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Victory For Apple In "Patent Trial of the Century," To the Tune of $1 Billion
pdabbadabba writes "The jury is in in the epic patent dispute between Apple and Samsung and Apple appears to be coming out on top. The court is still going through the 700+ items on the verdict form, but things seem to be going Apple's way so far. In the case of Apple's various UI patents, the jury is consistently ruling that Samsung not only violated Apple's patent, but did so willfully." Reader bob zee also points to the AP's story, as carried by Breitbart.com, and Charliemopps adds Reuters' take. Reader Samalie contributes a link to a live blog of the (at this writing) ongoing recitation of the verdict. Whether you like it or not, even this verdict won't be the last word.
In the end the only true winners, are the lawyers.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
I call bullshit, that jury was stacked. You can't sift through such a complex case in 22 hours and come to an informed decision.
sorry, but I think this is wild bullshit
I guess I better get ready to pony up to Apple for those brownies with rounded, beveled edges I made last night.
sigh. :-(
"UI patents", more like patents on basic shapes and positioning.
Apple should be burned for even being granted such a retarded thing, even if it is the patent systems fault.
What the hell do you expect Samsumg to do? Make a damn oval phone? A TRIANGLE?
Fuck Apple and every single person that defends them. Pure scum, both Apple and them.
Ya know, as much as I get patent infringement as a patent holder, alot of this is really really trivial. The iPhone isn't really so much different than the Treo I used years before there was an iPhone. Most of this is obvious (in patent terms) and iterative but the bottomline is that I'm not buying another iPhone. Apple owns a large portion of marketshare, it's stock is sky-high and I'm going to vote the dollars of me personally to other vendors. Enough is enough.
Tim Cook, Shame on you....
Circular with razor sharp edges!
We all know this won't be over for a long time to come, appeal after appeal after appeal.
To Apple, it's... a good week.
Why'd you have to link to the AP article via that (dead) troll Breitbart?
Here are some other sources, thanks Google:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19377261
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577609810658082898.html
I'm sure the AP article can be found via a more... reputable site.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to don a biohazard suit and hide from all the Apple fanboys masturbating wildly to the news.
According to the Verge http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/ Apple was awarded $1,051,855,000 in damages. Samsung got nada. Zip. Zero.
Big win for Apple and a legal lesson to the folks who claimed this case was about "a rectangle with rounded corners."
The fact is that Apple is not suing quite a few Android vendors based on design patents - only Samsung, with blatant copies of products.
They are not suing Amazon for the fire, or Google for the Nexus line....
So I don't think Apple in this case is stifling real innovation, they are just trying to punish companies that are obviously copying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When it costs a small developer millions of dollars to patent search and licence obvious designs, we have killed innovation.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
go buy asian to hell with americans and let me know how that gold standard works out
Thanks Timothy... not.
In the case of Apple, it's clear that Samsung was directly copying Apple on many fronts - hell, look at their Samsung Stores or their power adapters. This case however, will immediately be appealed and this is nowhere near the last we'll hear of it.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Oh shut up you fucking Aspie.
The only thing that was resolved today was which company gets to appeal the decision. And I suspect Samsung has a lot of grounds on which to appeal.
My userid is prime!
I wonder why Samsung wouldn't just leave US market, after all, it is only some 20% of worldwide smartphone market and shrinking. Just like Google left China with search engine nad let Chinese eat their own Baidu dogfood, US market is broken, so it is better left to Apple alone.
839*929
I'm sure most people on Slashdot are going to think the entire jury was filled with idiots and the outcome is a travesty.
Mind you, that probably would have been true regardless of which side won...
Well, I'm glad I have some AAPL stock.
until all the facts are in, but I'm guessing that the $1bn number is the least of Samsungs and other smartphone manufacturers problems. Apple will now go after everyone else and I'm sure they wont be licensing anything to their competitors. Of course however an appeal is 100% guarenteed.
That's like saying that a law against walking on cracks in the footpath is clearly retarded, but you did it and so the death penalty is perfectly justified.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Which is a significant problem with having juries in thorny, complex civil trials. Emotion, procedural rules and the voire dire triumph over expertise and reason. It can work in your favour or against you, but it is impossible to verify that the thinking processes of the jury are rigorous. At least judges sitting on their own have to explain the process by which they reached their decisions. Here the reasoning process appears to be a badly filled in sudoku...
Samsung is their biggest threat and that is why they have gone after them first, should it verdict be held up after appeal I have no doubt they will go after the rest.
Samsung makes good devices, but they really did go out of their way to copy the look and feel of apple devices. Samsung even goes as far as to put customizations on top of Andriod to make it more apple-like. If you deny this, you are a moron that lacks basic rational facilities or in complete denial. A few seconds of cursory observation is all it takes to confirm this beyond any doubt.
Weather or not the above is legal is what is being settled in the courts right now. It looks like our legal system is coming out in favor of apple's position.
I see the trial was in San Jose. I am curious whether Koreans will be suspicious of the verdict. Maybe such trials should be on neutral ground. For what it's worth, halfway from San Jose to Korea from West to East appears to be, roughly, France.
What? For a fucking shape?
Go look at the evidence. The designs were around long, long, long before Apple did anything with them.
And *real* tech patents? Nothing.
This trial shows nothing but what Americans value, and that's shiny fashion accessories.
This marks the nail in the coffin for American economic dominance. Other countries will pull out because the US will become a backwater of markets dominated by fiefdoms propped up by bullshit patents. Patents are killing off real competition and innovation. We're going to be stuck with shiny toys while the rest of the world enjoys advances in standards of living.
Welcome to your new glorified banana republic.
Toally agree. It's stupid to think that having competition is good. Clearly, the only smartphone that is allowed to exist is the iPhone. Everything else is a rip-off because it has icons and is rectangular.
Yes, because Apple /never/ /ever/ copied Xerox.
My gut reaction now is that I don't want to have anything to do with Apple products, nor be any part in their software ecosystem.
your move Google.
Breitbart.com? What has the world come to? Or slashdot for that matter? I'd need to deslime my eyeballs if I followed that link. I'd need to clear my browser history so I could forget. Yuck.
I'm no fanboy and though I originally figured that Apple was whining, when I saw some of the side-by-side comparison images of some products, I definitely saw form factor similarity, so I can see that there may be some infringement. To form a more solid opinion regarding other aspects I'd have to look into things further, and I would rather spend my time on other things. Since going to CES 2011 and being astonished and turned off by the extreme and desperate tablet "me, too" offerings which offered little better or more innovative, I've really wanted to see some other company actually come up with something striking and different. I see this as very possible and don't understand what the difficulty is. I'm sure that Apple can be topped but apparently no one creative enough is getting the capital to take the lead.
Wow, welcome to drudgedot. All conservative, all the time. I'm so glad you guys could find me a "news" source that could tell me how this is all the personal fault of Bill Clinton and can only be solved with massive tax cuts for the rich.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
FUCK APPLE.
Off to buy 5 new Samsung phones and 3 tablets.
Did I say, FUCK APPLE???
The patent system is broken. The real question is should the patents that Apple claims Samsung infringed upon been granted. Imagine if this happened in the car industry. Only the first car company to put anti-lock brakes on their cars would ever be allowed to use the technology. Good ideas get copied. That is what is called progress. Only the specific implementation of that idea should be patented.
Samsung: Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!
Is why Samsung hasn't just had some large hiccups with the chips they supply for the IPhone and IPad?
Oops.. the Iphone5 will be late.
The only good thing that has come of this is the media attention for how Apple is behaving. I was reading the comments on a 'normal' news website about another Apple patent related matter, and the dislike for them was very prevalent. Anti-Apple sentiments seemed to be about 90% of the comments. You can't be that much of a dick for that long without losing business. Look at Sony. Apple will always have the blind followers who have been using them for years, but most i think they'll lose in the end.
The good thing is that Apple learned how to protect its look and feel from the Microsoft case. Trade dress, how about that.
Triple damages due to willful infringement. Ouch.
But that's only going to be a quarter of profit for Samsung. More important is the loss of face that Samsung just incurred.
From now on, all of Samsung's products will be as confusing as the galaxy note 10. They won't have Apple's UX to fall back on anymore.
Just nasty BS, apple i hope to be alive the day you dissapear devoured by a bunch of hyena lawyers.
If Apple used in-house lawyers, they just saved a bundle.
If Apple didn't use in-house lawyers and Samsung did, well the lawyers did very well.
That said, couldn't Apple just buy Greece and make an end run to keep Germany from buying all the Greek islands? They could then have the rights to name future Apple products after specific Greek islands ... plus have lots of vacation spots for employees!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Really? Then why is Samsung the butt of the joke on shows like Conan?
Your side? So, it's like that now??
So you have no problem with "rounded corner" patents while Apple is clearly hiding under FRAND argument and refusing to even pay the industry-agreed token fees for basic technology like radios which makes mobile communication possible?
Congrats Slashdot. This comment is modded up as of now. You have officially turned full retard now.
Qualcomm crushing Nokia in forcing a settlement in 2008 entirely in Qualcomm's favor is the patent lawsuit of the century. Nokia transferred patents to Qualcomm and agreed to pay continuing cash payments to Qualcomm. Qualcomm in a few years time had a complete ARM SoC solution and is continuing to expand its baseband chip capabilities both for backwards compatibility and forwards supporting various LTE frequencies. Nokia months after the settlement dropped its support for WiMAX, then a couple of years later was forced to use Qualcomm's SoC just to produce the Lumia Windows phones. That day was the real end of Nokia. In one instant Nokia's entire phone system, from operating system down to the hardware, was finished for the future.
With rounded corners. Don't forget the rounded corners...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Alexander Graham Bell called, he wants Apple to quit using his idea.
After they paid them with stock in the company.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
"Stacked" is a dangerous word, implying Apple illegally influenced the jury before they made that verdict. Unless you have evidence of this, don't throw around a word like that lightly. If you merely think that Apple is simply lucky with the jury panel they got in this case, then just say so.
You have no idea what the heck you are talking about or forgot your /sarcasm switch.
Every piece of technology (including Apple's) ever created was based on some prior art except the wheel.
But 'a rectangle with rounded corners' IS what... this was about.
http://www.dailytech.com/Jury+Finds+Samsung+Guilty+of+Vast+Willful+Infringement+of+Apples+Smartphones/article25515c.htm
You're right in that it's not the only thing it was about. It was also about...
I don't know what lesson you suggest we should have learned, but I'm pretty sure the one people are going to be learning in the months to come is that your patent system is fubar.
They didn't even copy Palm
So basically you can look forward to an Apple only world from now on because they have the most money and people are too stupid to realize Apple did not invent the world.
Fuck Apple.
Apple employee? Yeah, it is a great day for you. Not for consumers or the market though.
It's like watching two tv manufactures complain about infringement because both tv's use flat panels for display, use a power button and have a remote control "OMG".
or all the car companies suing each other over the fact the others are using round tires too with a steering wheel no less, the audacity!
It's to the point now that really, no one gives a flying fuck anymore. It's become pretty much the defacto standard for devices to look a certain way, especially in something using such small form factors like tablets and smart phones. I mean what the hell else should they make it look like? a triangle? Side by side I don't any issues telling them apart and what they have on the inside is not even remotely the same, neither is the software they run.
This is not garnering any good will for apple win or lose so I really hope this 1 billion or whatever if they win helps massage away the pain of losing almost all of their slice of the world mobile os marketshare pie. something like 14-18% apple to androids 65-68% or pretty close to it. Apple, perhaps you should call and make friends with .. oh .. what the heck were they called? blueberry or some crap.. those stupid things with the actual clicky screens?... oh yeah RIM.
I can tell you this much. I will certainly never purchase another apple product if I can help it, especially their mobile and tablet devices. I will buy Android every time and most probably a Samsung or if Google starts running it like I hope, perhaps a Motorola if it gets the next generation of "Nexus". Why? well aside from being better in pretty much all respects and most probably being cheaper as well, it's open source so I can do what I want with it. Saw a pamphlet at Verizon for that insurance company they use and I saw apple customers get to pay like 100 more for their deductible.... oh yeah fun stuff.
Samsung should put a kickstarter type of page together for donations lol. I'd donate to help fuck over apple.
Apple has 100 billion dollars in the bank, they can afford to pay their lawyers up-front, so of course the lawyers won't be getting a cut of the settlement.
TV and movie people are the biggest fanboys around, as they've tended to use predominantly Apple hardware for a very long time. Have a look at what's on people's desks on most TV shows. That media push once they started to be relevant again has gone a long way in getting Apple free advertising.
If they keep this up, they'll tear the patent system to pieces and we'll be forced to start again.
More please. Bring it on. Its about time we got two companies in the ring who simply hate each other.
Cross-licensing agreements only benefit the companies involved - and they're a boring spectacle.
A battle to the death, however, benefits all of us.
Glad for Apple, Samsung is copying everything from Apple and Apple must defend their IP.
This is good for all of us, it will force other companies to innovate instead of ripping ideas.
Samsung should not be allowed to copy all the features the iPhone and get away with it, whether you like it or not.
I kind of expected it, given that it's fairly obvious to everybody (modulo fandroids) that Samsung ripped them off and many of Koh's decisions fucked Samsung, but stilll...
Holy fucking shit.
Even if reversed on appeal, Samsung is on the record as being nothing more than a rip-off artist.
Except, what they do is take everyone's incremental ideas, throw fashion onto it, and chop down their original design ideas into crap just to be first-to-market with a particular physical design. Then they market the hell out of it, appealing to all their customers "mee too" mindset. Apples products are fashion first, technology second. Their behavior in the marketplace is more like Louis Vuitton protecting a name brand than a technology company protecting an idea.
I would suggest that copying is not the right word to use... "inspired by" would probably be a more apt term.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Someone keep an eye on the Samsung Galaxy designers... I bet they're about to have "an accident"...
Bow before me, for I am root.
Sure, there are many shades of gray.
If this verdict prevails, and other smart phones will soon fade, Apple is in the cross-hair anti-monopoly law soon.
Remember Microsoft's legal trouble in anti-monopoly front? Microsoft actually invested in Apple to keep Apple alive, just to make sure there is competitor in the market. Apple, mind you, today's victory is your fall for the next day.
That is all.
Let's see, last year Samsung's revenues were 134 billion... profits - 14 billion... considering 80% growth since 2012, we can assume most of it was from mobile devices... so in the end, this is chump change to them, maybe a 10% reduction on the bottom line earnings from those phones. I think they'll be fine. People didn't buy their phones because they looked like iPhones, so they will continue buying them just as well.
Bow before me, for I am root.
The Nexus S 4G is part of the lawsuit.
What's bullshit is that you can't go to the USPTO to invalidate a patent.
For one, they rubber stamp everything and expect the courts to sort it out
For two, if you fail on a reexam request, you LOSE DEFENSES in court if later someone sues you for infringement.
Invalidating the patents will make the judgement moot. Spending a few million will get that done, much cheaper!
TV and movie people are the biggest fanboys around, as they've tended to use predominantly Apple hardware for a very long time. Have a look at what's on people's desks on most TV shows. That media push once they started to be relevant again has gone a long way in getting Apple free advertising.
Yeah, and most Republican bigwigs want Mitt Romney as President too, but that doesn't mean Joe Average is going to vote for him.
I mean, the century is only 12 years old now... is the submitter seriously thinking that there won't be something bigger in the next 88?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
To Corp.s Enter. No one Leaves!
I agree that the situation is fucked up, but can we do without the brainless cliches for once? Yeah, it's a big payday for the lawyers, but that's true every day in this litigious society. They're not the winners, they're just well-paid peons.
The winner (of a sort, see below) is Apple. They're the ones that hired the lawyers, and the lobbyists, and the politicians, so that they can cash in big on a few design patents.
The losers is everybody who depends on innovation. Which is to say everybody, including Apple, though they they will see some short term financial benefits.
What's the answer? Well it's not to elect Dennis Kucinich, or Ron Paul, or Ralph Nader, or Ross Perot, or whoever the white knight is this week. Even if such a pure-minded soul had the slightest hope of winning an election in the real world, he'd be even less well equipped to fight The Bad Guys than mainstream politicians.
You've got to fix the system. You've got to throw away the stupid cliches, develop an actual understanding of how the system works, and start electing people who will actually fix it. Not just Presidents. Representatives and Senators too. (How many of you know the name of your Representative and where he or she stands on IP issues?) And you keep an eye on what they're doing, not just wait until it becomes obvious that they've sold out and whine about it.
That's hard work, and it won't happen overnight. It's so much easier to say "Don't Reward Corruption!" and refuse to have anything to do with mainstream politics. But it's time to give up on the lazy, simple-minded righteousness and actually do stuff.
Sure, but how many vote with their wallet? And the sad thing is that Slashdot is hardly any better.
LOL @ all you whiners.
Samsung stole, now will pay. Suck it up little girls.
That's not due to Hollywood being fanboys. That's all paid-for advertising. Apple pays those shows and movies for product placement. Pretty much anytime you see a real product in a show, it's paid-for product placement.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Retina displays. Right. Except they weren't the first for that, the Nokia smartphones were there (though, IIRC 20ppi lower, but then again, Apple were below "Retina" too by about 50ppi).
Multitouch. No, not really much use on a phone, and they were buying their stuff from another company anyway, they didn't do it themselves, just licensed it.
App ecosystem? For a phone? If you exclude twocows and RedHat repositories, you might have a point. Except you can't.
PS given patents last 25 years, why the hell are you whining about a five year limit here? So you can exclude the MOBILE TELEPHONY patents?
Apple insists they never pay for product placement. Of course, they've lied about a rather large number of other things, so you never know.
He had a patent but it ran out so he can call all he wants.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
And Samsung's success has come largely from ripping Apple off. I don't like what this case says about our patent system, but when you look at what Samsung has done, it's hard to argue the jury got it wrong.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
The only good thing that has come of this is the media attention for how Apple is behaving. I was reading the comments on a 'normal' news website about another Apple patent related matter, and the dislike for them was very prevalent. Anti-Apple sentiments seemed to be about 90% of the comments. You can't be that much of a dick for that long without losing business. Look at Sony. Apple will always have the blind followers who have been using them for years, but most i think they'll lose in the end.
Blind followers, or most people just don't share your opinion, regardless of little Internet bubbles convincing you otherwise.
Samsung have produced a superior product, therefore Apple needs to attack them first.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
The fact is that Apple is not yet suing quite a few Android vendors based on design patents - only Samsung, with blatant copies of products.
fixed that for you.
You are 100% correct. NO Corporate media outlet allows any free advertisement. They block and scramble logos all the time because they dont want to give anyone free advertisement or be subject to lawsuit.
Anytime you see an Apple logo on tv, its because Apple paid for it to be there.
Just like when I watch Mythbusters, they cover up the Apple logo on their show, or the dell logo on their laptops as well.
If you think you can measure public opinion by the tone of posts on the Internet you are hopelessly deluded.
They are not suing Amazon for the fire, or Google for the Nexus line....
Yet.
-- QED
That's all pretty much no true.
Apple is suing over the Nexus line. Not only is the Nexus S part of this suit, but they got an injunction for a while against the Galaxy Nexus for their patent on searching more than one database with a single search.
Furthermore, this suit just affirmed their software patents on pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, and bouncing on scrolling past the end of a list. Finding these software patents valid and that Samsung violated them was a huge part of this case.
Apple ripped off the original graphic user interface from Xerox Parc. For years Apple advertised in magazines that it had "invented" the mouse when it was actually some guy at MIT. Now their stupid patent on rectangles stands. So disappointing.
... are the ones who look at Samsung handsets and tablets and don't see the Apple design as the basic building block. Whining because Samsung couldn't innovate its way out of a wet paper sack doesn't justify what they did. Now if Samsung was smart they'd pay Apple the $1.05B on the steps of an IRS office in California to make it easier for Apple to pay it's taxes lol.
I still want to know why iPhones are called Smartphones. in order to do most of what a smartphone does don't you have to buy and install 3rd party apps and still cannot sync your PIM info to any computer.
Basically it still fails to be what Palm, Blackberry and even MS Mobile devices are. Its not a smartphone, its a mediaphone.
Undo.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
because conan is an american show and apple is an american company and samsung is a korean company?
Sorry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dung_beetle
That fellows carries something that's round, rolling and created before the wheel
sickening
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
i am so excited for apple and their winning lottery ticket for a billion dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what will they do with all this money????????????????????? i cannot even endeavor to understand it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they should probably buy a giant hat with an apple on top of it that says apple rulez!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you hold the apple logo sideways it reminds me of the rem koolhaas library in seattle, that is where bill gates got so smart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bill gates come fast, apple has more money than you now!!!!!!!!!!!
Sjee, who will win... Lol.
This is bullshit. This is bullshit. This is bullshit
Actually, I have been on a jury, and pretty much everyone took their job pretty seriously and tried to do their best. I'm not sure where you get off saying this. Have you been on a jury before?
Did you know that you can eject people from a jury who are behaving they way you say?
This stereotype of jurors is probably hurting the legal system more than anything else. Just because you're a moron who doesn't take his responsibilities seriously doesn't mean everyone else doesn't either.
Blame the broken software patent system. Remember, Samsung, Motorola Mobility, Microsoft, etc, are also suing prolifically with mobile patent suits.
Apple (like the other companies mentioned above), is only acting in the interests of their shareholders. That's their legal obligation as a publicly traded corporation.
Fix the software patent laws (or eliminate them altogether) and the problem goes away.
This space left intentionally blank.
I agree (for the most part) with this, but patents were never intended to protect an idea 100%. They were to spread an idea so somebody else can improve upon or go about it in different way, without flat out copying it of course. In this case, It is hard to tell who copied who without going into objective accusations. From a standard business (non-apple fanboy) point of view, Samsung could have simply took an idea from Apple (or vice-versa) and improved upon it.
Patent lawsuits are more about splitting hairs than actual facts now.
50 according to that book.... :)
I keed I keed... lighten up everyone... two behemoths just showed us why the Patent System needs reforming.... it won't help much, but no real people got hurt in this melee... unless you count the boredom forced on the jury. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
At trial Apple gave 5 examples of families of smartphones that were developed independently. The problem is Android not smartphones. Windows Phone, MeeGo, BBOS even Samsung's own Tizen are independent by Apple's own admission.
Both those companies sell one single product and represent a tiny fraction. The way to become dominant is to create a precedent and intimidate the other players. The only other major player is HTC and they'll probably be bankrupt by this time next year. Android might survive, but Apple have certainly done a good job in killing HTC.
You should have doubt. Apple made multiple sworn statements where they indicated various other phones and ways they didn't infringe.
I think creating a document on how to improve your phones by evaluating how an existing phone works is probably what lost this case for them.
As much as you'd like to think that it's just about a rectangle with rounded corners, well, that's not really what this was about. It's the software, stupid.
What you barely hearing, is the sound of human progress grinding to a halt.
OH #$@% !!!!
This is good for Apple. The outcome was as expected. I have seen both the phones, the evidence was overwhelming in favor of Apple. Having worked with Patents for many years, Samsung blatantly ripped off of Apple's innovation. Before Apple, we had Microsoft's phones, Blackberries, Nokia etc. It doesn't take a rocket science to figure out - the interface smoothness was innovated by Apple. Remember it is not the work on one company, everyone else before Apple launched had patents. And Apple did was innovate on those existing patents and in the process improved AND/OR created new patents. Look on the bright side, innovation helped change the world. Everyone's lives are easier (or will get complicated - that is another story) - look iPad revolutionized tablets. MSFT has been trying for years, but Apple made the game. I am not a Apple Fanboy, but a person who understands properly on how Patent System Works and how to do Business. Apple win is good for consumers, in the long term - this even helps out to all the developers of the app store. And to people who say it is bad for innovation - you have no damn idea what the hell you are talking about (it is just noise). And scouring the web for blog post and commentary about Apple vs Samsung - this has to be one of the most insightful commentary ever on http://ow.ly/ddERM (this is a damn blog, not spam here) and the rebuttal is amazing - the damn pic. Seriously check out the blog....if not - whateva - your loss
One of the reasons this trial ever happened was because consumers was mislead by Samsung into believing that they actually bought an Apple device instead of a Samsung. That's why consumers will benefit.
Oh please. Show me one person that even claims to have inadvertently bought a Samsung when they intended to buy an Apple. It says Samsung right on the freaking box!
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
So does no one on this "news site for nerds" recall the keynote speech where Jobs introduced the iPhone?
The end of his sentence was, "...and we have patented the heck out of it."
That was a hint to others to not go out and simply copy their design. Apple is just following through on this years-ago promise. Samsung was warned...
....died with him. Now, Apple is going to be treated like a normal company again in the press and by customers. It will just take a while for that new reality to get past the remnants of the distortion field's effects inside Apple.
Even Palm copied a lot of stuff. I worked for GRiD Systems (1990-1994) back when Jeff Hawkins worked there. We had a pen-based SDK with handwriting recognition. He developed the handwriting recognition algorithms which were used in the GRiDPad, which incidentally was manufactured by Samsung.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
I noticed the same thing as you while browsing the comments on some "normal" news sites. However, I do have to say this - I occasionally view the comments on "normal" news sites and I have to say that the only people posting have to be the scum of the earth. For anyone complaining about trolling on Slashdot, or even Dig or Reddit, those comments pale in comparison to the vile bigoted spew that makes up 90% of "normal" news site comments.
Now, I'm not saying that the comments in this case fall into that category, I would just caution anyone reading too much into news site comments. I'm not sure that they are representative of most people.
First Apple product was the Apple computer. They built a better KIM-1 or a cheaper Altair. Next the built the Apple II. Big innovation (from Jobs) was the plastic case. Now they sue someone else for round corners. Yes, the Apple Reality Distortion Field is still working. By the way, I love Woz, he was the real guy.
When the jury read the verdict, they ended with "Disclaimer: We are long Apple."
Most other vendors just couldn't match up. Motorola made terrible phones and had crap support. HTC makes some decent phones but none were quite up to Samsung, or were only available in limited markets.
Sony? Overpriced and gimicky.
Samsung made the best Android phones in the current generation, not the look of the phones but features/spec
You all ripping on apple are full of shit in this case. Apple does plenty wrong and plenty right, but the fact of the matter is Samsung is in full on copy mode. Their phones and tablets are clones of Apple, their stores are clones of Apple and now they have a commercial that is a clone of those Johnny Ive clips from product intros. It is apparently impossible for them to do anything other than copy Apple and you are all calling Apple the bad guy and trotting out the tired (and false) "rectangle with rounded corners" meme? In your attempts to be intellectual techie snobs you've all become lemmings. You've become the very sheep you ridicule when you talk about Apple customers.
The new anti-sheep, same as the old sheep!
Apple has claimed in the past they could compete on innovation alone. That doesn't appear to be the case anymore.
Think not.
I bought a few call contracts on Apple for cheap not long ago. The spot price is rapidly approaching my strike price. Everybody just keep saying "Apple" and "$1 Billion" for the next week or so...
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
Can someone explain why this was a jury trial, in the first place? The common jury can, typically, barely comprehend even our most fundamental laws. Like the Bill of Rights, in even their most simple forms. They tend to be irrational and uninformed. Regardless of the outcome, here, exactly how is a jury supposed to deliberate on something so deep and convoluted and complex that CEOs, technical experts, legal experts and many others who are thoroughly educated and experienced in these fields can't even come to a conclusion?
Also, can we please avoid linking to breitbart? What's wrong with linking to the actual AP article? Or doing it via google or another website? Does that Matt Drudge coat-tail-riding-nut's site really need the extra attention and traffic driven to it?
They are not suing Amazon for the fire, or Google for the Nexus line....
They did sue over Nexus (and not just once). They just sue Samsung over it rather than Google, because Samsung is the hardware manufacturer. But all patents invoked so far are software patents (swipe to unlock, overscroll), so in reality they are suing over stock Android functionality that Google wrote, not Samsung's additions.
Samsung's success has come largely from making good phones. As in, large high quality screens and powerful hardware. On both counts they handily beat iPhones from the same generation, which is why I personally ditched iPhone 4 back in the day for S2, and never looked back.
Oh, and as a user of both products? Any person that thinks that S2 looks or works like iPhone 4, after using one for a few minutes, is retarded.
Did they indicate any other Android phones that are not infringing?
Not over yet.
A very big victory for Apple on this day.
Samsung will appeal so it can go on for a few more years (remember SCO?) before final closure is reached given that Samsung stands to loose 10s of Billions in dollars over just a few years if their products are 1) banned in North America markets and 2) repercussions with the European and South American markets.
Affect on and from the China market would be marginal since many manufactures there ripp-off anything 'Made in USA'.
They didn't even copy Palm
If you were being sarcastic, allow me to support you. If you were being sincere, allow me to refute you.
Here's a device that is full screen, one primary button on the bottom middle, icons lined up in rows and columns, has installable apps, and is rectangular shaped with rounded corners. I'm sure you know by looking at the image provided that it is NOT an Apple device and came out years before the first iphone. The design for this device had been around for years before this particular model came out.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
They believe all of Android is infringing their functional patents. Generally they haven't alleged physical infringement with other vendors like Motorola. Since they have specifically indicated RIM phones are not copies something like the Motorola Charm wouldn't infringe (physically). Similarly something like the Kyocera Milano I can't see how you could argue that was a physical copy.
In terms of more broadly, that is more than just physical copies. No. They believe all of Android violates their functionality patents. Android (from Apple's perspective) would need to get another GUI. But again MeeGo isn't being used, is frankly better than iOS, is available (open source) , Jolla is busy porting MeeGo to run Android apps so.... I don't see a crisis.
In unrelated news, Apple announces a price increase in the cost of iPhones due to sudden, "unexplained" price increases from critical suppliers.
Perhaps the award (if not decision) would have been much less had it not bee for plaintiff's exhibit 44 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/102322739/Samsung-Comparison-Report).
Actually the only real loss for Apple was the most talked about design patent. The D'889 iPad Design patent infringement alleged against Samsung's tablets was rejected by the Jury. This was the rectangle with rounded corners patent. So this is the one bright spot in this travesty.
The other design patents D'087 affected just a few phones, and D''677 effect most of the phones. But since they didn't effect all of the devices these patents probably won't have much of a long term impact (other than costing Samsung a lot).
The D'305 patents is a user interface patent on a grid of rounded square icons on a black background (can you believe they actually got a patent on that - sounds like most GUI interfaces the last 20 years). This impacted most of the phones but not all again so it shows this will probably not have a long term impact beyond the jury verdict itself.
The killer is the '381 "rubber band" patent and the '915 multi-touch/pinch-to-zoom patent. These are just patents on basic ideas. These are ideas, not inventions. All that is required to implement them is just the idea. A programmer could go and implement these features never having seen them before. These basic ideas are pretty much going to follow from using your fingers as the user interface so removing these features will make a pretty crappy user experience.
But the experts the idiotic news organizations interview say this big Apple win will lead to a lot of new innovation because competitors will have to jump through hoops to get around these patents. I know, we'll have a tongue interface. Double lick to zoom anyone!!
As we all know, the cost of this fine will ultimately be shifted to Samsung customers. Who is a major Samsung customer? Apple is, of course. Congratulations to Apple for getting a jury to increase its iPhone manufacturing costs by about $1B.
No, because if you discovered some combination that would allow phones made according to your design to compete in the market, Apple would pay enough lawyers and witnesses (and maybe judges) to pervert the truth until it looked like your design infringed their patents.
Wait, isn't that pretty much what happened here?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Linux, like Samsung, has many looks and feels which are not owned by Apple. I would encourage you to try a few, you might like them. You might even discover that the operating systems and hardware don't mean much these days. What matters is what we can do with the technology, not who is most capable of limiting your use of it.
Gotta cite for that?
How was it that they were found not to be infringing? Under what argument? Just because they were not Android or something?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
How is it good for consumers? Who do you think pays for the innovation? Who do you think pays for expensive legal wrangling that takes years to resolve? Who do you think pays for corporations to cover their losses? Who do you think pays for corporations to lobby governments for laws that protect and/or favor them? Ultimately, no matter what happens in cases like this it's the consumer that gets screwed the most.
Yes... that's pretty much what I was referring to. Looks remarkably like almost any small screened computing device because it's an OBVIOUS design choice.
What, you're suggesting somebody here get out and run for office or something?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Stupid patents shouldn't be allowed to live. Samsung makes good products. Samsung made good products before the upstart young snippet came along. Samsung was building cell phones when apple was still trying to be a computer company. Apple learned how to be rat-bastard-lawyers when Apple records sued them over the name 'apple', so this really all does stem from the rat-bastardness of the recording industry, but I digress. Obvious, my-kid-did-this-in-kindergarten patents should not be allowed to live. Look and feel? A pre-schooler from ancient Rome could have come up with that. And probably did. Rounded corners? Its bullshit! Go to any art gallery. There should be at least 9 centuries of prior art!
I think everyone would agree the patent system is fubar. However going by the current patent system I strongly believe the result has been justifiable.
If I was in Apples position and saw such a big fat cow to milk ... I would set my lawyers on them too - who wouldn't?
end of story.
So, your saying that the jury was right in assuming Samsung stole an idea from Apple - solely based off a 100% broken patent system?
:-P) that no one else would have been able to do or they were "only" the first to WORD it that way and like wise got the prize of the first patent concerning something so stupid and obvious - and have taken advantage of the said broken patent system...
You can't have it both ways, either Apple thought up such an ingenious design (rectangle with rounded corners
Elisha Gray called, an hour later to remind you that he left the same note before Alexander Bell contacted you.
The patent system has NEVER worked as claimed. However, It has ALWAYS worked as intended: To keep the competition out of the market.
Right, the 90s were a computing dark age.
Look at just two things that died during that timeframe:
1) OS/2
2) Be/OS
Both fantastic operating systems with many features we consider modern now. But Microsoft used the full power of monopoly to crush them before they could go anywhere.
It was also when Microsoft stamped out older OS's that might have many any kind of run or comeback, like AmigaOS.
We had to endure the whole decade moving forward at Microsoft's snail's pace, and whatever we could get from Linux...
Thankfully Microsoft was incapable of maintaining an all-powerful dynasty forever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm confused. You don't want Apple to be in control, but you don't think "copyists should run things". What's the third choice?
How do you see those as the only two possible options?
Apple didn't get where they are by copying other mobile OS's.
Similarly a real competitor for Apple could have an OS that was pretty unique. In fact we have two great examples, WebOS and WP7/8 .
Now they may be struggling for market (Ok, WebOS is quite a lot beyond "struggling for market") but only because Android has most of it currently. Even so both are great examples of how it is in fact possible to design really good mobile OS's that are very different than the iPhone.
But over time I think being very different from iOS and more stylistically pure than Android (which can be heavily tweaked by carriers) could be an advantage, so we still might see WP8 do well (and it kind of has to for Microsoft, never underestimate what a few billion dollars slathered with great vigor on developers can do).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I personally think that the time limit turned it into an unfair trial.
Remember it was Apple that had to forgo calling a ton of witnesses. In a case like this were you have to demonstrate harm at a reasonable level, it's much harder for Apple to present in a small timeframe than for Samsung to defend.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hopefully Samsung and others can make a model for non-US users. US users still have access to craps.
I guess Samsung should have used this quote for their defense and they would have won...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
As Steve Jobs said himself,
"Good artists copy...Great artists steal".
"We ... have been SHAMELESS at STEALING GREAT IDEAS."
Then just claim Samsung is a great artist like Apple. Case closed!
if (!sig) { printf("Signature Unavailable\n"); }
The iPhone isn't really so much different than the Treo
Are you nuts? I was a huge Palm fan before the iPhone came out. The iPhone was totally what the Treo should have been two years before the iPhone came out but never was thanks to Palm stupidly splitting resources to support WIndows Mobile.
The iPhone was a HUGE leap over the Treo in terms of what you could do, how it performed, the UI, the browser, etc.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sounds like they are going directly to a federal patent appeal court, so that would pretty much be it.
However given how quickly the jury was able to find for Apple and how one-sideed the verdict was (the jury found mostly that Apple either did not infringe on Samsung patents or that Samsung was seeking infringement on patents they could no longer enforce), it seems unlikely the appeal will change much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With a clear enough case lawyers will work for you on contingency. Yes they will suck up most of the damages but you really just wanted to stop the copying in the first place, right?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's pennies for both of these companies. Samsung had an operating profit of $14 Billion USD according to this last year.
Apple made a bit more, about $34 Billion USD.
This is pennies and all Samsung has to do is raise the price a bit on it's A5 processors and Screens used in those apple products to make up the difference. You'll
also see some licensing agreements come out of this because even though Apple won, the Jury didn't think they deserved $2.5 Billion.
So, you and I will pay an extra $10 bucks per phone because almost all Tablet/Cellphone manufacturer out there uses Samsung products, but the same can't be said about those same manufacturers buying Apple stuff. That regrettably is all that this hoopla means.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Apple may have won the lawsuit, but they've started losing the war for positive consumer mindshare. The 1Bn they won in damages will be a pittance compared to what they could have earned had they used Samsung's copying (and yes I do believe Samsung copied to some extent) in positive advertising for future product. Imagine a tag line that emphasises Apple's (purported/imaginary) innovative prowess that others copy just to keep up. That would make iphone users feel like they're leaders in fashion/tech, and android users mere followers. This would cement their fanbase (permanently) and tip those sitting on the fence in their favour. The windfall from sales would have made much more than 1bn, and it would still have, in the minds of consumers, made them look like originators of the ideas.
Apple lost, samsung lost, google lost. And we, the consumers have also lost.
There's not going to be a billion dollars changing hands. This will go on to appeal. Apple can't even afford to punish samsung given they make all the key parts. What apple won was it's certain there will be an injunction against samsung from making things that copy iphoe concepts. Everyone else will get the wake up call. It's good. they will have to think of other designs, come up with their own stuff. They have had plenty of time now.
everybody wins.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Correct, I ditched my iPhone for an SII, they're very different beasts. Using an iPhone feels very dated.
-Steve jobs, 1996 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
Who actually got hurt in this battle? Well apple probably lost some market share. But it's nokia that got killed. Nokia lost out to all the cheap non-apple spamrtphone makers who got ahead on these google powered apple work-alikes. Nokia didn't play that game and look where it got them. Nokia got hurt far worse than a a billion.
Eric Schmitt is the one that should be paying in the end. The reason the damages were so high is because the jury did't just decide that the two devices looked a bit alike but rather that the similarity was willful. The samsung documents showing that even they thought their innovations just didn't measure up to apples refinements was the nail in the coffin. That is, if all these things were really obvious and easily arrived at by clever engineers then that document woul dnot have existed and googles android not been so slavish a copy of the human interface features.
Surely there is more than one way to make a smart phone? Yes. Microsoft is clearly answering that question with a much more differentiated product that actually licenses the parts of its OS that are like apple from apple and others.
Nokia should be suing google.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Afterwards the jury members pulled out their iPhones and texted their family members.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
No matter how you slice it, the 1 Billion Dollar Reward has much to do with how judge Lucy Koh conducted the trial
It was a kangaroo court, to put it mildly
I won't be surprised if inside the 1 Billion Dollar Reward there's a cut somewhere reserved for the good judge
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A pre-trial motion or ORDER by the judge asked Apple to limit its proposed several dozen patent claims to a half dozen or less. The trial as evolved ended up dealing with what I seem to think was no more than 4 of them. These are individual claims on individual patents. This applied to some 2 dozen Samsung products and that limited scope generated 700 jury instructions.
It also limited the damages to about $1B. Had Apple been allowed to bring the original claims the damages would have been closer to $5B. Apple should refile the claims which were dismissed WITHOUT PREJUDICE for expedited consideration in light of the prior JURY VERDICT.
Apple may get injunctions post-facto for products which are at EOL anyway. This shows just how hollow patent and trademark rules are. You have the right to something, and the right to sue, and even to collect damages. But you have to wait YEARS to get satisfaction, consume massive attorney fees beyond even medium size businesses to pay for, and eat it as an unrecoverable cost, and even if you get the second layer of an INJUNCTION the intentional violator only need change a small thing to make the next thing go forward, and even if that also copies something, its day of reckoning will not occur for another 2 years after the damage is done.
The $1B is something like $4 per unit or less on a $200 unit cost which sold largely becaise it was a clone of somebody already proven successful. Proven by documents published by the perp.
JJ
22 hours of deliberations, in a courthouse 5 miles from apple HQ, in the heart of silicon valley.
yeah, I wanna see how this stands up to appeal.
At least it didn't file in the Eastern District of Texas.
Even the wheel isn't safe. I mean, when it comes down to it, the wheel is just a tablet with sufficiently rounded corners. Those patent infringing messopotamian motherfuckers!
I hate printers.
It's as if if millions of subjective Android fanbois suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
This just shows how insanely broken the legal and patient system are in the world. The only thing that should be patentable is a NEW invention, not a change, not an idea, not a concept, AN INVENTION. What Apple has done is exploited the patient system in the most horrible way possible, almost like when you find a life cheat in a video game, Apple is just cheating the system to make the game a joke. It's time to change the way the system works and return it back to what it should be.
They have conclusively been quantified at 50.
I hate printers.
Remind me to go Visit Steve Jobs grave and take a HUGE STEAMING DUMP!!!!!! Hey MORONS at Apple a rounded rectangle IS NOT INNOVATIVE, NEW, OR TECHNOLOGY. MAY YOU ROT IN HELL!
Retina display is not an iPhone innovation... they don't make displays!
and if anything it's a hack - they had to wait until the screen manufacturers made suitable screens at double the resolution because their GUI can't scale by anything other than an integer.
An optimal resolution is somewhat lower.. not wasting processing and battery power on extra pixels you can't make use of.
from: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18709232
>The judge said that HTC's "arc unlock" feature - which also involves a predefined gesture along a path shown >on-screen - would have infringed Apple's technology had it not been for a device released in 2004.
>
>The Neonode N1 showed a padlock on its screen with the words "right sweep to unlock" when it was in its >protected mode. A later version replaced the text with an arrow.
re: Automobiles
I refer you to an earlier posting in this thread:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3070989&cid=41119359
If you go to the Wikipedia page he refers to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden
Which also linked to :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent_war
which was a very interesting read on how the Wright Brothers held back the entire US Aviation industry !
So much for the U.S. Patent system encouraging innovation!
Maybe the internet will expose the patent system for what it is.... as if anyone knows.
You pay with high phone prices and little invention and development on them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I suppose that when people will go to the mall and see then Samsung's shelves empty (as happened to me when the Galaxy 10.1 was banned in Europe for a while) and is forced to buy Apple crap or desist, will get the perception of what Apple actually is and will realize that this company is evil. I recommend anyone I know against buying Apple products because Apple is bad for the consumers and for the innovation.
This isn't about patents and conceptual design and innovation. This is about blatant copycat ripoff knockoff cloning, right down the the boxes the products ship in, the 30-pin dock connector, and the identical wall wart. Samsung's infringing products are no better than street corner Gucci knockoff handbags. Samsung has no shame, and neither do consumers who reward Samsung by buying their Apple knockoffs. Because Apple is rich and makes cool stuff, it's best for consumers to let companies who can't or won't invest in their own innovations shortcut the R&D process by merely copying Apple's successful and popular products? I like EFF in general, but was pissed off by their Robin Hood argument that Apple shouldn't be allowed to be the only one to benefit from their inventions, as it would stifle innovation which hurts consumers. Apple doesn't want or need to stifle legitimate innovation and competition, they are big enough, rich enough and smart enough to respond in kind with innovation of their own. Apple wants to stifle clones and knockoffs. Inferior products designed to look just like superior products implies to the consumer there is no difference. Yet the consumer who thinks there is no difference ends up with a fake, imitation product that does not compare to the real thing, and dilutes the value of the copied product. This harms consumers. This verdict puts copiers on notice; design you own stuff, don't use Cupertino like your personal R&D lab.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
Hater nerds are going to be raging, herp derp derp. Normal people don't give a fuck - let alone comment, fag.
Rage on cocksucker! You're fucking pwned. Eat Apple cock!
What others things have not happened yet?
Check out the FRAND between between Apple and Microsoft. Although Samsung is the plaintiff, this is a driect attack on Google. Samsung and Apple are great partners.
Sorry, Defendant.....and direct.
A US company in a US court vs a foreign company.
As with Russia, the US views foreigners as piggy-banks to be raped for money as hard as possible. Sure, it props up the US economy in the short term, but in the longer term? I've a feeling that there will be a reaction, and the US shouldn't expect WTO/GATT to protect their money-grabbing antics much longer.
The US is doomed, and perhaps thats a good thing for the rest of the world...
maybe samsung should hire her to do an ad , showing her use a galaxy S3, and say, "I love the S3 more"
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Jury verdicts can and are appealed all the time, and can even be set aside by the judge in a trial. The only special case is a verdict of innocent in a criminal case. Since double jepordy doesn't allow someone to be retried when they are found innocent, an innocent verdict by a jury stands and cannot be overturned. A guilty one can though, as can any verdict in a civil case.
As a practical matter most civil trials have jury verdicts reduced on appeal. Jurors are notoriously free with other people's money and the appellate courts often reduce their awards.
Will BMW now sue Mercs? or will Sony sue LG or a wil samsung sue Apple when it makes its Apple TV w/Sanyo parts?
Will Nikon sue Lumix because, wow your camera uses a damn lens, your camera uses the same knob.
God, get real, every one has a right to copy another product as-is. You cannot (C) or patent a "LOOK", coordinates of buttons, or the fact that buttons are a 4x6 matrix etc...
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Usually when you go to trial, you retain outside council. The reason is that in-house corporate council is used to handling paperwork and so on, they usually don't have much trial experience.
So I'm betting if you look both companies retained outside council for this litigation. What that cost them is probably not something for public consumption.
Even if there was someone who was willing to reform the patent system, and he had a bunch of friends in politics who thought the same way to help him put it through, and they all got voted in...then what? Congratulations, you've just voted a bunch of people into power on the basis of one single issue.
Where do they stand on copyright? Foreign relations? Immigration? Health, defence, welfare/social security, privacy, tax, finance, technology, science, education, transport?
But who cares about minor things like that, they've pinky-promised to reform the patent system right?
I don't think Apple's in it to recover lost money anyway. I think they just want to stem the tide of Android knock-off phones so they can reclaim their brand image (which is very valuable to them, probably worth several hundred billion dollars). Winning this case will make it easier to get injunctions against infringing products, and should encourage Google, Samsung, HTC and others to redesign their products to be less apple-like and avoid the lawsuits and injunctions.
The finding that these products infringe on Apple's patents means that they can be banned from the US market. That's what Apple's after, they have no interest in collecting royalties.
It's good because it means companies now will have a reason to try to develop new things, instead of just copying the successful product and racing to the bottom.
Is anything that Samsung made the same as Apple's? No. Are there similarities? Yes.
The second question, irrelevant. It's not a copy, unless it's the same. This is an awful verdict. Pure stupidity.
One of the reasons this trial ever happened was because consumers was mislead by Samsung into believing that they actually bought an Apple device instead of a Samsung.
Brilliant, you almost got me, but I managed to wriggle free of the hook just in time.
-(10*9) stupid comment
Who really got hurt by this verdict are consumers and innovation. What's the point of developing new technologies like multitouch when Apple is just going to rip you off and monopolize the market anyway? When juries are swayed by superficial appearances and give credit to the successful IP thief instead of the people who actually invented the technologies?
Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci called and he claims that Alexander Graham Bell was a copycat and owes him 1 quadrillion dollars.
Samsung's success has come largely from making good copies of other people's phones. As we've just seen, they copied the iPhone in numerous examples. We know they've copied the Motorola RAZR with the Samsung Blade (example). We know they copied RIM's Blackberry with the Blackjack (resolution).
Samsung has a history of copying successful phones from other manufacturers. The claim of "the design is obvious" really starts to fall apart when one recognizes that the company has a history of doing this...
But, hey, let's pretend that Samsung is successful because they make great phones. Let's ignore the facts that history has laid out for us.
What if the fortunes were reversed and it was Apple forced to pay out a billion dollars for patent infringement? Would the haterz be burning their Galaxies in effigy while running out to buy iPads before shelves were emptied?
Methinks not.
When I'm at our Project board or board of directors, all I see are Apple products. Do you really think anyone there gives a damned thing about these trials ? Those people just want nice, fluid, easy working, looking good, innovative products by a company they know they can rely on. Guess who Apple is targeting, us here on the forums or the huge business market out there ?
In other news Samsung announced that due to unexpected 1bn losses, the cost of smartphone
parts is going to increase 15%.
In the Samsung case the jury walked into the jury room with a very complex 700 question jury questionnaire and answered all 700 in 21 hours which is 1.8 minutes per question. Does anyone thing they really deliberated the merits of the case? It would take that long just to read the questionnaire and write down an answer.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I think now that Apple has pretty much prevailed over Samsung, Apple may be emboldened to do the unthinkable: directly sue Google over Android itself. (After all, anyone who's run a Samsung Galaxy Nexus notices that much of the "look and feel" of Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich") and 4.1 ("Jelly Bean") is still very much like iOS in many ways.)
If Apple does this, we could see a gigantic migration of cellphone manufacturers to the only really viable alternative: Microsoft, especially the Windows Phone 8.0 being officially unveiled in September 2012. Why Windows Phone 8.0? I cite two reasons:
1. Thanks to cross-licensing agreements with Apple and its very unique tile-based interface, Windows Phone 8.0 will NOT infringe on critical Apple iOS patents and copyrights.
2. Windows Phone 8.0 supports all the latest cellphone hardware--multicore CPU/GPU's, 3GPP LTE, NFC mobile payments and higher resolution touchscreen displays up to 1280x768.
I would NOT be surprised that a Samsung cellphone that looks almost identical to the Galaxy SIII but running Windows Phone 8.0 comes out before the end of 2012.
Ah yes, back to the notion that Apple's victory simply turned on a touch screen, a thin bezel, and rounded corners, which seems to be very popular among people whose reactions to the case are dominated by their own prejudices rather than the actual evidence or decision. In fact, Apple asserted numerous other patents. The "thin bezel, rounded corners" design patent (referred to as D'087) was found to be infringed by only 3 out of a long list of Samsung devices. So clearly the jury did not find it to be a broad patent unavoidably infringed by just about any touch phone, and it played a very minor role in Apple's win. Could it be maybe, that after sitting in court for all those hours and going over the evidence in detail, they figured out something you didn't?
There were many patents on motorcars, some of them quite broad, and Fords were far from the first. There were plenty of court cases, and despite being a bit of a latecomer to the business, Henry Ford and his lawyers did just fine. And in just a few years, all those patents expired, because the term of a patent is not actually all that long. And their overall impact on the development and sale of cars by multiple manufacturers was so small that you obviously are quite unaware of the history.
Agree. Patents are supposed to be novel, not obvious and useful, but unfortunately the USPTO is very promiscuous in granting patents; They apply some basic tests, but they're very easy to get through and if you make enough noise they will approve it: Give them a thick enough patent application and they will shrug, approve it and leave it up to the courts to decide. So the jurors in this case should have tested the validity of the patent, and not blindly followed it.
The problem here seems to be the the jury didn't realize that. They didn't realize they could have determined all this crap Apple is patenting is obvious. Instead they thought if the USPTO granted it then it must be valid, which is wrong and upheld something quite ridiculous. What a farce.
Right click is essential only if software design makes it essential. On the Mac, right-click (or command-click, for that matter) is only a shortcut. Even to this day, I encounter people who find multiple mouse buttons confusing. The brilliance of Apple's decision to ship a single-button mouse was that it forced Mac developers to make their software usable with only one button.
Personally, I preferred multiple button mice on the Mac (until Apple came up with its multitouch-surface mouse, which I find superior), but I've always hated the way they are used in Windows. Buying a 3rd party mouse for my Mac was a small price to pay for the clarity the one-button mouse imposed on software user interface design--which ultimately helped Apple with the laptop market, because two-button trackpads are horribly awkward to use and likely to induce repetitive stress injury.
And before the iPhone, cell phones had lots of buttons, and everybody believed they were essential--until Apple released a one-button phone.
there are only morons in the jury if they voted for Apple, it's so clear Apple just took other people's work from the past and patented it as their own.. This really is a big low for the justice system..
I wouldn't be even surprised if a lot of jurymembers are apple fanboys, otherwise the outcome would have been much different..
Don't be so sure. Usually this winds up with some exchange and agreement, i.e., "you can't copy me" or "we get to look at your designs before you go to market" or a cross licensing deal. The thing that has bothered me all along about this case is that Apple relies on Samsung and while there are manufacturers that Apple could turn to to help build their stuff, Samsung is pretty much in bed with Apple and vice-versa. This I think will have more ramifications down the road. Samsung is already posturing in the US, they just announced a $4B investment in their Austin TX Fab that makes the chips for Apple's toys and all those nice pretty screens, well the retina displays are LG but look at this for example. While the lawsuit was started under the eye of jobs it was finished on Cook's watch. I hardly think they'll cut off their nose to spite their face so to speak. Besides Apple doesn't have a really great public opinion when it comes to creating US jobs..
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer FTW
Casteism
If they've "ripped off" Apple, why does their home menu use widgets instead of displaying ancient grid of icons?
If you were referring to internal, at Samsung, comparison of particular UI solutions, guess what, when you rip something off, you don't have to compare, you just copy. Samsung didn't copy. They've compared their product to that of competitors and improved where appropriate. And guess what, that's what ALL major CAR (and not only) manufacturers do, having special departments to examine competitors products.
Like I said, I've used both products - the alleged "original" and the "copy" - and I didn't see any obvious similarities there, other then a capacitive touchscreen. If anything, the "copy" is considerably better than the "original".
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390
Actually, Alexander Graham Bell ripped off the invention of the telephone from Antonio Meucci...
From Wikipedia:
'In 2002 the United States HRes. 269 on Antonio Meucci stated "his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged." Within its preamble it stated that: "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to A. G. Bell." If Meucci had renewed his caveat, he would have been given an opportunity to prove to the examiner that the device described in his caveat was the electromagnetic telephone described in Bell's patent application.
Indeed Italy considers Meucci the inventor of the telephone.'
It's the thing I hope people keep an eye on - judging Apple for what they did is stupid. Companies do whatever's profitable and possible, in order from easy to hard.
What this should do is underscore just how ridiculous the whole system of software patents is (which I'd squarely put this in since it dealt primarily with non-implementation focused design details) and the need for reform.
Did you seriously expect a Korean Company, or a company from any other country for that matter, to get a fair shake against a U.S. company in a U.S. court with a U.S. Jury? Not Likely. I develop hardware and firmware and definitely do not support stealing designs, but from what I have seen, these Apple patents are a complete joke that should trigger patent reform if anything, not be used to destroy fair competition. In my opinion this decision will hurt consumers with a lack of competition. How many shapes can you come up with economically that allow a screen to be held in your hand, ie a Rectangle. What is the most efficient way of arranging icons on that screen, i.e. vertical and horizontally aligned, just like the short cuts on your PC OS, which also happens to be a rectangular screen. Perhaps all the PC manufacturers and Microsoft should sue Apple for infringement. I just hope Samsung can still sell in Canada, however with the U.S. sales screwed over I am sure the support for after market addons will drop in a big way.
Android looks nothing like iOS. All smartphone oses, save for windows phone, use a grid of icons to represent apps. BBOS has been doing this since before iOS. Other than that, android is nothing like iOS.
Yet.
How the fcuk they got the double tap to zoom patent when opera mobile had it on windows mobile way before iPhone existence.
Come on. Lets address the facts here: http://www.talkandroid.com/126109-samsung-in-hot-water-for-alleged-icon-theft-from-apples-ios/
Screen resolution is just increasing over time. That is incremental innovation and not invention. The iPhone had a 320x480 resolution. Samsung (and others, probably) came up with 800x480.
Apple's move, because of software limitations, had to be a doubling of the resolution to 640x960. Which they called a 'retina' display, and paved the way for the iPad as well (where that same resolution definitely was not 'retina'.
You could as well say that Samsung has an 8 MP camera and Apple only 5. No-one will claim this is innovative.
That is because most of you are hired by googles media engine to write pro-android bias, and aren't real commentators.
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. (La Rochefoucauld)
almost anybody can pluck up their vocal chords, and sing an incredible song like 'let it be'.. but it takes a john lennon or paul mcCartney to originate and write the song.. everyone had access to the same technologies and components, but apple made a series of deliberate design decisions which raised the bar to what was expected in a phone. samsung copied, just like microsoft windows copied apple — which got its concepts form xerox, and those back to douglas englebart.
now it looks like samsung has now got to give a billion bucks o credit where it is due — wonder if apple should go back and pay xerox parc for developing the concepts for the GUI, network, and object-oriented code (oh wait, they already did).
microsoft oto got away without paying anything for ripping off the mac (thx to msr bush) when they were found engaging in monopolistic practices by (foolishly, by technical standards) tying the browser to the OS in order to gain dominance over netscape (the original entry, and explorer was a clone; just as excel was a clone off dan bricklin's visicalc)..
back in the birth of the PC computer daaays it was ALL sharing - you gave your circuit designs away (apple II schematics and source code came with the machine - as was common practice - and still is today with open source today). it wasnt until the money people came into it that people started getting all legal about what should come naturally -- sharing and playing nice in the sandbox of the tech world.. :-^
2cents from toronto island
jp
Rage on cocksucker! You're fucking pwned. Eat Apple cock!
I am so getting that engraved on my iPad.
Apparently most of the public finds the iPhone (and its imitators, such as many of the Samsung phones) different from the Treo in important and meaningful ways. If that were not true, Palm would still be a major competitor, enjoying huge sales like Apple and Samsung, instead of a shell of a company absorbed into the also sinking Hewlett Packard.
Moreover, it is quite clear that what really killed Palm was the invasion of the iClones. Palm had invested considerably in developing a new OS, with a novel operating system and a design that owed very little to the iPhone, which debuted to rave reviews. But then came the iClones. Verizon backed out of a big order for the Palm phones and chose to go with Android based iPhone-like phones instead, which were cheap because the manufacturers, unlike Palm, did not bother to invest in coming up with novel designs, or take the risk of introducing a novel device to the public--they could just piggyback on Apple's already market-tested designs.
Perhaps, if this decision had come down a few years ago, Palm would still be alive, and consumers would be benefiting from greater diversity in the smartphone market
Would somebody have asked in 1910 what the biggest invention/development of the century might have been, he may have gotten funny answers.
The same for political developments. Soemthing like 2 World wars, the cold war, 2-5 big revolutions would have been missing.
So, while the trial is *big* any conclusion would be a little early.
Samsung has been bit in the ass by submitting their technology as a standard. Tough for them, but that's the way the system works.
No matter how many big companies join in, gang raping Apple for its technology isn't right either.
Samsung loses on both counts.
Will BMW now sue Mercs? or will Sony sue LG or a wil samsung sue Apple when it makes its Apple TV w/Sanyo parts?
Will Nikon sue Lumix because, wow your camera uses a damn lens, your camera uses the same knob.
God, get real, every one has a right to copy another product as-is. You cannot (C) or patent a "LOOK", coordinates of buttons, or the fact that buttons are a 4x6 matrix etc...
Oh yeah? Ask Louis Vutton (sp) or Nike why they spend tons trying to stop pirated stuff from entering the states. Yes, you can prevent someone from making something look too much like your product, as decided in this case by a jury, your opinion notwithstanding.
I work at a private school in British Columbia. We have both a physical, and an online school. It seems the pro Apple vibe is quite strong in academia, i.e. lots of teachers and students buy them, but our tech department hates them with a passion, and people in the office who had used iOS devices are shifting to Andriod.
I guess this will be the story for some time. Some people will move to Apple, some will move away from it.
Another example is, I have a friend who has had issues with the last few laptops he has purchased, sometimes with the power connection, but the last 2 he has had harddrive issues. In that he's had so many issues I think he may be rough with his equipment, and I suggested (actually before his most recent purchase) that he get a thinkpad. He didn't. When he mentioned to me that his laptop was in the shop because it wouldn't boot into windows (and he had purchased an extended warranty) I suggested again that his next laptop should be a thinkpad. He said forget it, If I need to get a new laptop I'll get a Mac.
I think some people have trouble with one system so they move to another just because it's different, even if it won't acctually solve their problem. And for a while they'll feel better about it. See what they think in 3 years.
I believe that Apple will continue to grow stronger in the next 2 - 5 years, but I think their popularity will wane after that, UNLESS they can capture tech and corporate support. From my understanding Apple devices are difficult to administer in a large network enviroment, and if they don't change that there will be a continual push against them from tech departments.
Apple are in a precarious place right now where increasingly people either love or hate them. And hatred from tech could be the catalyst for their eventual demise. But not in the near future.
Wow, I've rambled incoherently.
Amen brother. My wife still has an iPhone and occasionally I end up with it my lap. Usually on a road trip where she wants me to look something up or navigate After a few minutes of fumbling I hand it back and say thanks, but I'll wait for mine to recharge, ... 'til I find it, ... 'til I can pry it out of my 7 year old daughters hands. A billion dollars for what? How close are these phones? WTF?!
Ahoy?
It seems likely that the damages would have been minimal in the unlikely event that Apple had bothered to bring suit if a few of Samsung's devices had happened to inadvertently violate one of Apple's design patents, and that there would be little chance of an injunction. In such a case, I could easily imagine an outcome in which the jury found Samsung guilty--and awarded Apple damages of one dollar. But that was not the case. The jury saw evidence of violations of multiple design patents by many of Samsung's devices. They saw evidence of violation of Apple's trade dress. And they saw internal Samsung documents that demonstrated that the copying was intentional (which, according to public comments by jury members, was highly influential), convincing the jury that there was an extensive pattern of willful copying of Apple's products.
And is it really such a tragedy if manufacturers have exert a little creativity and avoid duplicating these cosmetic features of Apple's products for the relatively brief (14-year) term of a design patent? From the fact that many of Samsung's products were not found in violation, it is clear that it is possible to do so. Indeed, Microsoft's new Windows phones are quite attractive, and quite clearly do not violate Apple's design patents.
I agree that it is smaller creative companies like Nokia (and Palm, and Blackberry) that really suffer from copycats like Samsung. In contrast to Samsung, Nokia had some real intellectual property of its own to offer to Apple, and Apple and Nokia reached a cross-licensing settlement in Nokia's favor, with Apple making payments to Nokia. Apple and Microsoft have also reached a cross-licensing agreement, with Apple licensing some features in return for a commitment from Microsoft not to use them to "clone" Apple's products (and indeed, Microsofts phones show genuine creativity in software and hardware design). But Samsung had noting original to trade in a settlement, save some standards-essential patents that the jury found that Apple had already indirectly paid for.
It will be interesting to see whether the judges chooses to follow through and award triple damages plus attorney's fees to Apple. Based upon the jury's judgment that the patent violations were willful, she really ought to do this, but considering the large size of the settlement as it is, I suspect that she won't.
If they've "ripped off" Apple, why does their home menu use widgets instead of displaying ancient grid of icons?
Why does most of Samsung's promotional material not show the home display with the widgets, but the completely unimportant screen that is a rip-off of Apple?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Yeah, if I stand on a ladder I can just see it over your fanboyism.
Until the US Patent Office actually vets patents properly and starts to reject so many of these garbage patents that are obviously based on pre-existing gestures, art or tech then we are going to get these stupid patent suits that will only serve to raise the price of products as companies have to spend millions on defending themselves from other bigger companies. Apple is the 800 pound gorilla in the room right now but it won't be for long. Someone else will come up and take over from them like they did from Microsoft. Until the patent office fixes their process we will still get dumb ass patents for something like the "swipe" to turn a virtual page on a screen when that is an act that is based on a gesture that has been used by people in meat space for a long time. If you want to patent the sensor tech then go ahead but patenting a gesture is crap.
Technically true. Instead, they give the computers to the move production company to use as props, possibly along with other products to various individuals in the system to ensure those props might "accidentally" find their way onto the set without being modified, and have the logo displayed prominently in a couple shots. Also, Apple will do a cross-promotion deal and feature the movie trailer somewhere in return for some screen time. They're also willing to allow for product use without major (or even minor, usually) strings attached, which can make a big difference (and reduces legal costs). But just because the payment is hidden (whether I pay you or reduce your costs is a matter of perspective -- end result is pretty much the same), that doesn't mean it isn't (in some sense) paid for somewhere, and having the systems available for use in movies and shows is definitely in the Apple marketing budget.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Articles are already coming out that the jury COMPLETELY IGNORED the key issue of the entire case, that Apple tried to patent "prior art".
http://news.techeye.net/mobile/apple-versus-samsung-verdict-was-a-complete-mess
The jury abdicated their view to the jury foreman, who was completely unwilling to get "bogged down" on the key issue of the case.
This case appears to be yet anothe pyrrhic victory for Apple. Steve Jobs' legacy of "going nuclear" is going to destroy Apple once the rest of the tech industry realizes Apple is becoming an existential threat to them. After that, everyone in Tech will begin suing Apple for patent violations.
If Apple is not allowed to "innovate" other people's ideas, they'll have nothing.
Yeah. Still not buying an iphone or anything apple. I just bought an HP laptop, and my next phone is probably going to be Motorola on TMobile. I'm going thermonuclear on my boycott against apple.
Nokia should be suing google.
Nokia got killed because they didn't give consumers what consumers wanted, that was entirely Nokia's decision and Google didn't play any part in it.
Let's replace "Nokia" with "Gnome", and the sentence still holds true.
In the apple Samsung case not a word concerning apples treatment of workers by the pundits. the top 9 shitheads at apple make as much as 95000 employees of Foxconn their main vendor. I am curiouse as to when profit at all cost will come back to bite us all in the ass.