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Samsung: Apple Stole the iPad's Design From Univ of Missouri Professor
TheBoat writes with a bit from BGR on the Apple vs Samsung case: "We're starting to see a theme develop here. Now that it's Samsung's turn to present its case in the San Jose, California patent trial that regularly has the tech media abuzz, the company is taking an interesting approach. Rather than start out by arguing that its various Android smartphones and tablets do not copy Apple's designs or infringe on its patents, Samsung is arguing that Apple's IP is invalid to begin with. On Monday, Samsung argued that Apple's pinch-to-zoom patent was stolen from Mitsubishi's old Diamond Touch and on Tuesday evening, Samsung made a similar argument regarding the design of Apple's iPad. Samsung on Tuesday presented the jury with videotaped testimony from Roger Fidler, head of the digital publishing program at the University of Missouri. In his testimony, Fidler stated that he began work on a tablet design in 1981. 'Apple personnel were exposed to my tablet ideas and prototypes,' he testified, adding that Apple staff saw his designs in the mid-1990s."
Apple itself has a prior art problem. Look at the Apple Newton, designed in 1987, alongside an iPhone. That was more than 20 years ago, so any patents have expired.
If Samsung can find all these examples of prior art, how is it that Apple was granted patents in the first place? These are hardly the only examples of Apple being given patents on things that were obviously done by others well before they "innovated" them.
As my father-in-law was a patent clerk he said they stopped checking into prior art when he left in the 90s and they seemed to rubber stamp multiple things. He tended to take pride in searching for prior art as he didn't want a company to get patents on existing things. This was lost as they brought in managers who went with quotas rather then actually vetting everything thoroughly.
I think the article misinterprets the situation. Samsung showing evidence like this could be taken that they are trying to say that they copied the ideas (perhaps even with permission) from the professor, and NOT from Apple. IANAL, but that would have a firmer legal position than challenging Apple's patent with prior art. If the court is willing to view the case in such terms they would, de facto, accept that Samsung's position (that they are not infringing) is valid.
The essence of time is transient. Always be sure to make haste slowly.
If there's any pattern here, it's that companies will violate a competitor's patent by claiming the patent is invalid (ergo the violation is completely justifiable.) Here's a pretty classic example from the telecom bubble:
Dr. David Huber gets booted from Ciena corporation, and founds a competing entity - Corvis. Corvis builds a product that does exactly what Ciena's products do - they multiplex several optical signals onto a single fiber. Ciena has patents for synthesizing a higher-rate signal by bundling several lower-rate signals together. The process is called "inverse multiplexing," and has been around since the analog telephony days. You can inverse mux several analog telephone modems together, and some companies did. Ciena got patents by basically putting "on fiber optic cables" after the well known technique. Since Huber used to work at Ciena, he knew the technique had a long history, and consequently moved forward with the expectation that any patent infringement could be easily dismissed by claiming Ciena's patents were invalid by prior art.
So how did that work out? As you might expect, not so well for Corvis.