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Apple v. Samsung Jurors Speak, Skipped Prior Art For "Bogging Us Down"
eldavojohn writes "PJ over at Groklaw has consolidated some of the more interesting juror comments made following the landmark $1 billion settlement. Apparently the foreman (a patent holder himself) took the jury through the process of how patents work and thus allowed them to return so quickly with a verdict without need of any instructions on how to work through all the material. Most sources are incredulous that all of the information was considered in the process. CNET quotes a juror as saying 'After we debated that first patent — what was prior art — because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple. In fact we skipped that one so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down.' While the fact that they they voted one way on infringement and another way on invalidity shows they were at least consistent, Groklaw is reporting on some odd inconsistencies in the aftermath of accounts from jurors. The appeal for something this huge goes without question but the accounts collected at Groklaw make this verdict and verdict process sound hasty, ambiguous and probably the result of one man's (the foreman's) personal opinion of patents."
I can not see the judge confirming this verdict. It was way too quick
I was worried for a moment. I would love for this to go again with a new judge and jury. -Posted from Galaxy Tab 10.1
So what was this Foreman's patent in? Did he have some reason to want there to be stronger legal precedent for, software/design patents? Why did the other Jurors simply follow this mans lead? Was it group think, at its worst or were they just eager to get the hell home because the entire trial was boring and silly in their minds and the fastest way to get out of there was to slap down a billion dollar number and then call it a day?
and the rest of the jury just followed along like lemmings. The foreman fancied himself an expert on patents, what with his vast experience of having secured 1 patent
What a disgrace. Unfortunately rule 606(b) of the Federal evidence code precludes using the jurors' statements in an appeal. So they can prance and prattle like jackasses, but there's not much to do about it
Did the juror text this info to the reporter with "send from my iPhone" at the bottom?
Could jury know trial would likely go to appeals? They might have known that this trial is a waste of time and not likely to get resolved prior to Supreme Court.
Juries can pretty much do what they want, and then they only get overturned if it would be impossible for a reasonable jury to come out the way they did. I don't even thinks that it will matter if they were all high and determined their votes by flipping coins; so long as it is *possible* that a reasonable jury would come out with the verdict they picked. The exceptions lie for things like reading about the trial in the media rather than only learning about it from the witnesses and other evidence.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It looks like samsung ships 20 to 45 million smart phones and tablets per quarter. If so then 1 billion is less than ten bucks per phone, possibly way less. This is not a terribly inappropriate sum or one that's going to ruin samsung. Indeed samsung would have been glad to pay a billion for the opportunity to take Nokia's market share away from them. Nokia elected to use patent indemnified Windows, they exchanged patents with apple, and Microsoft paid for patents to apple as well. Samsung got the market jump on nokia going the faster but less vetted approach of Android. They, according to their own documents, made deliberate decisions to chuck their in house designs where they differed from apples.
Samsung is coming out handsomly since it now has Nokia's market.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This was a simple exercise of recognizing a duck and whether there were any before Apple hatched the egg first.
Samsung whined. Jurors were listening for a quack
No. No judge in the US, or the EU, or anywhere else is concerned about the national budget. It is not their job, it is not their boss' job, or the job of anybody they've ever met.
Saying that judiciary decisions are made because of the budget only shows that you have no idea how a government operates. And that you are a troll.
Rethinking email
They're now taking things BADLY out of context. For instance, the quote about not needing the jury instructions, was NOT about the whole decision, it just about resolving their original 2 mistakes of including damages for phones they found non-infringing--well duh they didn't need instructions about how to fix that.
And pay careful attention to the quote in the summary: the juror says they debated the prior art, then he says they "skipped that one". Hmm. He does not say they failed to consider prior art. He says the first one was bogging them down with the debate on prior art because they found it hard to believe there was not any. Then he says "they skipped that one", which, in context, probably means they put all questions regarding that patent aside to move on and see if the others were easier. But they did rule on it, which means they came back to it--and given their reports that debate was heated, it seems unlikely that they put it aside for a while, then came back and arbitrarily found for Apple without finishing their consideration of the evidence. It is really not reasonable to read that quote as saying the jury skipped consideration of prior art.
Reading Groklaw's opinions of this trial has become rather like reading FOSS Patent's opinions of the Oracle/Google trial, or Enderle/Didio's opinions of the SCO trials. They've become so emotionally attached to the outcome they wanted, that everything about the trial is twisted to become part of the (imaginary) wrong that Samsung and the world are suffering at the hands of this (allegedly) rogue jury. Seriously, don't you notice that their comments disparaging the jury (who spent 3 weeks listening all day to the details of this stuff, far more than any of us will ever know about it) sound like SCO or Oracle disparaging their respective juries???
... and there's a potential huge opportunity for Samsung's marketing department here. As seen here, a court has just effectively ruled that Samsung's products are equivalent to Apple's. So, other than the Apple logo and brand name, why would you want an iThing when you can have the Samsung equivalent for any from a few tens of bucks to several hundred bucks less? After all, according to a US District Court, they are now essentially the same thing!
The trick (of course) would be for Samsung to pull off the marketing campaign without being found in contempt of court or getting their products pulled from the shelves...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple. In fact we skipped that one so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down"
LOL!
Go Samsung, go jugular!
Appeal approved!
Of course, if they had actually ignored the prior art. Forget the spin in the post, and actually read the quote, carefully this time, and explain exactly how you conclude that they did not consider prior art.
Jurors are free people. They may not behave like the programmed robots the judges or attorneys would like them to but this wild card is purposefully designed into the system as a last barrier to injustice. For example, if I was on a jury in a death penalty case I would not issue a sentence of death during the sentencing phase. I am incapable of doing so because I know the death penalty system in this country is fundamentally unjust. My sense of personal integrity would not allow it.
IANAL, etc., but while they might have assumed that there would be an appeal - it was pretty much a given, regardless of the result, really - but it's not supposed to matter. One of their obligations as jurors is to set their personal opinions aside and provide both sides with a fair trial. If they can be shown to have failed to do that, then the only fair and legal way forward is to throw the entire thing out and start over from scratch with a new jury.
There are generally two way of appealing a verdict; attacking the opposing legal team (e.g. withholding and/or misrepresenting evidence), and attacking the court (e.g. failure to follow procedure, clear bias). I'm guessing Samsung's legal team will go mostly for the latter. Not withstanding the rulings from Judge Koh are heavily in Apple's favour, particularly in the case of denying some of their evidence (potential bias), there is a growing sentiment in the press that the jury badly failed in their duties, with the clear failure to sanity check their rulings against their penalties as Exhibit A.
My prediction; successful appeal from Samsung on grounds of a mis-trial then back to District Court for a do-over and, no doubt, subsequent appeals and counter appeals... It's going to be a loooong time before we can stick a fork in this one.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"What could possibly go wrong?!" Now we know.
And in case anyone ever asked "why do they select such stupid people to be in juries" that question should be answered now as well. Normally I would think "let jurists be experts in their fields" and I am sure lots of others do as well. It makes sense somehow. But as we can see, a patent-holding jury foreman sided with his feelings on the matter rather than on the facts. Not only that, he was already prejudiced in favor of Apple as were many jury members.
Samsung doesn't need to appeal, they need a new trial. And in this trial, they need to be even more careful about the jury selection.
You know what's worse than self-righteous rich people? Self-righteous wannabe-rich.
How does the judicial system compensate for a jury foreman aggressively promoting himself as a de facto expert witness?
Groklaw consistantly sides with the law, and with common sense. I go to groklaw.net to cut through all of the bias and sensationalism of the mainstream press.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/technology/jury-reaches-decision-in-apple-samsung-patent-trial.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-25/apple-s-1-billion-verdict-may-lead-to-samsung-sales-ban.html
http://gizmodo.com/5937762/samsung-vs-apple-apple-winning-big-updating
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19377261
Now that's bias!
Patent law might be unreasonable, but the verdict was pretty reasonable given the law.
Was there any doubt that Samsung was specifically trying to copy elements which were covered by Apple patents? No.
Are the patents valid. Yes.
Case closed.
"When the iPhone debuted, it was widely criticized for having no buttons/keys. Now people think the iPhone's design is 'obvious.' "
- Dan Frakes
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
And pay careful attention to the quote in the summary: the juror says they debated the prior art, then he says they "skipped that one". Hmm. He does not say they failed to consider prior art. He says the first one was bogging them down with the debate on prior art because they found it hard to believe there was not any. Then he says "they skipped that one", which, in context, probably means
No, no it fucking doesn't. Go to the CNET article linked in the summary, there is no context. It's right there with no follow up about how they came back to it like you're making up! Here, I can be just as full of shit as you are, "they skipped that one", which, in context, probably means they all did double dutch jump roping in the parking lot before mounting unicorns and flying off to fucking sugarcane lane.
Corporations being "persons" is a 500 - 600 year old doctrine of law. Back to the Maritime and before to about the time North America was even discovered. Investors stopped financing trade voyages because they would be 100% liable if the ship went down. They many times lost their homes, money and land to pay the families of those lost on the ship. The Corporation simply created a legal "person" to take on that liability and limit the investors losses to the amount they invest.
It was nothing new created by the Supreme Court. Corporations are made of people. Yes they can be killed (aka Dissolved) and individuals within it can be personally liable for their actions.
and mockery of justice. One biased loudmoutj of a foreman and lazy weak followers.
Sounds like the USPO.
Apparently the foreman (a patent holder himself) took the jury through the process of how patents work and thus allowed them to return so quickly with a verdict without need of any instructions on how to work through all the material.
Doesn't this qualify as a mistrial? Was the material in the form of foreman's explanation vetted by the court? Is it admissible as expert testimony? As a guideline perhaps?
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Aparantly we've sunk this low in the US of A.
Never letting the truth or relivant informaiton get in the way of a good show trial. The only reason we know this much is because google. samsung, motorola, etc.. all intrested android parties have the money and influence in society to matter. Imagine being a random joe.
If I didn't have faith in the judicial system before, I don't now.
The other major issue that has surfaced is the calculation of damages. The foreman stated, "we wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist...we wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable." If the jurors had bothered to read the jury instructions, they would have hopefully understood that the damages were supposed to be compensatory for lost sales (people buying Samsung thinking they were buying an iphone), not punitive. The inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary breakdown of damages by device reflects this.
Laying liability onto a fictional construct does not require granting personhood. Its a compeltely stupid concept that attempts to create a new class of citizen.
Good-bye
With hindsight, perhaps, but Samsung's legal team had their chance to evict him from the jury back in July when the jury was selected, so either they missed the chance or decided that there was a greater risk of pro-Apple bias from another juror and evicted someone else instead. From what I recall of the process there were a lot of potential jurors with a potential bias towards Apple (knowing Apple employees, owning Apple hardware, etc.) and Samsung couldn't get rid of them all, just as Apple couldn't get rid of the jurors that has similar potential bias towards Android/Samsung. I think it more likely that Samsung's legal team thought that as an electrical engineer and patent holder he might have a better grasp of their case and gambled that he might tip the balance more in their favour than in Apples'. If so it was a bad call, that's all.
I wonder if instead it might have been a deliberate ploy by Samsung -- if they could get an obviously-screwy pro-Apple verdict at this stage, it would be easier to have that verdict thrown out and move one rung up the appeals process.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Yeah, how dare those investors reap all of the profit but only have to take some of the risk!
Capitalism was non-existent the moment the first limited liability corporation was set up.
Which is appropriate, because capitalism itself would have been even more of a miserable failure.
"[Hogan] the jury foreman, who is a patent holder himself told court officials that the jury didn't need the answer to its question to reach a verdict"
"The foreman told a court representative that the jurors had reached a decision without needing the instructions. "
"Hogan holds patents, so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. "
"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down." ...But we took our time. We didn't rush.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
So the decision to exclude evidence (of Samsung's phones in development prior to the iPhone's release) based on a technicality did in fact influence the outcome. Who would've guessed.
As I said before the verdict, the whole purpose of having deadlines in a court case is so that the trial proceeds in a timely manner. Why? So the delays in the trial do not negate the value of any potential outcome. i.e. the cost of achieving justice does not exceed the value of justice. Here we clearly had the opposite case, where the value of justice (billions of dollars either way) obviously would far, far outweigh the cost of a trial delay. The judge erred in disallowing that evidence due to a missed deadline, and I suspect we're going to have to sit through and pay for yet another trial to correct that error.
Groklaw is not, and has never been, a neutral, unbiassed source of information.
What PJ did in the SCO case, and for which she deserves a huge pile of karma, is to present her pro-Linux, pro-GPL argument in an extremely professional, reasoned way, with copious references and links to sources, and with clear, plain English explanations of the law and legal procedures involved. Essentially, she was presenting the case for the defence the way it should be presented if the court system lived up to its own ideals. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as you don't confuse it with being neutral. Also, the way it turned out, she was robustly vindicated in the SCO case.
She was also very conciliatory towards anybody who fancied slagging off the judge or court system, even when it appeared to be favouring SCO.
Frankly, I don't see any of that in her coverage of Apple vs. Samsung: cherry picking soundbites from press interviews with jurors, openly deriding the process, and claiming fuzzy snaps of tablet-like devices from "Soylent Green" as prior art (maybe it was, the Jury largely junked the iPad design patents, but the PJ of old would have scrupulously backed up that argument with extracts from the patents and case law about what constituted prior art).
I'm not sure what people are hoping for with an appeal/retrial. The parties are both big enough and ugly enough to loose the odd billion. Samsung's patent claims on 'integrating phones cameras and email' and 'listening to music while using an app' are just as poisonous as Apple's - possibly harder to work round if they'd been found to be infringed, and the idea that you can charge both chip makers and device makers that buy their chips for the same patent needed scotching. A korean-style 'you both infringed' verdict would just mean we had two sets of successfully-asserted patents stinking up the marketplace.
Perfection, in my mind, would have been throwing out all the patents, Samsung and Apple, so we could get back to arguing over whether Samsung copied the iPhone or if they had an independent revelation during a SF movie session on a TV with rounded corners, regardless of whether any of it was patentable. I don't think that outcome is likely as long as the US recognises software patents and the USPTO doesn't get held to account for duff patents.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
and given that there were lots of patents, trademarks, and more importantly the ever so vague trade dress infringements. I wonder if the jury actually made the right decision or just went with the home team ( apple ). From personal experience , when reviewing patents and prior art, the first time can take longer than a day to review. You MUST read the patents, and more importantly UNDERSTAND the patent claims and figure if the claims are broad or not. The claims are what the patent is really about and infringement means that device b actually is covered in the claims. Also additions to a feature can mean that feature is not infringing on a claim and could be a new enhancement to a device. So if Samsung took apples device and improved the device in any way, then it could be considered not infringing and a new device or new feature. Personally I believe this is Apple's way of destroying it's competition. Rather than innovate new, it is going to sue it's competition. In fact it's only real competition has been Samsung in the phone space, as all others are not doing as well in the US.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Wouldn't it be funny if people started carrying around rotten apples and hurled them at every person walking around with or seen using a product bearing an Apple logo? Of course, if anyone ACTUALLY did that, I might get in trouble, people could say I "incited" people to commit fruit-missile based violence and property damage, so I want to stress that I definitely do NOT support, condone, or even suggest anyone should do this, nor should anyone throw such fruit as hard as they possibly can at or inside of Apple stores, especially after having frozen said apples overnight, as that would be morally and legally wrong.
So if you despise what Apple has done and is doing, DEFINITELY DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT throw frozen, rotting apples at Apple stores, Apple employees, or just Apple iCult members using their stupid little fucking Apple iDevices, as that would be wrong, and not at all funny. Just DON'T. Make sure to show this to your friends, and discourage them from doing it as well, as there is NO HUMOR VALUE WHATEVER to be found in this form of lawlessness. Let's all just live in piece. Er... peace.
after reading this, it's clear to me that the trial should be repeated.. I already wondered why prior art which was shown by samsung was put aside..
Hey, do the icons have rounded corners? Does the phone button green, with a phone that faces upwards? Can that do pinch-to-zoom?
I'd argue that the era of touchscreens started with the Palm Pilot, which predates this phone by 6 years. There was the Newton as well, and the Palm Palm, was probably the first device with a large user base that had a touchscreen.
Touchscreen + phone is pretty obvious, I'd argue.
Pointing out that people have bias is a lot like pointing out that polynomial approximation has an error function. This is situation normal until people start to claim A) there is no error function, or B) the error function contains violently immodest sub-domains which people fail to restrict in practical application.
The largest component of my legal bias against Microsoft is their wilful and voluntary introduction of false evidence in the DOJ anti-trust trial. It's pretty much the normal bias term I apply to all brazen and self-serving liars with billions and billions of dollars. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Microsoft likely suspected the false video tape wouldn't play well in the court of public opinion on the off chance someone clever suspected they might try such a ploy.
If Microsoft gave a rat's ass about bias, they would behave better. But why waste your time cultivating favorable public opinion when you're the 800 lb gorilla? Anyone not biased against Microsoft wasn't paying attention.
I greatly appreciate what PJ has accomplished in the battle against SCO, but I've never enjoyed reading her site as much as I thought I would, mostly because she wears her bias on her sleeve, 24x7. She believes that powerful interests game the legal system with incredible displays of chutzpah.
Apple has long been such a corporation: any previous incarnation of an invention never existed, because the previous incarnation wasn't cool. A general-purpose Apple patent claim template: Invention A of prior inventor B, but this time more cool, and with people actually willing to buy it. Apple believes that the proper domain of invention is coolness. They've been trying to beat this down our hatch for thirty years.
Amazon believes the proper domain of invention is consumer convenience, where convenience is measured by Stephen Hawking's mouse reflex after 24 hours deprived of his medications.
Microsoft believes the proper domain of invention is backward-compatible (hence irreversible) integration into the borg-ship.
None of them use the slogan "Invention is what we do." The copyright infringement suits would aground on the irreconcilable meanings and bankrupt them all.
I keep seeing this but I don't understand. How is it a "loss" that people can't just make copycat products?
Wouldn't that be a "win" because we want each individual company to try out innovate each other instead of just giving us "low rent" knockoffs?
I just don't get...
No. Psystar modified kernel extensions and a few other pieces of software. They also broke the EULA by selling machines with OSX pre installed.
It's not illegal to modify osx and it's not illegal to sell a Hackintosh, it is illegal to make your entire business model selling hackintoshes.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Reminds me of the 'Senator for a Day' trip in HS.
"Streamlined justice." Just more confirmation of the horrors I heard years ago...
I think I'll take the next few decades from a private island somewhere in the South Pacific. I can already see where this is going, and I will admit that I am not clever enough to find a way to stop it.
I am John Hurt.
That was samsungs mistake. They introduced it too late into the discovery process. The discovery phase isn't something you can load anything you want at any time. If you show off something near the end that would require investigation, for instance forensic evidence, and you do it near the end of discovery, what time will be available to do any sort of follow up by the other side?
Samsung fucked up. Not just with the F700 evidence either.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Original concept was indeed to deal with the liabilities of corporations which before considering them a legal persons could kill or cause losses but could not be held liable thus causing trouble so they have been made liable by declaring them persons in law for dealing with debt. It was back then but It is different in US now (and possibly in Germany if you believe this but I guess that depends what courts will find) where corporations are now granted much more rights than needed to deal with liabilities. It is one of those things that simple in principle make your mind boiling and have a raising set of unintended/not predicted consequences.
So how much money would you put on there turning up a duly registered and notarised deed of indemnity protecting Pamela Jones in case the 'pj' lawyer did something nasty like libeling others, and got sued for it?
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
Corporations being "persons" is a 500 - 600 year old doctrine of law. Back to the Maritime and before to about the time North America was even discovered. Investors stopped financing trade voyages because they would be 100% liable if the ship went down. They many times lost their homes, money and land to pay the families of those lost on the ship. The Corporation simply created a legal "person" to take on that liability and limit the investors losses to the amount they invest.
It was nothing new created by the Supreme Court. Corporations are made of people. Yes they can be killed (aka Dissolved) and individuals within it can be personally liable for their actions.
You are talking about limited liability companies. This was a way to encourage entrepeneurs, and limit any loss from their ventures to what they had invested. It did not in any way confer personhood on the company. And under modern laws, surely if a company is indeed considered a person, then should they not be freed from their slavery to shareholders?
Gosh that sounds like juror misconduct.
You do know that anyone can post there, just like on Slashdot, right?
We're not talking about the 'public' comments. We're top-level articles 'by PJ' and posted by the editorial team, not the comments by all and sundry.
And you do know that PJ posts full texts of legal documents there, so the readers and commentators can make up their own minds, don't you?
Except, in this case, she's just collecting snippets of interviews with the jury from other news sites, drawing some huge inferences from odd words and phrases and using them as the basis for accusing the jury of being incompetent (this is from someone who was very reluctant to criticise judges and juries during the SCO case). She's flamed journalists in the past (but usually along with well-written arguments as to why they were wrong), but has always been respectful towards legal processes (perhaps the Chap. 11 phase of SCO cured her of that).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
And if a corporation is a person, shouldn't it go to jail when it breaks the law instead of always just fined?
If a corporation steals something- put the corporation in jail for 90 days.
If a corporation kills someone- execute it or put it in jail for "life" (since corporations are immortal- it's a death penalty for a corporation.)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
He clearly could have been excluded if either side requested it, but I can think of reasons why he probably wasn't. Apple probably liked him because he had a patent and thus presumably believed that there was some value to patents, and Samsung probably liked him because his patent was for a DVR-like device, and thus he presumably would not think it would be a good thing if TiVo, the original patent-holder of the DVR, could prevent anybody else from making a DVR.
It can be hard to find jurors with no previous opinion or experience in an area. I was in a jury pool for a medical malpractice case once, and they interviewed potential jurors all day and only managed to seat one. Almost everybody had worked for a doctor, had one in the family, had had a good or bad experience with the medical profession, or had some sort of pre-existing opinion regarding medical malpractice lawsuits.
I wonder how many people here have been on a jury. I have been on several juries and been a jury foreman. Once the trial is completed, what you are allowed to ask as a juror is quite limited.
It is the lawyers' job to ask questions of the witnesses and explain the facts of the case. It is the judge's job to explain the relevant law (this is typically minimal and bound by legislation). It is the jury's job to determine what the relevant facts are and how they apply to the law. I've been on juries where we set things aside simply because we didn't see how it was applicable. That happens all the time.
It is often the case that some jurors understand certain things more than others. It is often the case that neither side's lawyer provides an adequate and complete description of the situation. It is often the case that a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the law is absent in the deliberation room. It is often the case that a jury has only part of the information available to those outside the jury. It is often the case that different jurors have different reasons for making a decision. None of that matters. It is the jury's job to come to a verdict with what THEY are given.
"Groklaw make this verdict and verdict process sound hasty, ambiguous and probably the result of one man's (the foreman's) personal opinion of patents." Just by slashdotters alone that know about the patent system, they each make there own arguments or have different interpretations. Probably the same with people who claim to be, or have a degree on being experts when it comes to Patents!
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. -- Norm Crosby
No. Psystar modified kernel extensions and a few other pieces of software. They also broke the EULA by selling machines with OSX pre installed.
The EULA only applies to End Users, hence the EU part before the LA. It should not have even applied to them except insofar as modifying the software.
It's not illegal to modify osx and it's not illegal to sell a Hackintosh, it is illegal to make your entire business model selling hackintoshes.
These two lines are mutually exclusive, and fundamentally incompatible.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Wait, seriously? That's so stupid on so many levels that I honestly don't believe it.
Lets start with the EULA concept. Microsoft is a quite heavy user of EULAs. A court case that said EULAs were unenforceable would hurt MS considerably. On the flip side, the GPL is explicitly not an EULA; it says absolutely nothing with regard to use or the permissions of users; its only restrictions are on distribution. Far from being some kind of harmful precedent, EULAs being overturned would have exactly zero legal effect on the GPL.
Then let's move on to what the GPL actually is. It's a copyright license, and a rather complex one. It relies on copyright law itself to enforce the "copyleft" terms. This is the same copyright law that also allows things like reselling (doctrine of first sale) by treating IP as an item of property. Although first sale itself has relatively little meaning as directly relates to the GPL, attacking creative uses of copyright law is very much not in a GPL supporter's best interest.
Then there's the whole concept behind the GPL; that people should be able to adapt and modify and reuse your code. This is very much not Apple's philosophy. Yes, they use some open-source code themselves, and some of it is under GPL (or variations thereof), but of course, that's exactly the same code that Pystar was reselling... with some extra work on their part to adapt it to non-Apple hardware. That's exactly in the spirit of the GPL.
Now, as I heard it, the reason Pystar lost was because they were found to be violating copyright - that is, they were directly redistributing Apple's copyrighted and proprietary software updates without a license to do so - and I could see how Groklaw might support that idea. I'd think it a bit strange, and certainly contrary to the ideals of F/LOSS, for them to argue that it's illegal to re-"sell"software packages which you received because of other software that you bought and then resold, but I can believe that a strict reading of copyright law does not include a provision for such things. The idea of Groklaw supporting EULAs, though... that's just whacked. If true, I have a lot less respect for them than I used to.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The patents that were upheld had nothing to do with rectangles with rounded corners but rather to do with interface design patents. Other Android OEMs have been able to avoid the issues that Samsung had by simply not slavishly copying Apple's implementation patents.
Prior art be damned if Samsung ignores the prior art themselves and instead blindly copies Apple's implementation.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The new Samsung slogan should be: " Apple say our products are indistinguishable from theirs. Be smart, pay less, buy Samsung!"
"(Here's some commentary from Reuters and CNet. Also remember, BOTH APPLE AND SAMSUNG VETTED THEM, and were able to remove whomever they wanted; I understand Apple got rid of a Google employee)."
But bear in mind Samsung can only have so many removed, and this trial was a few miles from Apple's buildings. In that context it's next to impossible to remove every juror and find objective replacements who have no bias towards Apple when the area is so dependent on it for it's income and wealth.
This is the underlying problem. Such an important trial shouldn't ever be allowed to be held so close to one party's offices under any circumstances. It doesn't happen in criminal trials - where there is a danger a member of a community would be prejudged by everyone in that community if the trial is held in that community, hence why they move the trial elsewhere, and it shouldn't happen in civil trials either when the stakes are so high.
You know personally, the problem I have with all this is not so much Samsung being found guilty of infringement which has been the focus of every discussion surrounding this case, the problem I have is that all Samsung's claims were thrown out - what happened to them? where is the commentary on them? If Samsung was found guilty of infringing Apple's rectangulary phone patent which is merely opinion depending on how close you believe a phone can be to such a patent, then how could Apple not be found guilty of infringing Samsung's wireless patents in Samsung's counter-claim, a fact which is provable and not open to mere opinion like the design patents are.
It's that that is the most damning evidence for me that this trial was fundamentally flawed, if Samsung infringed fine, but it's just nonsensical to say Samsung infringed, but somehow Apple didn't, as Apple's works are simply far more blatantly infringing than Samsungs are- Apple kit used tech Samsung has patents on, and contested in this trial, there's simply no question about that, yet those claims apparently vanished into the ether and Apple got everything they wanted. I fully except this may have just been a pro-patent jury who were always going to back patent enforcement and bad luck to Samsung, but then why did they not back Samsung's patents too? The fact they only backed Apple's does pretty much confirm this was not merely a pro-patent jury, but a pro-Apple jury.
It applied to Psystar because they had images of the modified osx on a server, which they then imaged onto each machine they sold. That imaging process was an unauthorised copy under copyright law. Probably, if they had shipped the boxes without an OS, and included a shrink wrapped copy of osx and a cd with their drivers etc, they would have been ok - although I think Apple would still have tried to sue them.
So disappointed today, the case was basically decided on the design and not inventions.
The EULA applies whenever you turn on the machine and use it.
I'm not happy with the broad reaching implications of what that means, but for now, practically speaking, personal hacking of the OS can't be and isn't tracked.
Making a business model of it, however, is. I'm sorry, but, what psystar did was illegal. They violated someone else's IP rights. That's the law.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
In Civil Law countries the Judge embarks on a search for the truth. In America we have an adversarial system where the best liar wins. The judge is merely the umpire. Seriously: Even if the judge knows one side is lying their asses off or hiding evidence they won't say or do anything because that would violate their 'independence'. The jurors are seeking the truth, because the courts are not. Better the jurors are allows to search for the truth and the judge joins them as an advocate not for the court but for the truth!
PS. I'm not talking about the Apple-Samsung jurors. I think we all agree they suck ass.
Samsung ripped off Apple - that's pretty obvious from the examples given. The fact that they only got stiffed for $1 Billion, when in fact they earn $145 Billion a year means that this is just a slap on the wrist. $1 Billion probably isn't enough to cover Apple's lawyers and court costs.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I keep seeing this but I don't understand. How is it a "loss" that people can't just make copycat products?
Wouldn't that be a "win" because we want each individual company to try out innovate each other instead of just giving us "low rent" knockoffs?
I just don't get...
It all depends on the definition of a 'copycat product' to you. It's all in the level of 'copying.' To take it to a couple of extremes for illustrative purposes:
It is not a loss for consumers that Toyota cannot make a truck that is 100% exactly like a particular model of the Dodge Ram. That encourages Toyota to continue to innovate.
It WOULD BE a loss for America if someone patented the wheel and all other vehicles had to just find some way to get around without it. While this would encourage people to try to find a new type of vehicle...cars and trucks as we know them would be controlled by one company and until someone was able to discover a vehicle that is as affordable as a car, as mobile as a car, etc. we would be at that company's mercy if we wanted to travel.
That's how people not being able to make 'copycat products' could be a loss to the consumers. Obviously, this isn't as bad as a patent on the wheel, but in my mind (and the minds of many others, obviously), it crossed the line between the two situations where enforcing patents goes from "encouraging innovation" to "pushing companies away from the best, obvious solutions because someone else already patented them."
FYI the jury is not the Patent Office. It's not their responsibility to determine prior art. Apple has their patents. Samsung has their patents. That's all they need to know. The jury can decide based on Apple's patents that Samsung infringed. If later the Patent Office invalidates the Patent, then and only then does a jury not consider Apple's patent, not before.
There are no timelines for verdicts. It can take you a week it can take you an hour. If there is a problem with the verdict the judge, if allowed, can toss it and/or there will be an appeal.
This is hardly surprising. How many times has a Texas jury condemned an innocent man to death on circumstantial evidence with only an hours deliberation....Seriously people need to calm down.
Samsung had evidence of prior art, the judge decided that evidence was inadmissible.
Even if the jury wanted to "send a message" regarding infringing patents, it is clear that it did so by awarding damages adequate to compensate the patent holder. For example, they reduced the award below what Apple asked, because they were not convinced that Apple had the capacity to build the amount of additional product that Apple claimed they could have sold in the absence of the infringement, and they were not willing to compensate Apple for sales they could not have made, anyway.
Which I initially thought wasn't a common feature, until I realized what it covers.
On maps I used to be able to search for an address, or just type in a name of somebody in my contacts. This would find their address (if saved in contacts) and allow me to quickly navigate. This feature stopped working on my phone, presumably due the the patent issue.
Multi-source search has been around for *ages* on PC's, etc.
Of course Samsung could have done it better too instead of slamming in a change that broke the functionality. A quick-select to choose either local or network search would have worked well and should have not been affected by the patent.
It seems that this reason is pretty much why companies throw out *insane number X* when asking for penalties. If they ask for a bazillion dollars, then a few trillion seems "more fair" in comparison.
We see this a lot with file-sharing penalties etc. The final result is often less than what's asked for, but still adds up to a mind-boggling amount... pretty much a bankrupting amount (without the option of bankruptcy) which will end up in lifetime indebtedness on the behalf of a plaintiff.
Not $1b may not break a big company like Samsung, but it's still a fairly crazy high amount. Not as crazy as $3b though, but crazy is still crazy.
Other Android OEMs have been able to avoid the issues that Samsung had
Samsung is not nearly the only vendor being sued by Apple. They are probably the biggest, by value of having the most popular android smartphones in most countries, but the entire industry is like watching somebody play patent-warfare-missile-command.
Incorrect. If you manage to get on a jury, despite believing that the crime under consideration should not be a crime, you -are- completely legally allowed to say not guilty even if you think the guy (or in this case corporation) is guilty of something you don't believe he should be punished for. For both good and bad, this is totally a thing - it's called jury nullifcation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
(Fun fact: admitting that you know this fact is apparently a great way to get out of jury duty...)
So you are saying to be able to create limited liability, we HAVE to grant personhood? Do see how silly that is? A corporation exists solely at the will of the People. If We The People say that you can have limited liabilty without personhood, it can be done. ANYTHING is better then creating a citizen that cant be jailed.
Good-bye
Perhaps Samsung losing was their own fault. That doesn't make it right.
That does, actually. I mean, Samsung's been found guilty by a jury in a court of law.
The F700 wouldn't have covered up the fact that internally, Samsung said, "Let's copy the iPhone."
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Ah, that certainly makes sense then. Actually making copies would indeed require a license and explain the crushing.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
That does, actually. I mean, Samsung's been found guilty by a jury in a court of law.
So, what does the finding of a jury have to do with is right? Juries send innocent people to jail every day.
The legal system is a process. It doesn't create "justice" or "right," it is optimized mainly to generate predictability.
Yes, and while that's a seriously flawed system, going by your gut and saying, "Well he seemed innocent or guilty, let's just go with that" is even worse!
Samsung was accused of copying the iPhone. Apple found an internal communication saying, "Let's copy the iPhone, it's kicking our asses design wise." Then the jury found in favor of Apple.
You simply can not copy and plagiarize and say it's innovative and your original idea. Samsung's entire case was, "If we don't get to copy where do our ideas come from?"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The issue is that the stuff they copied wasn't anything that ought to be legally protected in the first place - like rounded corners and slide to unlock. If they stuck an apple logo on the thing I'd be fine with trademark laws applying. However, this really isn't a place to be applying patent law.
So, the verdict was wrong, and if the verdict was supported by the law, then both the law and the verdict are wrong. If you happen to agree with the verdict and the law, then you're wrong. And if 95% of the population of the US agrees with you, then they're wrong. Right and wrong have nothing to do with what is legal, what a jury finds, or what is popular.
If the law is bad then what are you doing to change it? If the people are wrong, what are you doing to change their minds?
What are you doing to make it better?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.