Apple Loses Bid To Exclude Evidence In Samsung Patent Trial

New submitter Shavano writes with news that Apple's attempt to block Samsung from introducing evidence of a tablet prototype developed in 1994 has been denied by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. Part of the reason Apple got a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 earlier this year was that an Appeals Court said Apple's tablet design was significantly different from earlier designs. Now, Judge Koh has decided that the issue needs to be decided by a jury. "Samsung has argued the design was an obvious variation of tablets existing as early as 1994, including one made by Hewlett-Packard Co. The Korean company supported that argument at the trial with videotaped testimony by Roger Fidler, who heads the digital publishing program at the University of Missouri. Fidler said he started working on a tablet design in 1981. Apple sought to exclude the testimony based on the appeals court ruling. In a written declaration, Fidler said 'Apple personnel were exposed to my tablet ideas and prototypes' in the mid- 1990s when the company collaborated with Knight-Ridder Inc.’s information design laboratory in Colorado."

Comments

Re:We are blessed

[cpu6502]

>>>If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple -

Ahahahahahahahaaaha. Let's see. Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission. Apple sued Microsoft in the mid-80s for making an OS too similar to their own (which led MS plus other makers like Atari and Commodore to deliberately change their OSes appearance). Activision was sued by Atari in 1980 for making cartridges without permission. Nintendo was sued in the late 80s for not sharing their cartridge patents with Atari & other 3rd-party vendors. NCSA Mosaic sued Netscape for copying their browser concepts in the early 90s.

Yeah. Sure. "Open and willing to share". Not.

Re:We are blessed

[Tastecicles]

Citation: Patent 4,873,662, Informaton for display at a terminal apparatus of a computer is stored in blocks the first part of which contains the information which is actually displayed at the terminal and the second part of which contains information relating to the display and which may be used to influence the display at the time or in response to a keyboard entry signal. For example, the second part of the block could include information for providing the complete address of an another block which would be selected by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard. The second part of the block could alternatively influence the format and/or color of the display at the terminal. When a block is read from the store of the computer the second part is retained in another store which may be located in the terminal or in the computer itself or perhaps both. The invention is particularly useful in reducing the complexity of the operating protocol of the computer.

This was the basis for their 2000 claim on the patent (filed 1976, granted at the USPTO 1989) which they subsequently lost. IBM and Lockheed-Martin also tried to lay claim on hyperlinks, which they both also lost.