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Judge Suggests Apple Is "Smoking Crack" With Witness List In Samsung Case
infodragon writes "Today in the ongoing Apple vs Samsung court case Judge Lucy Koh's patience wore thin as Apple presented a 75-page document highlighting 22 witnesses it would like to call in for rebuttal testimony, provided the court had the time. As those following the case closely know quite well, the case has a set number of hours which are already wearing quite thin. As quoted by The Verge as they sat in the courtroom listening in, Koh wondered aloud why Apple would offer the list 'when unless you're smoking crack you know these witnesses aren't going to be called!'"
Posting to remove ability to mod story I submitted.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Maybe she just doesnt have any tolerance for stupidity. I doint think she would tolerate you for missing it.
"His name was James Damore."
This is infront of a jury.
"We had 22 witnesses ready, but were denied time to present their testimony"
"They were ready to say all sorts of things to support us"
It is all about getting the jury on your side. Being "unable to present your case" is one such method.
And the other side cannot cross examine imagined testimony.
Apparently died with Steve.
in favor of Apple.
Now I think her wild mood swings must mean she's medicating?
No, she has just gotten to know Apple better than she did before.
Yes, Judges become judges so they judge the exciting world of Patent Ownership rights.
She is probably just pissed at the entire case, and trying to do her best to keep fair headed.
Apple is strong on these patents because of apples previous history. They made the Apple Macintosh, they didn't file all their patents, and got eaten alive by their competitors.
Samsung is trying to keep their products innovative and new. And a lot of apples patents are not really as impressive as Apple says.
To be a Judge where you are probably more interested in making sure every one get fair justice. These cases seem like petty bickering over nothing. However there are laws on the books and need to be followed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
She certainly does seem unhinged. I can't imagine that this won't end up being some sort of mistrial and tried again.
Her behavior through this whole trial has disgusted me. This stuff is really damn important. Why are the companies being so limited in the amount of time they can have witnesses on the stand? In such a case with such a long history and of such importance, shouldn't the jury be allowed to hear all evidence that is relevant that the two sides want to produce? I mean, I can understand not want to drag it out over six months, and if the lawyers started putting completely irrelevant witnesses on the stand just to try to filibuster the trial, I can understand her wanting to crack down on them. But this is ridiculous.
At this point, if I were a lawyer for either side, it would be awful hard to care which way this trial goes because it just seems obvious to me that whatever the jury decides is going to be pretty unimportant once this trial is overturned and the next one begins.
It really is starting to strongly sound to me like Judge Koh is more concerned with her own ego and power trip than in being an impartial judge conducting a fair trial.
I love this Judge, shes blunt and will not take Apples bullshit.
She needs her own show on TV.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Apple has been caught buying their design expert witness for 75.000 USD. Though normal to cover expenses for expert witnesses, this is quite excessive. The guy even describes himself as a professional expert witness on his own website.
Koh may have just handed Apple what they need to prove she has a bias if they need to appeal this case later.
There appropriate ways for a Judge to express their frustrations at a plaintiff.
Anyone else think the legal system would make more sense if they were smoking crack?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A judge isn't supposed to be hassling and berating the lawyers on both sides like this.
When both sides deserve it, a fair judge should hassle and berate both sides. Justice isn't well served by tolerating games.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
A judge isn't supposed to be hassling and berating the lawyers on both sides like this.
Interesting choice of words. So you'd be ok with it if it was just one sided berating? Judges have done far worse to lawyers when they start resorting to court room theatrics like Apple and Samsung. Berating both sides just shows fairness, and that both sides are being asses.
You don't mod stories, you mod posts. There is no reason to believe you are any more or less likely to be biased than anyone else, so there is no reason to prohibit modding posts, even when they are related to the story you submitted. Also, you could have simply not modded. You aren't forced to mod. You did know that, right?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This stuff is really damn important
Hardly. Even ignoring all the stuff going on in criminal court (where someone's liberty, and sometimes their life, is at stake) and sticking to civil court, the serious cases still concern loss of life and limb, or at least of livelihoods and life savings. This crap about big companies hurling insults back and forth and playing ridiculous games with the system is only serious in so far as it's a fucking disgrace that it's allowed to tie up a system that's designed for more important things. It really doesn't matter whether 50 cents worth of your shiny new Samsung toy goes to Apple, or vice versa.
Calling someone out on their (procedural) bullshit is part of a judge's job. It's not her fault both sides are doing it, and she'd be negligent if she didn't hassle or berate them for intentionally wasting the court's time.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Inappropriate != bias
Two points.
One: this is a jury trial. As such, there are twelve jurors, private citizens like yourself, who have their lives on hold (without pay!) listening to two corporate behemoths whine at each other. Dragging this out for an unreasonable amount of time will create real problems for real people.
Two: Judge Koh has more than just this case on her docket, and it isn't fair to everyone else in her district that Apple v. Samsung take up an unreasonable amount of time and prevent other cases to come to trial.
If you can't present your case with 25 hours of face time before the jury, well, you can go fuck off. The lawyers in this case don't get hired by trillion-dollar multinationals by being tame, they're going to bend any rule they can get away with. The judge needs to present a strong barrier to that.
(Oh, and bonus point: All three parties know that this is going to go to appeal anyway, unless a settlement is reached or something.)
Or maybe she feels that this case is without merit and some outside force played a part in even letting it get this far.
in favor of Apple.
Now I think her wild mood swings must mean she's medicating?
No, she has just gotten to know Apple better than she did before.
No, both sides have been enormous cunts for the entire trial, and she's pissed at both of them for that reason. It got bad enough that if Samsung loses, they're basically guaranteed a full appeal at this point. Probably the same with Apple. So we're almost certainly going to get to relive all this AGAIN! WEEE!
IMHO Compelling both parties to reach a settlement as soon as possible is probably best for everyone.
Well, perhaps she should treat them like children.
When my kids are a pain, annoying, or just outright bad - I don't berate or hassle them, I *punish* them. She should do the same.
Put counsel in the corner (one minute for every year of their age.)
That might work :).
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Considering her attitude towards both sides, is it possible for both sides to request her removal?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The judge should keep his head and language cool, so neither of the parties can argue that they were unjustly treated and ask for a mistrial. It is like you bark back at a rude customer, it makes difficult to prove that you were right.
If the judge finds one or both sides deserve it, then he can present charges of "contempt of the court" or whatever fits. The judge is not at the court to get personal satisfaction, but to do his work.
Why can't
Uh, Apple has 4 hours left to give any of their arguments. They gave her a list of 75! witness that she had to read and familiarize herself with overnight. Even apple themselves said they would only get 20 of the witnesses on the stand in 4 hours.
To recap.
4 hours
20 planned witnesses
75 objections to review.
That's straight up bullshit.
They are being unprofessional, she is simply taking them down a peg.
laws that the patent trolls bought and paid for
the case has a set number of hours which are already wearing quite thin
You're right. It is a misuse in reference to a fixed interval that is elapsing. It would be correct if she was granting additional allotments of time, but was losing the inclination to continue doing so. Her patience is wearing thin though, and I certainly don't blame her. She should squeeze both parties' balls even harder.
She keeps sending the two parties away with instruction to try to figure something out, away from courtroom antics. They keep coming back like angry children, ready to fight it out. I'm not surprised that she's fed up with it all.
Personally, I'm hoping that Apple gets a nasty slap in the face.
DEA will continue with this proceeding from now on.
Make the losers pay for the winner's legal bills and a lot of the meritless crap won't even be around to clog the courts in the first place. For there would be a strong incentive not to waste the court's time on a bullshit case.
Firstly, IAAL. Secondly, judges are people. There is no "one" appropriate judicial temperament. While, I think she has made one bad decision on exclusion of evidence during discovery, she has not acted any differently than many judges I have encountered during my practice. Some of them were good jurists, others were arbitrary and capricious. She does not seem to be arbitrary or capricious. Discovery is always a thorny process in the Federal system. There are some strict rules, and there is incentive to hide things as well. Now to the issue of the day. Let's pretend you were a judge, and you had just presided over a multi-day proceeding regarding the claims of these two litigants, only to hear that a litigant wants to call 75 witnesses, significantly more than they have called during the trial proper, in rebuttal. It is ludicrous. When one is scheduling a multi-day trial one, generally has to move significant other trials around. It delays proceedings for _Thousands_ of cases. When a party wants to call 75 witnesses, you have to estimate 1-2 hours per witness minimum. With about 6 real good hours of trial a day possible, that is 25 days of trial at the absolute minum. I think "are you smoking crack" is a proper measured response, considering that you have basically ruined your trial calendar for a year minimum to make up for that. If I were the presiding judge, I may have responded by saying, "You can put 75 on there but if even one is cumulative there will be sanctions: including attorney's fees, costs, etc. and a letter to your relevant State and Federal Bars." If I felt that the parties have been wasting the court's time, "Are you smoking crack?" would be the least of what they might hear, while I consider dismissing their claims by sua sponte summary judgment or JNOV.
That doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No, both sides have been enormous cunts for the entire trial, and she's pissed at both of them for that reason. It got bad enough that if Samsung loses, they're basically guaranteed a full appeal at this point. Probably the same with Apple. So we're almost certainly going to get to relive all this AGAIN! WEEE!
This. Since almost the beginning, when Samsung's lawyers started lining up evidence for the judge to strike down, this trial was merely a pre-game for the appeal. In big trials like this, appeals are inevitable (unless the process is exhausting enough to make a settlement more appealing), so this move suggests Apple's lawyers are now finishing off with enough material to make the appeal trial that much more interesting.
A judge isn't supposed to be hassling and berating the lawyers on both sides like this.
Good grief man, have you ever seen any real trials?
It is EXACTLY the job of a judge to ride herd over lawyers on both sides, as they will take whatever advantage they can eek out. You cannot have some mild judge that gets rode over by the alpha personality that almost every trial lawyer exhibits.
A judge must make, then strictly enforce, rules - or else the lawyers will just take over.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Reminds me of Judge Jackson in United_States vs. Microsoft. He got so pissed at Microsoft's behavior in court that he said some rather unfriendly things about the company in interviews (see http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/02/42071).
Which was probably not so smart and might have contributed to his verdict (breaking up Microsoft) being overturned on appeal.
I always wondered why he did not keep his mouth shut and sanction Microsoft's legal team instead. They did some things that might have counted as perjury, such as presenting a faked video as evidence.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I don't know what you mean... Judge Judy does that.
Regardless of which side it favors, this is very unprofessional behavior coming from a judge presiding over a very influential case that could result in millions, even billions, of dollars in damages.
Firstly, the suggestion that you should get a better class of justice if you have billions of dollars to argue over is truly vile and despicable. Either these sort of comments are acceptable by a judge or they are not. The wealth and claims of the parties is irrelevant to that.
Secondly, to answer your question, Lucy Koh worked at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, California law firm as a litigation partner representing technology companies in patent, trade secret and commercial civil matters from 2002 to 2008. So I imagine she 'became a patent lawyer' around then or a bit before.
And then, when a corporation can afford millions in lawyers and an injured consumer can afford next to nothing in comparison, nobody will be willing to sue. Because, if you lose, you'll owe the company that injured you millions on top of the initial injury. And the corporation, with the huge legal team, has a better chance of winning.
That only works when both sides, at the beginning of the suit, are of equal financial standing. Which is the rare case in our legal system. It sounds great on the face of it, but it's just a straw man that isn't worth the straw it's built out of.
S. Jobs was fond of LSD. It seems the culture spread in Apple.
Table-ized A.I.
Apple has been caught buying their design expert witness for 75.000 USD.
They guy worked for it though, 136 hours or so (if you had read the article you'd know he was being paid $550/hour).
You seem to think an expert witness is just spending a few hours on a stand. Not so, there are MANY hours spent in preparation of a trial, also helping APple produce supporting documents or determine what is infringing.
That seems like a lot of money but consider that the person has to work in a high stress environment, taking time away from other projects - and to boot is highly valuable as having actually been the one working on a lot of Apple icons. $550/hour is totally reasonable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple has just put a patent on the term "smoking crack", people who use the term, and/or engage in the activity could now be charge with copyright infringement. This may prove to be the most serious blow to the crack consumers, and the illegal drugs industry at large........
Why would either side be considered unprofessional for naming more witnesses than they need? Please explain further. I'm aware that rejections happen for a multitude of reasons, so it would seem that having alternates is a must.
Though I personally fail to see why it's a big deal, and I understand that a time limit is a time limit, all she would have to say is "you need to cut this list down to only the witnesses you plan to present", not "you wouldn't submit this unless you were smoking crack".
My opinion remains that this judge is very unprofessional.
Patent engineers and attorneys also are people. If I would make a comment regarding the judge smoking crack in an ongoing trial, I'd get my ass kicked. Hard. Not working in the US, though, so perhaps that is customary over there together with the weird legal folklore of having patent cases decided by juries.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
She keeps sending the two parties away with instruction to try to figure something out, away from courtroom antics.
I understand that the overcongested court system wants routine cases to be settled out of court, but settlements set no precedent.
A lot of people really want the law to say, definitively, one way or the other, whether or not one company can force another company to pay for the privilege of making a device with rounded corners.
Apple is strong on these patents because of apples previous history. They made the Apple Macintosh, they didn't file all their patents, and got eaten alive by their competitors.
Care to explain what on earth would be worthy of a patent in the Macintosh? And I mean of course a patent for an industrial invention, not a design patent. You heard about Xerox PARC, didn't you?
Considering she already handled around 20 cases involving Apple, she's not a very fast learner ...
I disagree. Invalidating as many patents as possible is best for everyone. A settlement just means Apple can sue someone else for the same stuff.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
It really doesn't matter whether 50 cents worth of your shiny new Samsung toy goes to Apple, or vice versa.
I think you underestimate the seriousness of this issue to these companies. This isn't about tiny license fees. Apple is ultimately aiming for a complete sales ban on most (all?) Samsung smartphones (and then HTC). A few years ago Apple fans were proudly shouting that the iPhone had 70%+ of the smartphone market, and was growing by 200% to 300% every year. They don't talk about market share these days - now they brag about profitability - and the reason is that the iPhone market share is falling, and is down to 32%. The Samsung Galaxy phones are widely popular - UK sales data show the S2 and S3 outselling the iPhone every month except April 2012 - and if you check the "Android fragmentation" graph you will see that Galaxy devices (GT-x) alone comprise a huge proportion of the Android market.
Apple executives are terrified that what happened with the desktop market - Apple initially gaining huge market share, and then falling to below 5% - will be repeated in the phone and tablet markets. And in a completely free market, that is what would probably happen, since competitors will produce lower price products with similar capabilities and over time erode market share of the dominant manufacturer. Thus the obvious answer is to try and avoid the dangers of the free market by asking the government to stop your competitors from being so competitive.
I wonder if it's possible to sanction ALL the lawyers.... Maybe that would set a precedent that if lawyers are abusing their privilege, they get sanctioned. This might clean up courtoom antics and make going to court much less painful, if the actual lawyers have to be continually responsible for their behaviour.
Why would either side be considered unprofessional for naming more witnesses than they need?
Almost four times as many witnesses as they could possibly question?
all she would have to say is "you need to cut this list down to only the witnesses you plan to present"
That's what the point of Apple submitting this list was all about in the first place. She had asked that the first time and they gave her a list of 20 witnesses that Apple believed they were going to bring to court.
She told them off. Unprofessional or not, she could have done much worse to Apple's lawyers for trying to waste her own as well as the courts' time. I think it's a welcome change for this case, and is probably one of the reasons Koh remained as judge for it. This needs to be a quick, no-nonsense, no-bullshit, no-courtroom-theatrics case that settles things once and for all. The amount of patent cases in a day alone waste enough of the courts' time, and I doubt that anyone wants it to be wasted anymore, because Apple thinks their going to get away with 20 witnesses in an impossibly short amount of time.
Really? I think a great many legal issues could be solved if judges would just look over the case, decide it doesn't have merit and tell the prosecutor to GTFO out of here before I hold you in contempt.
Just think about the lawsuits that generated things like "Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly" on Superman underwear...or (due to the McDonalds lawsuit) coffee cups everywhere stating "Warning: Contents Hot"
Only further supports my crazy conspiracy theory from two weeks ago
Judge is intentionally dragging this out, and ensuring both sides have plenty of ammo for appeals. My unfounded conjecture is that she's getting kickbacks from both Apple and Sony. Additionally, she could be sharing a bit of profit from the lawyers involved, who will be employed for a long time, including the many MANY appeals that are sure to stem from this case.
This signature is false.
Or maybe she was never biased. But people here on Slashdot automatically assumed she was because she ruled against Samsung on a procedural violation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually, there are quite a few aspects of the Apple operating system that did not come from Xerox:
The Finder and its interface
Drag-and-drop file manipulation, including dropping files onto a trash icon
Drop-down menus
Multiple views of the file system (e.g. icon vs. list)
OS support for drawing into partially obscured windows
Desk accessories
Direct editing of file names
Copying data in multiple formats to the clipboard
Automatic updating of windows when rearranged
However, it is not quite true that Apple did not protect its ideas. At that time, computer software was protected more by copyright than patents, as the court precedents that determined that software features are patentable had not yet been established. Rather, Apple was tricked by Microsoft into licensing the key original features of the Mac operating system to them. In return for developing software for the Mac, Microsoft asked for a license to some features of the Mac GUI, including some of the unique features listed above. Because Microsoft was pursuing a very different approach to a GUI, with data displayed in separate panes of the display rather than in overlapping windows, Jobs apparently felt that their OS was not directly competing with the Mac, and agreed. Microsoft then turned around and released a version of Windows that blatantly copied Apple's approach. Betrayed, Apple sued, arguing "We licensed those features for the original version of Windows, not the one that imitates the Mac." The court reasonably responded, "Well then, you should have specified that int he license," and Apple lost.
But it is probably true that this early experience contributed Apple's modern no-tolerance approach toward companies they perceive as crossing the line that separates competition from copying.
I think you mean 20 witnesses in a 75-page report, not 75 witnesses.
I hope both sides appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court. End this BS once and for all.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Sorry, who are you again? I can't see your username behind that AC label.
when bad behavior has no actual negative consequences, bad behavior continues to exist.
well, DUH!
until there are consequences for waste of time 'I'm gonna sue your ass!' moves, the lunacy will continue.
if, otoh, the lawyers had SKIN in the game (and jail time for when they act like ambulance-chasers that most of them are, anyway) then you'd see real change.
white collar crime usually is just a 'cost of business' and there's no real pain involved. so it won't stop. its a business, in fact!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The judge should keep his head and language cool, so neither of the parties can argue that they were unjustly treated and ask for a mistrial. It is like you bark back at a rude customer, it makes difficult to prove that you were right.
If the judge finds one or both sides deserve it, then he can present charges of "contempt of the court" or whatever fits. The judge is not at the court to get personal satisfaction, but to do his work.
She should really go after the lawyers and ignore the actual parties involved altogether. If the parties argue that they were unjustly treated in this case, they can sue their lawyers.
I do wish that more separation of counsel and client was to be had in the courtroom. If lawyers were penalized for misrepresentation (possibly even with jail time), we'd have more honest lawyers. There's a difference between defending a client you know to be guilty to the best of your ability, and attempting to game the court system to ensure your client wins, no matter the cost to all involved. A good lawyer should be able to keep most cases out of court altogether (but this doesn't make them as much money).
There's nothing particularly unhinged about it. Apple wants to keep its options open about which witnesses to call in the limited time remaining to them, which makes a lot of more paperwork for the court. The judge is irritated because Apple cannot possibly call all of those witnesses, and is insisting that Apple make up its mind in advance.
So tell us all about your vast experience that informs your scholarly opinion.
so this move suggests Apple's lawyers are now finishing off with enough material to make the appeal trial that much more interesting.
If it's not presented at trial (this includes testimony), it doesn't get looked at in the Appeals court.
I don't see how an Appeals judge could send the case back to the original court because rebuttal witnesses could not be called during the alloted time for the trial.
That's not an error of law.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
However there are laws on the books and need to be followed.
No. There are laws on the books that SHOLDN'T BE THERE, but without them the Lawyers and Judges (who are also lawyers) wouldn't have jobs.
You work for Apple or Samsung?
Oh, I like this judge! Shades of Judge Judy, yeah, I'll accept her ruling.
Or it could be that ridiculous patent cases like these waste time and taxpayers' money and the case isn't worth being heard. Apple got broad overreaching patents that should be invalidated based on prior art and Samsung saw they had some good ideas based on that prior art and copied those to make a competitive product.
Either way they're all a bunch of fucking yo-yos wasting money on a lengthy court trial that the judge should have the authority to throw the hell out but does not. To quote a certain Master Shake: "You're both yo-yos. Shut up ya yo-yos."
What?!?! You mean just because she didn't do what you wanted doesn't make her biased against you?! NO WAY!!!!
but yeah - that's how a lot of people think. Remember that idiotic movement to impeach or remove her when she let the trial continue/whatever?
Apple NEVER had a huge share of the market in desktop computers. The most they ever commanded was about 15.8% reported in 1980, in the nascent desktop market.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Has your sig been this appropriate before?
On second thoughts, probably every time.
She needs to send them out to find her a switch. And if it ain't big enough, she's going to find herself a switch, in which case they're both gonna get they're hides tanned!
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
in favor of Apple.
Now I think her wild mood swings must mean she's medicating?
No, she has just gotten to know Apple better than she did before.
Got to know the ugly side of patent fights and how everyone can be such a poor actor.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Lol... "You better pick one thick enough - 'cause if I have to go out and pick it, you're gunna regret it..."
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> Drag-and-drop file manipulation, including dropping files onto a trash icon
Yeah, and the user interface brilliance that you had to drag the disk icon to the trashcan to release the disk. There are a whole lot of blind alleys and outright bloopers in Apple's history of "user friendliness" (not least that until OSX, it would crash if you spoke loudly at it).
Some think that overlapping windows was a step backwards from tiling window managers, and it would be better if Microsoft had never followed suit. But, especially today, it seems absurd that anyone should be able to own one of the fundamental window arrangement modes.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Sumsung is a much larger and older company than Apple, with much more diverse income sources and more than double the revenue. I have no doubt they will be a thorn in Apple's side for years to come, regardless of how many lawyers Apple can afford.
Not sure where this trial is being held, but the first link when googling jury pay in california says $15 per day.
That's less than minimum wage in the 1974 (assuming 8 hr day).
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No, as you would have noticed if you'd read more carefully, I pointed out that protection back in those days was based on copyright law, not patent, so the issues you raise were irrelevant. However, based upon subsequent court precedents, it is clear that many of those features would be considered patentable by modern standards. They were, in fact, not merely ideas but based on a specific implementations--you may have heard of them; they were known as the Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh.
As an aside, it is preferable for such features to be protected by patent rather than by copyright, as the term of patent is much shorter than copyright. Any design or technical features patented at that time (if modern rules had applied) would have passed into the public domain quite a few years ago, but any copyrights are still valid. Indeed, the original patent on the mouse had expired by the time the Apple Lisa was introduced.
Equalling financial standing is what charities like the EFF are for.
Funny thing is that they will be able to reuse their legal budget once the defeated corporation has paid up for legal expenses.
I'm pretty sure Apple would view that as a great outcome and it would only encourage them to initiate more patent lawsuits. Your "solution" doesn't really seem to be in line with your stated beliefs.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I suppose that this is relevant in some wishful-thinking world of how you imagine that patents ought to work, but that is not the standard that modern courts apply. Indeed, requiring that a patent should be the sort of thing that "no ordinary engineer could have figured out how to do using known techniques" is so restrictive that it would have excluded a large percentage of the patents of the early industrial age. And these features were hardly abstract ideas--they were features of actual, physical devices.
I'm amazed that you think copyright protection is preferable. After all, if they had been patented, these features would have long since passed into the public domain, while copyrighted features would still be protected, and would remain so for decades yet to come.
A few years ago Apple fans were proudly shouting that the iPhone had 70%+ of the smartphone market
[cite needed] The iPhone has never been more than 20-30% of total smartphone sales. See here for a glimpse of 2010 [1] and 2011 [2] numbers - none are are even as high as the 32% you are quoting (from where?). Fact is, Android (particularly Samsung) have replaced Nokia, RIMM and Blackberry, not to mention Windows mobile/phone devices. iOS has never been stronger - and neither has Android.
Apple executives are terrified that what happened with the desktop market - Apple initially gaining huge market share, and then falling to below 5%
Unless you never lived the 80's you know this isn't true - Apple pioneered with their AppleII, but IBM always had the corporate market which they basically gave away to Microsoft due to poor agreements on software licenses. Apple's share has never amounted to a large percentage of computing device sales.
Apple has always been about profits and not marketshare.
[1] http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/16/iphone_drops_to_23_8_smartphone_market_share_android_jumps_to_17.html
[2] http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/iphone_and_android_gain_marketshare_through_february/
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Jurors get paid $27 a day where I am. Oh - plus a lunch allowance.
I agree with you, I meant this specific case. Although given Samsung's recent arguments, invalidating the whole thing should be on the table. USPTO needs to 1) process claims much faster, 2) reject all but a precious few that actually describe specific, narrowly defined original inventions. The narrower and more specific, the better. It might be hard to create and maintain the guidelines, though. Amazon's one button buy patent sounds as if any book on HTML would be prior art, but how do you make such things into policy as technologies appear and become widely disseminated?
Apple is now swearing to the judge that the really do plan to call all of those witnesses, and that they can manage the time so that they can do it in the time allotted. They will be in trouble with the judge if they list witnesses that they do not call.
Just try deliberately offending a US judge during a trial in which you are a litigant. Go on. I dare you. I double dare you.
You should watch The mother of all demos.
The concepts behind the personal computer were crystallized there. The only thing missing from that demo is graphical display of controls, but they have mouse operable buttons, hyperlink navigation, filesystem with hierarchical view, list and collaborative editing. Those stories about Xerox Apple and Microsoft display a blatant lack of historical perspective !
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
With all due respect, in what world is $27 a day and lunch allowance anywhere near enough to cover the living expenses of an adult who is not salaried but commanding a respectable hourly salary like there is a good chance some of these jurors are?
So what you're saying is that Apple should be rewarded for patenting round rectangles with glass on the front?
If the "whole patenting nonsense has gone way overboard," it time to smack those who patent nonsensical things, like round rectangles with glass on the front or a phone receiver with a green background.
It's not. That's the point of the post - it was in response to the AC seeming to think that the jurors were being paid an acceptable amount.
Apple is strong on these patents because of apples previous history. They made the Apple Macintosh, they didn't file all their patents, and got eaten alive by their competitors.
You mean competitors like Power Computing?
And by "eaten alive" you mean "Apple Computer bought key assets of Power Computing for $100 million in Apple stock and roughly $10 million in cash"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing#cite_note-3
Both parties rely on the fact that a definitive resolution of these issues cannot be found before the courts, and various courts of appeals, until long after the related products are irrelevant. SCO v. Novell is into its ninth year, both companies for all intents no longer exist. And yet lawyers will stand before the bar and argue this case for a while yet. If there is enough money left whatever decisions reached will be appealed to another court still.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And if you win, then the corporation has to pay your legal costs. It cuts both ways. If your case has merit, you are better off bringing it in a loser pays jurisdiction (like Europe). If your opponent's case does not have merit, you are better off if they bring it in loser pays jurisdiction. If your case lacks merit, you are better off under the American rule. In the US, a big corporation that can afford millions in lawyers can sue you, drag you through a meritless case, and then you have to sue them if you want your legal costs back.
I'm also not convinced that big corporations have better lawyers. Corporate defense lawyers get paid a salary. Consumer injury lawyers get paid commission. Better lawyers will tend to gravitate towards the consumer injury jobs, as they pay better. Corporations lose court cases all the time.
It's also worth noting that loser pays is generally not automatic. It's not like you lose and get a bill. If you lose, your opponent presents costs to the court and explains why they think that you should pay them. The court can then evaluate the costs, determine if they are reasonable, and either order you to pay them or not.
Loser pays is the normal rule. The US is an exception in not following it. The rest of the world somehow manages to get by with it. The US could too.
More discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney's_fee#Which_party_pays
She should squeeze both parties' balls even harder.
They might like that!
But you can challenge the judge's ruling that barred the evidence / testimony, asking the appeals court to rule that it should have been allowed in.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The iPhone has never been more than 20-30% of total smartphone sales.
Perhaps, but what I actually said was that Apple fans *claimed* it was higher, and they would link to some page like this as evidence ("If you look at this January 2009 data, The iPhone was actually less than half of a percentage point away from owning 70 percent of the mobile browsing market.") or "iPhone grabbed 72% of smartphone market share in Japan" or "iPad owns 96% of enterprise market and iPhone share climbs to 53%". And even now we are seeing stuff like "Apple's iPhone Has Staged A Monster Comeback, Android Is Now Dead In The Water". Yes, a platform that with almost a million phones being activated every day is apparently now "dead in the water". Those Apple marketing guys are good at getting their message broadcast.
Apple's share has never amounted to a large percentage of computing device sales.
According to this, Apples market share in 1980 was 15%. Okay, that is "huge" on the scale of all PC clones combined, but it beats out the market share of individual manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo today. This article says "In 1984, the Apple II had 15% of the market, Apple's best showing ever. (When combined with the Mac, Apple had over 20% of the market that year.)". The same page says that Apple's low point in 2001 was 2.3%. So from a high of 20% to a low of 2.3%... that's a big fall, losing 88.5% of the market, which was my real point.
But inappropriate can still = grounds for appeal.
I was going to say a similar thing myself, but not about "bias".
Apple could simply be doing it on the grounds that it is necessary testimony, and disallowing it denies them a fair trial.
But copyright only matters if you copy the actual bytes, while patents apply even if you implement it from scratch and have never seen the patented invention before. Its reach is much wider and protection against infringing them is much, much more difficult to achieve, since you can infringe without even knowing.
Dilbert RSS feed
It's because everyone here gets their information from Groklaw.
Groklaw is a great information source, of course. But it's analysis is completely partisan in favor of 'their' side of the case. So anything that doesn't go 'their' way is because the judge is biased/confused/lazy/whatever.
Except that isn't what Apple is asking for. They are asking for $24 of your new Samsung toy, plus 100% of the profit of Samsung's mobile division. If you were Samsung, would you want to settle out of court when that was the offer on the table?
She should have said "dropping acid." This is Apple after all.
And the essential 3G patents which Apple has steadfastly refused to pay a single dime for for the last 5 years? Can we award Samsung their dollar back and ban sales of iPhones for that too. What a great idea, and if we do the same to HTC and Motorola, the cellphone division of Microsoft can move from Finland to the US and have their very own protected market!
Samsung just doubled her bribe that's all :)
Now I think her wild mood swings must mean she's medicating?
Or smoked a little too much of Apple's icrack.
Watch out for your cornhole. Apple's sure to be after you for using the iCrack brand without express written permission.
Seriously people here acted like Jack Thompson in that the judge was an enemy because she dared rule against his side. In a normal court case, some rulings might go against you and judges are sticklers for deadlines. Being late isn't an excuse in most things in life.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
WRONG!
Dood, seriously? GFC? what about superfunds funding future trading options? Apple has had a lot of money poured into it from different places left and right. How much of that was YOUR money! If Samsung loses and because they are not posted on the NASDAQ means that Samsung and their knitted group of shareholders bare the brunt. A company like Apple losses and loses large chunks of value then WE the people have to suffer. It's sick I tell ya!
This case SHOULD end in a Samsung win and yes I agree Samsung did steal. Samsung should win because they did what the market demands and that is be a competitor to a potential monopolistic vendor which in turn means we the users weigh in on the benefits, If it wasn't for Apple bringing out Smartphones and then Samsung making a BETTER Smartphone we wouldn't all have such cool devices sitting on all our desks.
This whole shooting match means
a) users get best of the best product as the two companies have to "out do" each other
b) It's a measure of true capitalism where business reaps the benefits because they have a better product.
I say allow the time proven way of business to play out, GM makes a better car than Ford, then Ford makes a better car than GM. What Apple did with the smartphone revolt is provide us with Electric Flying Cars, Samsung has given us Underwater Electric Flying Cars that can fly to outer space. So, lets keep the momentum of this going moving forward and not allow the courts to kill it.
START:
Apple_please_create_a_new_marketspace()
Samsung_copy_ Apple_but_make_it cheaper_and_better()
GOTO START
They created the desktop market, how can you claim they never had a big share of it?
When they created the market, they had 100% of it.
Rethinking email
Apples makes nothing other than designs and owns very little other than cash. The whole house of cards (their market cap) can can fall based on a marketing failure of their next product. This is the ONLY reason they need Android and Samsung to fail. Apple is a middle man with a design that is currently in style. They must stay in style to keep it moving. There is NO fall back plan other than spreading out the cash on hand. The stock value is based on maintaining future sales, not capital equipment. Samsung OWNS factories, they design and manufacture things from raw material to end user product very big and very small. Large R&D centers that produce products that just about every company that makes something that uses power uses in their products, ships, earth moving equipment, large industrial power control devices, home appliances, LCD screens, power supplies, chips, dips, chains, and whips.
I think what we're seeing here is a fundamental failure to have a meeting of the minds in light of new circumstances. Judge Lucy realizes that all the recent public interest in this trial exposed how much she's been in the tank for Apple, and she's decided to start playing it straight...or at least give that appearance.
Apple, on the other hand, still seems to believe that they own her skinny apps. ;-)
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I was waiting for the "but but but Market Cap!" fools to chime in. Thanks for the LOL. Apple is a tiny company with a bunch of over-optimistic investors. Yes, you can argue and win on the premise that Apple designs cellphones for other people to make and still others to sell... While Samsung really does everything including making skyscrapers, kitchen sinks, and everything in between. Please enlighten me on how this makes them even comparable to the shiny doodad company from Cupertino.
It is obvious that Samsung has indeed copied Apple
obvious to whom? other judges have already ruled that samsung did not copy apple, even going so far as to force Apple to publicly admit that Samsung never copied them... http://www.bgr.com/2012/07/18/apple-patent-ruling-judge-samsung-copy-ipad/
this is hardly the clear cut case that iDiots would have you think it is.
-Lod
Slight edit. 22 witnesses x 2 hours / 6 hours per day = 7.5 days of trial. That is only slightly less ridiculous. That would mean either delaying the trial for a long time to get a block available, or doing it piece meal with Apple and Samsung standing on-call. On-call trials rarely happen. With some of the additional information regarding the 4 hours left of actually blocked off time for Apple, it is still ridiculous.
Newsflash: They didn't create the market, fanboy.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Regardless of which side it favors, this is very unprofessional behavior coming from a judge presiding over a very influential case that could result in millions, even billions, of dollars in damages.
No it's not.
There's no requirement that judges stick to mild language; it's not at all unusual for judges to be frustrated with obviously stupid games played by lawyers arguing a case, and using harsh language does not indicate prejudice. That it didn't indicate prejudice in this case is abundantly clear from the context of the statement—Apple's request was simply bizarre, and her remark simply reflected that (using a standard epithet which means exactly that).
If Apple wants to be treated more "professionally," it's very clear how they should precede: act more professionally themselves and stop playing stupid games in court.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
>Yes, Judges become judges so they judge the exciting world of Patent Ownership rights.
She was a patent (troll) lawyer before donning black robes.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Which raises the question: Why hasn't Apple integrated vertically, owning more of the hardware process, from chip making to board fabbing to plastic extrusion? Is the barrier to entry for becoming a mini-another-Intel beyond anyone new's ability to surmount, even Apple? Or could Apple have been seriously concerned about a vertical monopoly leading to an antitrust claim? (unlikely, considering Microsoft's own efforts at vertical integration).
Who is John Cabal?
"One: this is a jury trial. As such, there are twelve jurors, "
No this is a civil trial. Twelve is not a specified number for the jury. IIRC this trial actually has nine.
Maybe she just doesnt have any tolerance for stupidity.
It has nothing to do with intolerance for stupidity
It's a case of arrogance on the part of Apple's lawyers submitting 75 pages of paper listing 20 additional witnesses that they (Apple) want to call into the courtroom, while there were only 4 hours left
It's a show of sheer arrogance from the side that already know they are going to win the case because they already have the judge in their bag
Even after judge Lucy Koh asking him if he's on crack, that arrogant lawyer from Apple, Bill Lee, reply, in his typical arrogant manner, "Your honor, I can assure you, I'm not smoking crack"
If you are a lawyer who are not sure of the ultimate outcome of a suit, you wouldn't be replying in such an abrasive manner nor behaving in such arrogant manner
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Perjury in civil cases often has only the penalty of losing or at least helping lose the case. It's pretty usual for the judge not to sanction anyone, but to simply cite the instance in writing the final decision so as to limit grounds for appeal, and it's almost unheard of for a judge to turn the court transcript over to a DA seeking criminal charges. This was a question raised during the Clinton impeachment. Whether President Clinton lied or not, many court watchers were wondering what the relevence of it was, if the lie was about a civil matter not materially connected to High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the case? Would Congress really censure for something outside of the HC&D constitutional clause that was their mandate, and why were they acting so differently from a normal court?
Who is John Cabal?
Market Cap is just shares outstanding times stock price. It's just one attempt at measuring how "large" a company is.......and really, once stock is "in the wild", it doesn't really affect the business of the company *.
* By that, I mean that if the stock price goes up or down, it doesn't affect how much money a company has or whether a company sells its products or if a company even turns a profit. Obviously, management is responsible for making sure that the stockholders continue to want to be stockholders.....but the stock itself really represents what the stockholders think the company is going to be worth in the future.
GP quite clearly said that the company is larger, not its market cap.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Apple is a tiny company with a bunch of over-optimistic investors.
Over-optimistic investors, maybe. "Tiny company" is ridiculous by any standard, in any way you measure it. They have more than sixty thousand employees, they have $100 billion in cash, they have a world-wide retail presence and brand recognition... that's just stupid.
their products, ships, earth moving equipment, large industrial power control devices, home appliances, LCD screens, power supplies, chips, dips, chains, and whips .
Oh God knows I tried, but no matter which search engine I use, I just can't find "Samsung Whip" or "Samsung Whips" or anything similar
Would you be kind enough to tell us where to locate the Samsung Whips(TM) ?
Many thanks !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The problem is that winning and your case having merit are not synonymous, not in the US, and not in Europe either. You can have a legitimate grievance against someone, sue them, be in the right in every way, and still lose. This goes doubly if the party you are suing is a multinational corporation and has a legal team either in house or on retainer.
Loser pays is a shitty system unless it's tempered by the involvement of a judge to apply it only to cases without merit(which should actually be tossed out not paid for). The legal system is already heavily biased in favor of the people who know how to play the game, we don't want to make it any worse.
How about: Both Apple and Samsung get nothing since they can't come to an agreement. In other words: Neither Apple, nor Samsung can now use rounded rectangles, glass screens, or shiny black finish. Since you can't play nice or be fair, nobody wins.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
You're kidding. Not even an actual device, but a concept video--and of a pen-based tablet, at that? Many companies, including Apple, built pen-based tablets, but none of them ever sold very well. The iPad was a success precisely because it wasn't that kind of device.
and that was ONLY because everybody was waiting for the S3 to hit the shops after having been announced.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
If you do not know judge Lucy Koh, it's time you should know:
Before she was appointed a judge by Hussein Obama, Ms. Lucy Koh worked as a Patent Attorney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_H._Koh
From 2002 until 2008, Koh worked as a litigation partner at the Silicon Valley office of the law firm McDermott Will & Emery representing technology companies in patent, trade secret and commercial civil matters.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Apple is just trying to change the game of the mobile landscape. They don't want to pay FRAND more than peanuts, and license their "look and feel" patents very expensively to competitors. This would essentially make them earn money heads over heels for both their own and everybody elses smartphone, without paying for the real innovation that was done before Apple.
"Yang has made about $200,000 working on this lawsuit" for Samsung
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/samsung-says-it-patented-iphones-best-features-before-apple/
> Thus the obvious answer is to try and avoid the dangers of the free market by asking the government to stop your competitors from being so competitive.
Or keep innovating. Or both. Jury's still out.
Or how about just calling it "Three Stars"?
However, they do tend to post their reasoning and references behind their assertions... And that is a damn sight better than blind assertions or having to choose faith from authority. Sometimes the judges (being human which also means being biased, low-information, lazy, sick, impatient, etc at times) are indeed wrong or performing poorly. Once they put on the black robe they don't become perfect after all.
I've been impressed with the number of times I would normally have to do a [citation needed] but been pleasantly surprised at the fact that they took the time to dig up old exhibits, get other opinions from lawyers and specialists, list the relevant court documents directly from PACER or otherwise expand on the logic behind their reasoning. It's a very technical discussion of very complicated issues which is oddly and refreshingly accessible to even a lay-person who is not trained in lawyer-fu and doesn't speak legaleze. I would go so far as to assert that if politicians were required to reference all of their assertions at least as well as Groklaw references and explains theirs then politics would be a dead and unnecessary art after a couple of straight forward debates (barring incomprehensible idiots amongst the population who would cut off their nose to spite their face).
To use an example; I could assert that Romney frequently tends to come off as awkward and stiff under public pressure whereas Obama still tends to come off as collected and calm under the same. Some people would disagree with me because of a variety of reasons possibly including that they have political reasons not to like Obama or to speak in favor of Romney. However, a reader asserting bias in my observation is basically showing the bias of the reader themselves. My statements can be evaluated on their face and I could source plenty of incidents of this happening. So, is my assertion fundamentally an opinion at this point? Yes. An opinion which can be backed by examples? Yes. Biased? Not really. Partisan? No.
Groklaw explaining court proceedings works like that, and they do post their opinions and their relevant references inline in the same pieces. You also have access to the raw documents yourself and are free to draw your own conclusions because you have the same information available to you as they do. But you also have to think a little on how well you believe yourself to understand the matters at hand better than they do.
Completely partisan analysis as you assert implies they are hiding, misrepresenting, or otherwise masking information which I have seen no evidence to support. Care to provide examples? I haven't seen any incidence of them failing to back or retract potentially controversial assertions.
- Toast
Why hasn't Apple integrated vertically, owning more of the hardware process, from chip making to board fabbing to plastic extrusion?
because there are bigger, older and richer companies (like samsung) already in those markets, so if there is even a chance that apple is worried about competition with samsung in the smartphone market, can you imagine how terrified they would be of competing in markets that samsung has been a dominant player in for years?
The share prices is the marginal trade price for small numbers of shares. Multiplying it by the number of shares is a bogus number. If all the shareholders in Apple tried to cash in on the same day - or even the same six months window - the price would collapse.
Market cap is a term invented by Wall Street to sell stock bubbles to dim punters.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sumsung owns Sony, Universal, Microsoft, Starbucks, United Airlines, Nestle and Google... its CEO is Darth Vader
Samsung can answer the question of you and what army of killer robots. They got them. The market cap of Samsung is the GDP of Korea.
Meanwhile Apple is a very small player in a very crowded market that already was at deaths door once and the leader who pulled them out of it is dead.
The two companies are VERY different. If Apple loses mobile, it is dead. If Samsung looses mobile, only Samsung mobile is dead. And Samsung itself will continue and continue earning money on EVERY Apple device as it contains Samsung tech.
That is probably also the reason Apple is so pissed. Samsung gets money for every iPhone and iPad. Apple gets nothing (because it has nothing anybody wants for their devices). That hurts, Apple wants to sell stuff to other producers too but they got nothing but design and design is hard to sell to other designers.
This entire trial is between a company that makes physical parts that it sells to a design company that wants to sell its ideas. 40 bucks for a border around a screen. Fair isn't it? After all, Samsung and the likes get 40 bucks for the screen so why not 40 bucks in return for the design of the bezel?
Don't discount this, a LOT of republicans who want to outsource jobs want to turn the entire US economy into an idea economy where the west sells ideas to the east in exchange for physical products.
Problem: patents for physical objects are clear, for ideas... not so much.
This case is test if the "knowledge" economy (where knowledge is not hard science but design and ideas) is workable.
I don't think it is.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Because factories are not actually a good long-term investment. Apple actually does build factories for things like flash chips, but gives them to other companies in exchange for significantly lower prices. After a year or two, the factory is basically obsolete and Apple stops caring, while the manufacturing company can still make some money by selling cheap, lower-capacity flash from a factory that they basically got for free. A few more years later and they have an asset that's worthless and effectively need to build a new factory or, at least, replace all of the equipment inside it, which costs about the same. To make a profit from manufacturing consumer electronics, you need to constantly be investing in new processes or you'll end up with overheads that are much greater than your competitors at best, or be simply unable to build what the customer wants at worst.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Don't forget the billions of dollars also on the books. "Bickering over nothing"? Or "Bickering over $40,000,000,000 per year of market"?
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
They have more than sixty thousand employees
For reference, Samsung has 220,000 employees.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The only way to have a fair justice system is to take capitalism out of the courtroom.
That means set fixed hourly rates for lawyers and limit them legally to one-per-customer.
Yes, even if you're a billionaire you get ONE lawyer and they all cost the same so the poor guy whose life you ruined and is now suing you can afford one just as good as the one you got.
Will this have downsides ? Well I'm not so sure. The old "what would motivate you to be a better X" argument doesn't hold up well here, if what motivates you to be a "better lawyer" is "making more money" then you're in the job for the wrong reason to begin with.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Except their 5% desktop share today is larger than the entire home computer market from back when they had 15% of it. They've never been big on volume, and they've only ever dominated in terms of sheer volume with the iPad and iPod, this is a new concept to them.
Apple has for the past two decades preferred the low-volume/high-margin premium product approach over getting involved in the race to the bottom the rest of the industry is caught up in. They have a majority of the profits on a minority of the volume, why are we pretending like this is a bad thing and that their execs are shitting their pants over it?
It means that if someone said that ARM was a much larger company than Facebook, they would be incorrect.
You clearly never worked on either the Xerox Star workstations, or the Xerox AI workstations with which they shared hardware. These had (inter alia)
Not only did Xerox have prior art on all these things, it is a matter of historical record that Steve Jobs saw that prior art, so there is no possible way he could claim independent invention.
* For some value of. The Dandelion/Dandetiger/Dorado/Daybreak machines didn't really have an OS; InterLISP ran very close to bare metal.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
TRS-80 was probably the first single company with significant market share. Atari briefly rose to challenge them, along with Apple. Then Commodore and the PC dominated growth until the PC finally dominated everything else in the early 80s.
There's some data here.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
German law has the concept of fining X days' earnings. Just apply that. If the judge finds the lawsuit to be without merit, the plaintiff is fined, let's see... a week's earnings. An individual person won't like it but they can stomach the loss. A corporation will also live but they now have angry shareholders who'd like to know whether losing those heaps of money was really neccessary.
And no, the corporations can't decide how much money that're making; the judge does. Hollywood accounting wouldn't fly. "We make a lot of money but don't have any" (used by a shell company) wouldn't fly either; then the proper course of action would be to seize the company's assets, which would be great fun in the case of a patent shell company.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
This is a common misconception, but there is case law, stretching back to Pacman/Muchkin case in the 1980's, that copyright covers the visual representations of computer programs as well as the actual text of the source and object code.
So computer displays may be protected by design patents, which last for 14 years, conventional patents, which last for 20 years, copyright, which lasts for 120 years, or trademark/trade dress, which potentially lasts forever.
Actually, the stock represents what the stockholders think they can convince other stock traders it will be worth in the future, when they themselves think it is worth less than that.
It's all about how much you can con the next guy into buying the stock for, the actual value of the company is just a way to make that more convincing.
Not a sentence!
Other jobs she had before being appointed a FEDERAL judge by BHO (from the same link):
Superior Court judge as appointed by the Republican governator.
Senior Associate at a different private law firm (doesn't say what types of cases she handled).
Assistant US Attorney.
and more.
So, yes, one of her jobs was working patent cases (note it doesn't say whether she worked cases enforcing patents, defending against alleged infringement, or both), but it wasn't her only job. Congratulations, all you've shown is that this judge has some experience in the type of law she is judging in this case. What was your point?
My understanding was that Samsung missed a deadline so the judge ruled against them admitting it late. That's it. The evidence would probably have helped Samsung but seeing how it was their own records, there isn't really an excuse for them missing the deadline. Basically the judge was doing her job.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Can you provide citation or other evidence? Here is one of many reports that state the contrary. Here's another. Here are descriptions of the Xerox Star and Xerox Alto interfaces that don't seem to illustrate these features. Here's video of the Xerox Star, showing the use of dedicated keys, rather than drop-down menus, to carry out basic operations like copy, move, undo, and text formatting, the use of a "Move" key with point-and-click instead of drag-and-drop to arrange files on the desktop or move files into folders, the use of a "Properties sheet" instead of direct editing to change filenames, the use of a Delete key instead of dragging files to the trash, the use of an "Open" key instead of double-click to open a file, the absence of text selecting by dragging, etc.
Apples makes nothing other than designs and owns very little other than cash. The whole house of cards (their market cap) can can fall based on a marketing failure of their next product. This is the ONLY reason they need Android and Samsung to fail. Apple is a middle man with a design that is currently in style.
I think this should get the award for the most over-simplified statement on Slashdot.
Just looking at phones alone, Samsung and other manufacturers spent years subjecting us to their own piss-poor designs and the purposeful mis-designs of the carriers. (To trick us into using up data minutes, etc.) Apple came a long and with nothing but a "design that is currently in style" gave us a look at phones that worked for us instead of against us.
I wonder if a cure for cancer would just be a "design that's currently in style" to you as well?
You've evidently heard of Xerox PARC, but haven't actually researched it. As has already been mentioned in this thread, Apple took a restricted interface and generalized and improved it in a whole bunch of directions that aren't simply "style". In terms of hardware, they managed to shrink the machine down to fit on a desktop, not even require a fan, and cost way less than anything Xerox made while having much more functionality. I believe they also were the first to use rubber for the mouse ball, rather than metal, which improved performance and cost, and they went with a one-button mouse rather than a three-button mouse which made it easier for non-computer-programmers to use.
Heck, their software design to fill multiple overlapping and non-contiguous areas of the screen revolutionized GUIs all by itself, and certainly influenced the development of graphics from then on.
So, yeah, Apple did a lot more than make attractive machines and GUIs.
You do realize that both Apple (once) and the judge (twice) told Samsung that this trial should be split into two parts because cramming two trials into one would result in running out of time? You do realize that the disallowed evidence that Samsung sent to the press was submitted two weeks after the deadline (after a year of preparation), which would have further delayed and extended the trial? You do realize that Samsung spent too much time cross-examining Apple's witnesses rather than presenting their own?
It's Samsung that's caused this mess, so perhaps you should assign some blame to them?
Her loyalty is to the entire justice system. Cases like this are notorious for dragging on forever as multi-billion dollar corporations pump tons of money into them. The judge is trying to prevent that by keeping hard deadlines and tight schedules, no tolerance for the games that normally occur. The comments to that end may be colorful, but this country has a long history of judges with colorful comments.
As far as settlement, that is in the best interests of justice. Where one can be reached, it stops utilizing our crowded court system's resources. Where a settlement could be reached but won't because the sides are acting like spoiled brats, it wastes the court system's resources.
Actually. Solomonian solution would permit both of them to have 2 rounded corners, and gray finish.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
While other companies make their product, Apple has pumped billions into getting those factories built, modernized and/or retooled to make Apple's products. Often, this investment comes with exclusive access to the product for Apple for a period of time. IIRC, Apple invested over $1 billion in the Sharp plant that makes the Retina iPad LCDs. Apple also recently placed orders for $5 billion in industrial robots to put into Foxconn's plants to make their gadgets, possibly tying up global robot production for a while.
Antique-Double-Sided-School-Student-Chalk-Board-Slate-Vintage
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Double-Sided-School-Student-Chalk-Board-Slate-Vintage-House-Kids-Lined-/200805561955
Prototype of the Notepad application:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Childs-Primitive-Wooden-Slate-Schoolhouse-Chalk-Board-School-Chalkboard-/170895205376
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Judge Lucy Koh's will smoke crack herself soon . ;)
Can someone please post a link to the list of witnesses Apple has requested? Im sure there is a link above, but I cannot find it.
Or cut the baby in half. Apple can create the right side and Samsung the left side. Consumers get some awkward looking phones.
Done it, twice. Still 'won.' Once for EA, the second time for my most recent eviction hearing, and in that one I offended both judge and plaintiff in the same fell swoop, in front of a commission, with hard backing of State and Federal Law quotes.
Tact - it's a quality you must possess if you wish to be a dick and get away with it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
First I thought she was miffed by who they were trying to call. Further reading informs me they were under time constraints.
That's a factor of less than 4, but considering that Samsung has a presence in so many more markets, this is not a special statistic. If anything, it shows that Apple, within one market, manages to be 25% of the size of Samsung, across all markets.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
except in Samsung's case, the Flash Chip Division chief simply dials the extension for the Factory Division chief and puts in an order for a new factory filled with new equipment from the New Factory Equipment Division... it still costs Samsung money, but nowhere near as much as purchasing everything from separate companies
Apple came a long and with nothing but a "design that is currently in style" gave us a look at phones that worked for us instead of against us
it works as long as you don't have a problem with purchasing everything through itunes and don't mind not having access to much else... apple being the good philanthropic corporate citizen that it is... its not like they want your money or anything
apple isn't a "tiny" company... some people get a bit overzealous about all this stuff, but in all fairness apple doesn't only compete in one market... apple is into laptop and desktop computers, operating systems and other software, and personal music players...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Current_products
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Macintosh_software
Apple is 17 ml greater in volume than Samsung
did you measure the size of the gap between the labia of the female employees? because assuming flat will result in a bias towards the company with more female workers
maybe your head is 17 ml greater volume than samsung
btw, volume (space) is generally measured using a unit of distance cubed (such as cm3), while ml is generally reserved for fluid volume... are you talking about volume of blood+water in their employees?
are you talking about volume of blood+water in their employees?
Sure.
No, the reason for the simple solution I proposed is to work within the existing framework of laws and then change the laws. For the current case we can't apply future law but must solve this. Then we can change the laws and regulations to avoid this in the future.
Sounds inefficient to me.
If I said my local computer company only deals with screens and has 300 employees and yours handles databases and networks and firewalls (successfully) with 100, that doesn't make me better.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
truth is first above any procedural properness, come on.
Imagine if at Nureburg , half the nazis were let of free, because it took too long to search the old records in the burnt out offices.
"Doing your job" is the old Nazi excuse of 'just following orders, im innocent' crap.
This isnt a small civil case worth $2000, its worth billions of dollars.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Dude, overlapping windows, is like some one trying to patent the printf() function thereby ruining it for everyone else.
Beginner coders in the 80s coded overlapping windows for text mode DOS 'window handlers', ie rect sections for text/textmode windows.
It shouldnt matter if its rendered using a raster pixmap, or ascii mode using ------------ or | | etc.... or rendered using vector monitors, or 3d GL stuff.
The concept is a natural progression of needs of programmers.
Its like exam questions at school, if 80% of students can answer the question, then the question cant really be made into a patent, can it.... only really hard to create efforts deserver a patent.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Please. Without rules and deadlines, court cases become chaotic. Let me ask you this: so the IRS allows you to file your taxes whenever you want or do you have to file something by tax day. What about your employer. They can pay you whenver they want or do they have to follow deadlines. Everything in life has deadlines. Just because you don't like the outcome doesn't mean you can ignore them.
[sarcasm]And yes this case is exactly like the Nazi war crimes in scope and seriousness.[/sarcasm]
Let me ask you also if you were in favor of the judges in the SCO v IBM case ruling against SCO when they failed to meet deadlines. If you were in favor in those cases but not in Apple's case, is bias clouding your judgement.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.