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Apple and Samsung Both Get South Korea Bans
New submitter Mackadoodledoo sends this quote from the BBC:
"A South Korean court has ruled that Apple and Samsung both infringed each other's patents on mobile devices. The court imposed a limited ban on national sales of products by both companies covered by the ruling. It ruled that U.S.-based Apple had infringed two patents held by Samsung, while the Korean firm had violated one of Apple's patents. The sales ban will apply to Apple's iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and its tablets the iPad and iPad 2. Samsung products affected by the ban include its smartphone models Galaxy SI and SII and its Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet PCs."
Remind me, how do these patents benefit the public again?
You don't understand it. The lawyers are indeed really happy. They still got paid.
My guesstimate is the lawyers are on retainer and/or are corporate salaried so they would have gotten paid anyway.
I don't think this is right. According to a recent article at Bloomberg this is actually causing a spike in lawyers and their services as this demand expands. From the article:
Costs are higher in cases before the ITC. The Washington agency has shorter timelines, squabbles over obtaining information from overseas companies, and no limits on how much pretrial evidence can be gathered or witnesses questioned. Forty or more lawyers may be assigned to each side in an ITC case, based on a review of dockets.
U.S. district court hearings can have 20 lawyers on either side. One or two wil take the lead, and the rest will be responsible for specific witnesses, the technology behind a single patent, or the legal arguments backing a key point.
“These big global cases, they become no stone unturned, no grain of sand unturned -- and for every one you turn over, you examine every facet,” Long said. “To do that, you need lots of people. You go down 1,000 rabbit holes, 10,000 rabbit holes, and most of them are empty but there’s one of them that’s not.”
The smartphone makers don’t disclose their total patent litigation costs. At some smaller companies, those expenses are enough to affect earnings. Computer-chip designer Rambus Inc. (RMBS) spent $56 million each in 2008 and 2009 when it was embroiled in trials, and chip packaging company Tessera Inc. (TSRA) has spent as much as $84 million in a year, based on their annual reports.
I believe these lawyers are assigned cases by their firm and the more cases the more lawyers and the more money paid. Of course, as that last paragraph notes, this means less innovation and more lawyers -- something nobody should want except the lawyers.
My work here is dung.