marketing and PR to a well-placed position as an analyst and blogger in the software patent world.

  2. Hey Apple by Nyder · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Fuck Off

    Love

    Samsung

    --
    Be seeing you...
    1. Re:Hey Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, "make it not rectangular, or not flat, or not have rounded corners" as Apple's consultant said about possible ways to not infringe on Apple's design.

    2. Re:Hey Apple by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you're saying the iPad was not innovative?

      Yes. At least in the patent sense. Certainly in the design sense. If there was any innovation it was in removing the desktop user interface in favor of something that worked better on a tablet.

      Or would you seriously argue that someone skilled in the arts of electronics design wouldn't obviously have thought of something rectangular with rounded corners and a glass screen when designing a tablet?

    3. Re:Hey Apple by HexaByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I just went back into my parents box of save school papers from long ago, I was drawing rectangles with rounded corners when I was still wearing short-pant.

      I wonder how many billion I can sue Apple for for stealing my design.

      This whole "it looks too much like mine" crap has got to stop. If you make it with sharp corners, you get sued when it pokes out someone's eye. If you make it round corners, you get sued because it looks too much like Apple's.

      And how can they assume that Samsung's profits are their losses? Maybe people were just too smart to get locked into a closed system.

      --
      HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
    4. Re:Hey Apple by amRadioHed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The system is *a* problem, but it's not the only one. Not every company abuses the system the way Apple does. Google has never initiated a patent lawsuit against anyone, they have only used their patents defensively. While the patent system is plenty deserving of any criticism it gets, the companies taking advantage of it are equally to blame.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    5. Re:Hey Apple by bennomatic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      She knew one was $100 cheaper. That was all.

      --
      The CB App. What's your 20?
    6. Re:Hey Apple by bhagwad · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's enough. Price competition is a bitch.

    7. Re:Hey Apple by Lendrick · · Score: 4, Informative

      Seriously. Who would have ever thought to make a rectangualr tablet with rounded corners? It's not at all obvious, and there's certainly no prior art.

    8. Re:Hey Apple by atriusofbricia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      1) Marketing. Denying the brand loyalty Apple buyers have would be foolish. Lots of people buy the iPad not because it is the best device for their goals but because it's cool. That is a function of marketing. Building on the iPhone, and iPod's popularity (also a function of marketing) helped a lot.
      2) The technology available as short as three years prior to the iPad wouldn't have supported the device. That doesn't mean that others didn't have the ideas nor want to implement them. Without the capacitive touchscreen at a reasonable price and quality, you have no iPad. Apple's great innovation was applying the technology a bit faster than everyone else. Everything from the physical design of the device to the interface of the OS is driven by that single piece of tech.
      3) They came out about a year prior to everyone else adopting the tech. Apple must be given credit for that, but it isn't innovation. It is market strategy and market vision.

      But no, rounded corners and a simple physical design could only have been created by the geniuses of industrial design at Apple. No one else could possibly have come up with the same thing given the same available technology and design goals. Or else they did and that is why all tablets have rounded corners and few physical buttons.

      --
      I was raised on the command line, bitch

      "Nemo me impune lacesset"

    9. Re:Hey Apple by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, this is exactly where we want it to be. For the average consumer, both tablets are identical. Email, web browsing, light gaming, communications are all covered along with robust marketplaces. Sort of like Xbox360 vs PS3, both have their strengths and weaknesses, but at the end of the day its hard to find one that is universally better then the other and choosing either will provide a premium experience.

      --
      Good-bye
    10. Re:Hey Apple by Vancorps · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Everytime I see that it makes me cringe. Corporations are collections of people, people can be immoral and so can corporations. Do you believe widespread genecide to be immoral or amoral just because it's a collection of people doing it instead of an individual? The action is immoral, not the actor. An actor is believe to be immoral when the sum of his or her actions are immoral. It works the same whether it's some guy named Victor or Apple. Of course Apple is far from the only immoral actor in this business.

  3. Apple is the new Microsoft by cyberspittle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When Microsoft had a majority in the PC market they behaved just as badly. With Apple have their lead in tablets, looks like they are now the new Microsoft.

    1. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't remember Microsoft ever being quite as evil as Apple now are.

    2. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What property?

      These are a bunch of bogus patents that amount to going down to city hall and declaring it your personal mansion. At least with copyright, I can write my own kernel or my own web browser.

      A patent is not "Apple's property". It's their license to steal mine. I can't write a kernel or a web browser any more because they "own" that.

      > Is it evil to defend your intellectual property?

      If you're the British East India Company? Probably so.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by cyberspittle · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think that you are mistaken, or perhaps young. Microsoft had restrictive licensing agreements that stated you could not install other operating systems if you used MS-DOS / Windows preinstalled. This essentially killed IBMs OS/2. At the same time, other DOS vendors were pushed out. Some were even a multi-tasking version of DOS. I guess that is all history now. The main reason to the rise of Linux is that it was free. How can you compete with free? No one would want to pay extra for an operating system, such as IBM OS/2, when the computer was already installed with Microsoft MS-DOS/Windows or latter Windows 95. Consider yourself schooled.

    4. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by crazyjj · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Is it evil to defend your intellectual property?

      If your intellectual property includes stuff like "a rectangle with rounded corners" the, yes--yes it is.

      --
      What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    5. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't remember Microsoft ever being quite as evil as Apple now are.

      Loathe as I am to admit to a greater evil than Microsoft in the computing world, I must agree. Microsoft's major thing was making proprietary solutions we already had other solutions for and strong-arming everyone else out of a market via manipulation of their OS monopoly. In hindsight and in the light of Apple, there was a subtlety to Microsoft's tactics, still allowing even the illusion of competition (and some cases where they failed in their tactics and were forced to compete). You could almost be convinced that Microsoft wasn't just bludgeoning everyone else into submission by coasting in on a substandard, nonstandard OS that everyone used at the time. Almost.

      Apple, on the other hand, straight-up refuses to compete. At all. A threat in one of their markets? Sue them out of existence. A better product shows up outside of their precious pre-ordained release/marketing schedule and threatens their bottom lines? Sue them out of existence. Someone else beats them to the punch on a technology? Get really, really bitter and sue them out of existence with obscure, obvious patents. Microsoft didn't go straight to the courts when they were threatened. Sure, they came back with either substandard or trivially improved products inextricably linked to their OS, or they bought the company out and absorbed the products, but they only went to the courts when there was actually a case to be made. Apple's very clearly on a slash-and-burn strategy, hell-bent on destroying the entire industry if they have to just to avoid any competition.

      I tried a MacBook once a few years back (before Apple went apeshit). I thought it was cute, but didn't see the whole obsession angle, and my next laptop was a ThinkPad. Now I'm glad I made that choice. Shame I'll never be able to sell the MacBook, owing to Apple's not only planned, but FORCED obsolescence...

      I read once before that there was a time when IBM was the Evil Empire(tm). It was then mentioned, by someone who was there for both, that in light of Microsoft, the old-timers never knew how good they had it with IBM in charge. I guess history's repeated itself once again.

    6. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by geminidomino · · Score: 3, Informative

      with all due respect, a simple design is tough to come up with, but easy to steal. Gene Roddenberry has every right to defend the product line he surely agonized to invent and promote. now Apple and others are reaping what someone else sown

      Fixed that for you. For fuck's sake, the "flat, rounded rectangle" thing predates Apple Computer by like, a decade at least.

      (Yeah, Gene probably wasn't the first either, but I think the point is clear.)

    7. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Informative

      Try installing Windows 8 on a 2005 Thinkpad. Let me know how well it works for you.

      I have a 2005 Thinkpad running Win7 just fine. I haven't tried Win8 yet, but given that it has lower hardware requirements, I don't see a problem there.

    8. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by spidercoz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How? Simple. The PTO is staffed by incompetent nitwits.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
    9. Re:Apple is the new Microsoft by Cederic · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What would you suggest Apple do?

      Yes. Show some fucking integrity. Display some ethics. Hell, even market the shit out of their products so that hip people buy them.

      Oh, they did that one.

      Try competing on merits, not on arbitrary and bullshit legalised monopolistic predation. Try fucking innovating and being better than the competition. And no, don't even fucking pretend the Apple design patent represents innovation. Don't fucking insult me by suggesting the iPad is better than the Asus Transformer tablets.

      Shit, how about even undercutting the competition. Apple can afford it, but they're too happy leeching cash off their loyal fanbase and racking up genuinely astonishing amounts of liquid assets. Sell iPads for $250 each and watch Samsung's sales plummet.

      Could you propose an alternative to the course of action that Apple are taking?

      Hmm, looks like I proposed several. Why did Apple pick the box marked "Act like cunts"?

  4. Question to Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of all those people that bought the Galaxy Tab would had bought the iPad if the Galaxy Tab didn't have round corners? Hmm.. All of them? Your damage claim is bull shit. Stop looking at the Movie and Music industry for business tactics. You are being insane!

  5. Its getting stupid now. by spikestabber · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Samsung just needs to stop making A5 cpu's in Texas and cut a ton of American jobs, see how quick will get the government's attention on this whole patent mess.

    1. Re:Its getting stupid now. by spikestabber · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry but this crap is happening in the US as well. Apple is an American company, Samsung A5 CPU's are used in Apple devices, my comment applies.

  6. Re:Seems fair.... by jaymz666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And 7 inch tablets at that! Because it's so similar to the 7" iPad

  7. Oh Apple, Apple, Apple by sandytaru · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't use Samsung products because they borrowed Apple's intellectual property without permission. I use Samsung products because they are not Apple iOS products. If it wasn't Apple, it'd be HTC, LG, or any other provider of Android based hardware. Your suing Samsung into oblivion and killing market choice is not going to endear me to your products in the future. Frankly, I'd rather just do without. No one needs a tablet.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
  8. $2.5 billion a pittance to use rectangle by kawabago · · Score: 3, Funny

    Samsung could have used a circle, a pentagram or even a doughnut. There was no reason to copy Apple's proprietary rectangular design. Samsung needs to do their own research to find the best shape for their product and stop stealing Apple's.

    1. Re: $2.5 billion a pittance to use rectangle by camperdave · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Your honour, clearly this is not a rectangle with rounded corners. It is a circle that has been extended in area by adding straight edges at the cardinal points."

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  9. Re:I always wondered by Antipater · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't try to swallow the moon, though. It'll all dissolve, see, and the moonbeams will shoot out your fingers and toes and the ends of your hair. Then Philips will sue you for patent infringment and you'll end up back where you started.

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  10. Re:Everywhere in the UE ? by Grumbleduke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was talking to a (UK-based) trade mark attorney about this sort of thing last week; basically German courts are designed to give quick, cheap decisions, which is why they tend to be the first to issue judgments and injunctions in these sorts of cases. However, what they make up in speed and expense they lose in accuracy.

    Contrast that with the English cases (such as the Apple v Samsung and Apple v HTC ones over the last two weeks) which can take a lot longer to reach a final decision, and cost a lot more (€100,000+), but tend to be very thorough. Sadly law tends to be that way; either fast and cheap, or thorough.

    The EU-wide injunction was granted (probably) because this case involved an EU right (such as a Community Design Right), rather than a national one. Certain national courts across the EU are given special powers to rule on these issues (to save the CJEU having to get involved all the time), so their rulings are binding across the EU. However, that also means that if another court somewhere else issues a final ruling (rather than just an interim injunction) that goes the other way, the German court's decision will be set aside.