Slashdot Mirror
Apple Seeks To Block 8 Samsung Products After Court Win
angry tapir writes "Apple has asked a U.S. court to block sales of eight Samsung Electronics products, following the iPhone maker's victory in a patent lawsuit against Samsung. In a filing to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Apple asked for preliminary injunctions against seven smartphones carrying its Galaxy brand, plus the Droid Charge. It based the requests on a jury's ruling on Friday that Samsung had infringed several Apple patents. Apple said it wants the preliminary injunction pending a final injunction."
I used to recommend people to buy their computers. I actually specifically tell people "just about anything but Apple" now.
Congratulations Apple. You might have won this battle (for now, appeal pending) but I assure you that you've lost the war.
All these phones are previous generation. Is Samsung still making these? Once they are inside the U.S. and no longer owned by Samsung, can the new owner sell them? Is the answer different if they are new or have been used? Is it different for ATT to sell them, vs. the guy who wants to sell his S2 to get Note 2? If so, why?
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
So Samsung "copied" Apple's use of corners and low profile SMCs to create thinner devices? You know what? I'll still buy Samsung over Apple even if they were the same price, and you want to know why?
It's because no company that resorts to litigating its competition out of existence because it can't offer something as good, if not better, for the same money, *deserves* my money. End of.
To anyone that says I'm jumping on the pro-Samsung bandwagon just because they're the little guy in all this: fuck off.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The problem is that whatever you might think of, someone has already a patent on it or a patent that's broad enough to cover what you do. Not because they ever thought of using the phone like you, but because they sought to cover as broad base as possible with their patent.
If Apple had been held to your standards they would never have gotten into the mobile industry at all since its impossible to build a mobile phone without infringing on thousands of patents on hardware alone from thousands of different companies and private inventors. If a fucking bounce effect costs billions to use, how fucking much do you think a fucking complete mobile phone would cost? Its not like Apple waddled into a vacuum and suddenly made a phone nobody had ever done before with never unheard of components.
HTTP/1.1 400
Apple got the idea for the design from Sony. A box shape with rounded edged isn't original either.
...is that Samsung parts make up a solid quarter of the electronics in iPhones and iPads! It gets better: Samsung fabricate the phones...!
So what happens to Apple if Samsung decide to be bastards and pull the plug on parts /and/ assembly? What the fuck can Apple do about it? Precisely *nothing*!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Just wondering.
If phones can be banned for using pinch to zoom, why not ban them all?
Wow, I just looked up what the Droid Charge looked like. It's really quite different from the iPhone. I think my lil' LG looks more like an iPhone than that one does.
Oh well, I guess they won't be done with this until everyone either has an iPhone or something that looks like an old Black Berry. Heh, I just realized... BB never actually sued companies over releasing similar phones like this did they?
Maybe if they cared more about their intellectual property they'd be in better shape today. No need to worry about the competition if you can wipe them out in the courts
They lost the cases in the UK, Netherlands, Germany but win in the US.
Part of the ruling in the UK was to put a notice on the website stating that Samsung did not copy Apple.
If the "look and feel" lawsuit had happened in the present-day US, Apple would have won it.
And where would be we be now?
how are rounded corners an inovation ? It's basic design.
The most useful shape would be rectangular because that's the shape of the screen - if only for software reasons
The most practical shape to put it in your pocket would be round/oval, because a rectangle will hurt your tighs and tear pockets.
A compromise between the two is simply obvious.
Let's remove the older, slower phones from the market so you'll have to compete only against the SIII, which people say beats the iPhone hands down.
Smart move Apple.
The court will issue an injunction.
Samsung will appeal and the court will suspend the injunction until the appeal is heard.
By then those devices will be discontinued and a whole family of new lawsuit drawing devices will be on offer.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Most Apple buyers don't need advice, they already know they want an Apple.
Samsung also asked for the ban on the Galaxy Tab to be removed as this was apparently found not infringing in the very same case. Something which seems to have gone largely unreported.
So a question, does this mean Apple will have to pay damages for loss of sales from the Tab ban due to it apparently being frivolous?
"Samsung files to appeal judges decision" and blocks Apples request for injunction...ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz
Rick B.
Its not like Apple waddled into a vacuum and suddenly made a phone nobody had ever done before with never unheard of components.
This is what always kills me about those "Before iPhone, after iPhone" and "Before iPad, after iPad" images Apple fans constantly post. They completely miss the fact that Samsung had phone before iPhone and Samsung had tablets before iPad. Apple gets defensive about broad patents on trade dress, but completely neglect the fact that the iPhone has a speaker on the top, which is not so loud as to conform to the sensitivities of the human ear; a mic on the bottom, which is sensitive enough to pic up the human voice; is shaped to fit the human hand and the human head; contains radio technology which enables voice conversations between people across the planet, at the speed of light; relies on networking technology developed by other companies to enable as such.... all the myriad technologies that enable the iPhone to even exist, were in place before the iPhone, and were invented by many of the same companies Apple is so keen to sue for frivolities like scroll bounce.
These "Before iPhone, after iPhone" images are a direct consequence of the touch screen becoming the primary input device, just as the fact that the iPhone has a speaker on top and a mic on the bottom is a direct consequence of mouth/ear placement on the human head.
Ever heard of SonyEricsson? Didnt think so. They make mobile phones. There were ample amounts of SonyEricsson products to copy, and many aspects of them is similar in the iPhone. They should have sued the pants off of Apple but in those days people in the mobile business weren't dickheads like Apple.
HTTP/1.1 400
umm, no... you're right, to build a phone you need patents for 3g, etc. these are standards essential. you can buy them on frand terms. but design patents are just one way of doing things.
if the rubber band bounceback is patented, then figure out a different visual cue. i've seen some nice ones elsewhere. if slide to unlock is patented, then figure out a different way. circle to unlock? spin a wheel? there are infinite varieties.
the OP's point still stands... if you use a little creativity it's no problem to skirt these patents. and it will make for a more vibrant marketplace.
You want to upvote/downvote? Go back to Reddit! Here we mod up/mod down.
Android normally doesn't use a bounce effect during scrolling, it uses a glow effect. Pretty much all of the claims only apply to Samsung's modifications to the base Android system (what they call "TouchWiz"), which is why you don't see, e.g., the Galaxy Nexus named in this injunction.
Sardine cans have had this design for decades with a pull to unlock feature included.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Did you know you can upgrade the Openmoko's motherboard? See http://www.gta04.org/
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
How can it be that none of the companies targeted by Apple have found a reason to sue Apple for infringing their own products? If I'm not mistaken, Samsung, Motorola, etc, have all been making phones and cell phones far longer than Apple has, and have had far longer to lay down a patent minefield to protect themselves from this shit. Why haven't they found a reason to sue? Is it really possible for Apple's designs to be so squeaky clean that there is nothing for others to go after? Really? Or is it that they're too afraid and are either sitting there quietly, hoping to fly under Apple's radar, or too busy trying to defend themselves from current attacks to launch their own? I'm incredulous that other than a couple of Chinese companies suing Apple for one reason or another, I haven't heard of anybody really being on the offensive against apple. Or, maybe that side of things just doesn't make the headlines...
How much do you think Samsung would have to pay IBM to get them to file an injunction against their iPad infringing on their original patent for a tablet? My guess would be not much. I think Apple just painted the biggest, most legitimately attackable target on themselves in human history. They're about to get IBM/Dell/LG/HP/GE/Lenovo-stomped. At least they've got all that 23 billion in cash laying around for legal fees. They're pretty lucky they didn't use it to pay their Foxconn slave labor workers sufficiently.
Which addresses the issue with Samsung. Apple warned them they were infringing and they ignored it at the direction of their management, hence the willfull finding.
Samsung blatantly copies Apple as directed by upper management, was found guilty in a court of law, and somehow they are the victim?
Many on here can't seem to separate open source from IP. You aren't entitled to someone else's work. Android avoided this but Samsung didn't.
Spend your tears on someone who did the work and deserves it.
Apple is worth more than Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined.
Assets:
Samsung: $384.3B
Google: $72.6B
Microsoft: $121.2B
RIM: $7.7B
Noika: $45.4B
Total assets of Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined: $631.2B
Total assets of Apple: $116.4B
Oh, or were you talking about the imaginary measure of "worth" derived from feelings and pixie dust known as market cap? Even not then:
Market Cap:
Samsung: $167.1B
Google: $218.9B
Microsoft: $257.3B
RIM: $3.7B
Noika: $12.06B
Total market cap of Samsung, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia combined: $659.0B
Total market cap of Apple: $633.4B
Anyway, not sure what a company's worth in relation to others prove about what one company will do with respect to breaking contracts and dropping customers. Remember, Samsung has something much more powerful than fat stacks of cash, something Apple cannot compare: the full backing and support of the South Korean government. Not saying I think it's great a corporation is so close to a government, but that while Apple is making only shiny iToys, Samsung is a massive conglomerate making:
Textiles
Securities
Credit cards
Insurance
Chemicals
Machine tools
Engineering services
Electronics
Semiconductors
Hotels
Ships
Surveillance
Automations
Aeronautics
Oh yeah, and weapons tech... seriously, that's not a company I'd want to fuck with.
Not indirectly. They licensed it from the chip maker. They presented the receipts in court which is why Samsung's patents were considered exhausted.
Samsung was trying to double dip.
...with all of this is that the patent life is too long for computer technology. Computing power doubles roughly every two years. An academic paper in computer science is old hat in 6 months or less. Why, and oh why has patent law not recognized this and adjusted the window accordingly? Doing so would still reward innovators by letting them be a special snowflake and hook followers off the start with their innovation, but would not stifle competitors to an obscene degree (and thereby keep the original innovators, well, innovating, too).
Why is your post down modded? Android itself does this with the glow effect. Patents have a short term and force variety. We don't need another iOS clone. What would be the point?
First off, if Apple paid every patent owner that has a patent Apple infringes they would have to charge ten times as much as they do today. You talk about two patent owners when there are thousands of them, many with far more impressive patents than Apple has ever dreamt off. If a crappy feedback is worth billions what would patents regarding using the mobile phone to actually make a call be worth, a googolplex? You are totally missing the point.
My old SE 990i looked very similar to the iPhone a full year before it was even released. It had animations, capacitive touchscreen alone but thankfully not a web based interface. Side by side the two are very similar, but where the iPhone severely lacked many features it is slowly gaining and still has a lot to catch up with. There are countless of other phones to compare with outside the US that is strikingly similar.
HTTP/1.1 400
"the OP's point still stands... if you use a little creativity it's no problem to skirt these patents. and it will make for a more vibrant marketplace."
The problem is that almost whatever you do, someone has a patent that you will infringe upon because they are so vague and broad. You skirt one patent and step right on top of another one. Slide to unlock was among others implemented on the Neonode but still granted a patent. Multiply that with a couple of thousand overlapping patents and step right out on the minefield. Good luck!
HTTP/1.1 400
Actually that's pretty much exactly what happened.
Yeah, Apple invented something completely out of the blue. None of those old Windows CE "PDA"s (remember those?) had animations, touch screens, etc. Nor were they smartphone shaped. They certainly wouldn't have had an 'i' anywhere in their names.
Oh, wait....
No sig today...
These "Before iPhone, after iPhone" images are a direct consequence of the touch screen becoming the primary input device
I'm all for Samsung in this because I don't believe in IP, but I must say that I clearly remember, when the iPhone came out, that it was criticized all around for not having a keyboard and/or not having a stylus. This means that nowadays we only consider keyboard-less/stylus-less touch screens a primary input device because Apple came and showed how to do it in a way not only comfortable enough for people to not cringe at bare-hands touch screen usage, but to actually like doing it this way, up to and including not even considering the previous approaches anymore. So, arguing that touch screens as we use them today would come to light anyway and result in such specific ways of doing things is a possibility, but by no means a clear certainty.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Wait, so Samsung could have provided third party receipts in defence of Apple's allegations of patent infringement too? Why didn't their lawyers think of that one?
Companies like Samsung and various Chinese manufacturers that blatantly copy from US and European companies are partially responsible for moving a large number of tech jobs to Asia.
So as an IT person, if you root for Samsung you are essentially saying: well you can have my job, but please continue to sell me a cheap smartphone.
I don't like the patents that were used by apple in this case, but they used the existing patent system (*) and a win for Apple sends the right message: don't copy, do your own stuff. Apple is at least doing most of the design in the U.S and manufactures chips in Texas.
(*) and yes the patent system should be somewhat reformed but as a realist I don't see that happening any time sone.
I've had the feeling that Apple had nothing left in the product pipeline and they will become the next SCO.
Sad. I like some of their stuff. I even liked how they forced many industries to change.
Now, to time the sale of my Apple stock with its peak value, which I suspect will be sometime this quarter.
Very well said, sir.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
It's not just about things that were patented, but things that are so obvious they are designed out of necessity, not ingenuity. Things like the basic shape and function of the cell phone are obvious and not patented. In today's climate however, if Apple could get away with it they'd patent "A method and placement of a speaker microphone array to optimize audio quality." Unfortunately for them, they can't do this, but they are getting away with equally egregious acts on the patents they managed to squeak through the rubber stamp patent authority known as the USPTO.
Flash had bounce affects. If you ever viewed a mobile Flash site with a bounce effect, does that make Apple irrelevant?
Web based interface? Where? What you talkin' about Willis. iOS uses a proprietary Objective-C interface.
Collection of components were used in the Prada phone.
If sales are blocked in the US is can see Canadian sales of those products increasing. I may even open a Samsung shop right next to the border.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
MOD +6
I'm just hoping that the Galaxy 11.8 comes out in the next month or two as planned, since it will be the first with 128-bit ARM NEON vector double-precision floating point, useful for the scientific applications that I develop. The Galaxy 11.8 ushers in the era of tablet number crunching. iPad won't get it until iPad 5.
I assume you're trolling, but the point of the post is that it showed that Apple properly purchased the chips from Intel, which in turn had a contract with Samsung that provided the right to sell said chipsets along with a license to use them, from Intel. This is why Samsung's claims were found to be invalid and their patent claims exhausted. Intel had the right to sell the chips from Samsung, and that included protections for any purchasers granting them the necessary rights to use those chipsets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine
Are you saying it is impossible to build a phone without pinch-to-zoom or scroll bounce-back? Or one that doesn't look just like an iPhone (like the hundreds of other smartphone models that Apple isn't sueing over).
Look at the new Microsoft phones, they look nothing like iPhones.
Should approach their S. Korean neighbor LG. And help fund a lawsuit against the iPhone for stealing the look, feel, touch interface, and GUI elements of the Prada phone.
And they should do it in Korea. And not just get the sale of the iPhone banned. But have Apple banned from doing business in Korea. Not only does this result in Samsung's contract for parts being nullified. But it takes several of the largest manufacturers away from Apple.
It'd get real nasty.... I like it!
Apple produced receipts from Intel as a defense for their use of Samsung technology inside Qualcomm chips? Even curiouser.
let's get specific. here's some brainstorming. I think there are infinite ways to solve these problems; the ideas below are just a sample. I'm going to be generous with the scope of apple's patents, to bolster my argument.
slide to unlock. how about circle to unlock? spin a wheel? face recognition (like samsung)?
rubber band. how about slowing the scrolling to zero as you approach the edge? you could call it friction scrolling. or the glow effect that android has.
look and feel of hardware ("rounded rectangles"). I think this description is unfair to apple and the description is more comprehensive than the actual patent. still, face value. look at the nook - it has that neat cutaway in a corner that you could attach a carabener to. kindle has an offset screen, with either a full keyboard or other physical controls.
look and feel of software. look at win phone 7, webos.
so, you see what I mean? there's an assumption that there's no way around these patents, because they're like convergent design, but I think that's lazy. the world is full of infinite ideas, which is why it's so great to be human!
You want to upvote/downvote? Go back to Reddit! Here we mod up/mod down.
I'd argue that a significant portion of Apple's market cap is driven by a more volatile, emotion-driven perception of their products. They make good products, but many people get them for the status (seriously, how many other phone cases have a hole in the back so you can see the logo?!). If this #BoycottApple stuff really starts taking off, you'll see a big impact to their sales.
They better have something special in line for the iPhone 5.
You're saying it like the US Govt isn't already? There appears to be a lot of protectionism going on in the US right now, so I'm not sure it would be that surprising to anyone...
Blatant Advert: Android Apps!
"Poisoning the well" is not a logical argument.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He started this fight, got really p***ed off at Samsung, but I somehow doubt he'd try to legislate the competition out of the market. He knew that the Apple brand was far too valuable to risk damaging it on peanuts like this.
This may be the turning point for Apple. Jobs' influence on the products in the pipeline is running low and now the brand is being trashed by the CEO.
The 990i did not have a capacitive touchscreen. The screen was also relatively tiny, it had a physical keyboard, and was this weird hybrid flip phone. It was also dog slow, you could not install third-party software, and IIRC did not even have a music player. About the only similarity between it and the iPhone were that they both made calls and had icons on its screen. The 990i was a beast, but it was comparable to the iPhone only in the loosest possible sense of the word.
I think you may well be right but your post illustrates the problems with the present system. The ideas you describe are very obvious. The purpose of a patent system is to encourage investment in innovation: none of those ideas require any investment so the rationale for having them protected is extremely weak.
fashion... The entire industry has no protection and new designs are copied immediately. Innovation (such as it is) is fast and successful companies are very successful...
Good point. If that's the case, i.e. using components in a unique and original combination doesn't count then the bar was far too high
Again, a bounce effect. It's a bounce effect. It's a meaningless bit of visual flair that should not be patentable. The fact that you can be sued and lose based on something so trivial is the problem.
Oh wait, it's a bounce effect on a touchscreen device. I guess this should change things?
Good point I should have said TouchWiz on that example.
...because I'm absolutely certain my opinion won't be popular here.
If all these innovations you think are so obvious are indeed that, then why didn't we see them implemented in popular phones released before 2007? I don't doubt that they existed before then, but it apparently took a company like Apple to implement them in a popular, readily available device.
If Samsung, who whines like the spanked brat of a company that they are, about how terrible it is that a company resorts to litigation rather than innovation in order to compete, well, why didn't they innovate? All of this obvious tech must have been available to do so, right? Samsung, as far as I'm concerned, got owned, and the best they could do was to imitate Apple. Ook ook.
As for those of you who sanctimoniously howl about how your household is going to be Apple-free from here on? See you in the funny papers, schmucks. I'm pretty sure Apple isn't in business to garner the adoration of the all-you-can-eat toe-jam buffet crowd. Not that I believe for a moment that any of you actually owned any Apple products in the first place.
I thought I'd never defend Microsoft, but I have to hand it to them: They created an OS that offers, as far as I can tell, a thoroughly original user experience for a smartphone. I mention this, because as much as I do enjoy my iPhone and the rest of the Apple products I own, I often wonder when something better will come along, and not necessarily from Apple.
But, those who really do innovate? Those who really would create something that is truly new under the sun? It isn't patents, or the arcane system that comes with them, that they need to fear. It's the people who buy fourth-rate knock-off crap they have to fear. It's their voice, their vision, that becomes lost in all the noise.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
I'm glad I never bought anything from you, and never will.
if Apple paid every patent owner that has a patent Apple infringes they would have to charge ten times as much as they do today
Apple isn't infringing and they more or less do pay patent owners for most of their patents. There are only a few outstanding at all. And even if they settle against Apple you are talking under $30 / phone.
If a crappy feedback is worth billions what would patents regarding using the mobile phone to actually make a call be worth, a googolplex?
Those are the ones they do license and we already know, about 8 euros each.
My old SE 990i looked very similar to the iPhone a full year before it was even released.
In what way? Physical button dialing, classic JavaVM interface. I dont' see anything similar about it beyond stuff that was common to more or less most phones with color screens.
None of those old Windows CE "PDA"s (remember those?) had animations, touch screens, etc
Yes, as far as I know they didn't have an animation based interface and they had resistive not capacitive touch screens.
As for your example that's a thin-film transistor screen which is pressure sensitive not a capacitive LCD. It doesn't use animation and it wasn't web based. So it met 0 of the criteria.
I see that most of us have been talking about $1 billion damages, but since the jury say the infringement was "willful" Apple is asking for $3 billion. http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3269534/apple-samsung-gear-triple-damages-injunctions-and-no-reasonable-jury-JNOV/in/3030480 That's enough to hurt! Well grab the popcorn, this isn't over yet.
iOS original design was based on Javascript rendering and Javascript apps. The iOS interface came later i.e. native applications. The question was the iPhone 1's innovations.
Prada didn't have the web but other than that, yes a very similar idea. LG was clearly moving in the same direction as Apple and if Apple hadn't have gotten there its entirely possible by 2008 / 2009 LG would have.
Help! Does anyone know if the Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G from MetroPCS covered in the preliminary injunction request????
The originals where roll to unlock an even needed a key....off to patent office brb.
horror vacui
And if you really want to go back far enough, there was the Newton MessagePad, which was made by whom again?
Oh, that's right. Apple.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Could you, or anyone else, clearly explain to me what Apple is doing that's objectionable, without assuming that I'm against patents (including software patents) in general?
This is not a rhetorical question, by the way. I haven't been reading /. for quite a while now, and I'm just curious.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Are you saying it is impossible to build a phone without pinch-to-zoom or scroll bounce-back?
No, I'm saying pinch-zoom and scroll bounce back are both obvious and natural ways to interact with devices and should not be patentable. Akin to click-drag, pinch zoom is one of the most natural gestures for zoom, and in fact has plenty of prior art, the earliest pre-dating the iPhone by over 20 years. Aside from Samsung's own expert testimony on coll bounce prior art, it is also natural and obvious, as any spring loaded mechanism contains the exact same feedback the iPhone's emulates on the screen. Same goes for slide to unlock.
But the jury didn't even consider the patents validity in their decisions. They went so far as to say such matters bogged down the process, and proceeded diligently as if the patents were valid, as instructed by a patent-holder foreman.
With such copious examples of prior art and physical analogs, these patents are analogous to Apple patenting the placement of speakers and microphones in a phone. Sure you could make a phone without a speaker on the top and a microphone on the bottom, but it would be completely counterintuitive. If the patent system is designed to encourage innovation and not obviousness, yet we have patents on obviousness, the patent system is completely fucked.
Except it's not. Things are as worth as much as people are willing to pay for them. If tomorrow the world wakes up and sees The Beatles as a shitty band and Ford Pinto's as the car to get, you would see the values of Pinto's and Beatles records from the 70's adjust accordingly.
So, yeah if you want to talk about how much money a company is worth, you need to look at how much people are willing to pay for that company. i.e. market cap.
as instructed by a patent-holder foreman.
Who holds a DVR patent that was granted after devices like the Tivo already existed.
Of course the patent trolls won the case, the foreman of the jury was also a patent troll.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
I don't know if there is sufficient prior art to invalidate those patents; and I don't know if the jury was even allowed to consider invalidation of those patents (if they were then all this prior art should have been displayed for them). I am 100% sure that you don't know either, you just cherry-picked comments and constructed some plotline which reinforces your world-view.
I don't think either pinch-zoom or scroll bounce-back are all that obvious. It seems like if they were obvious then they would have shown up in a smartphone or tablet before the iPhone/iPad. I suspect the world would be a better place if software/concept patents had a 3 year expiration date instead of 20 years. Why not direct your anger and energy at your congressmen to make that change?
No, it means that nowadays it's the obvious design because the technology (which had nothing to do with Apple) matured enough to support it. Apple was just the first to take advantage of the obvious evolution in design. They didn't "innovate" it.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
The jury did consider patent validity. They debated it initially at some length, did not come to a consensus at that time, but later returned to and answered the question of validity, as seen from their answers to item #11 on the jury form
Except it's not. Things are as worth as much as people are willing to pay for them. If tomorrow the world wakes up and sees The Beatles as a shitty band and Ford Pinto's as the car to get, you would see the values of Pinto's and Beatles records from the 70's adjust accordingly.
So, yeah if you want to talk about how much money a company is worth, you need to look at how much people are willing to pay for that company. i.e. market cap.
"imaginary measure of "worth" derived from feelings and pixie dust known as market cap"
You need to read more carefully the comments of others. Others (imaginary value versus real value) may be happy to be wrong, but not why they like being deceived that I have to be forced to accept too.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Yes that's what I meant. I won't count the Jailbreak community since it wasn't part of Apple's intent. Just as the really cool apps on Cydia today which allow you to take interface ideas from MeeGo, or use SSH don't count as iPhone features.
I prefer a world that "Just Works"
http://Lenny.com
How about this article in Canada.
While I'm sure there's some crossover between Canadian CBC and slashdot readers, I'd say that this is visible to more than just the slash-type crowd.
I have lots of non-geek friends that have taken notice of this, especially when features disappear from their phones are a result of idiotic lawsuits on obvious tech.
The claim was that Apple "waddled into a vacuum"...
No sig today...
The Newton was based on the Amstrad Penpad
No sig today...
No it wasn't. The claim was that Apple invented something new. No one denies there was a cell phone market prior to Apple's entrance.
Samsung tried that defense it collapsed in discovery. The facts don't bear out your theory.
That isn't what "people" are willing to pay. That is the price of the most recent few 1000 shares that were sold extrapolated across the number of shares issued. The tail wagging the dog.
If you want to know what people are willing to pay you need to sell a lot more shares to extrapolate. Then people will start to look at Profit / Earnings ratios and the voting power the public shares have.
Unlike Apple, everyone having patents on things Apple do infringe upon has not yet started to sue them. There are thousands of patent owners who has not sued Apple that has patents that Apple do infringe upon. This is not disputable, its a fact.
Apple only license Nokias patents, there are countless others that pertain to a mobile phone that Apple do not pay for. Nokia has patents on much of the radio parts of a specific implementation of a mobile phone, others have a lot of the other bits and pieces. That they have not sued Apple is in no way a sign that Apple does not infringe.
The SE 990i had a cover with physical buttons that was detachable. Without the cover my phone worked and looked very similar to iPhone did later, as did a bunch of other phones before iPhone. The wizard is dead, its time you let go of the reality distortion field.
HTTP/1.1 400
You are right that it did not have a capacitive touchscreen, it had a pressure based touchscreen. I would not call it tiny compared to other phones at the time. as it covered the whole phone. There was a cover that you could take off that had physical buttons for those who prefered them. When it was closed the screen was tiny, but taken off it was not small at all.
As for speed, it was as fast as any other phone at the time. You could very well install software from all over the net, no problem, as could most other similar phones of that era. I bought and installed tons of software, i still have some receipts left.
When i first saw the iPhone the first thing i thought was that it was so similar to the phone i already had, but without things i took for granted like multitasking and stuff.
HTTP/1.1 400
Well the only group that's made a credible claim is Motorola and Apple does have them limited to 2.25%. So you can believe what you want, but lots of companies would love to sue Apple and they haven't.
The problem is that whatever you might think of, someone has already a patent on it or a patent that's broad enough to cover what you do. Not because they ever thought of using the phone like you, but because they sought to cover as broad base as possible with their patent.
That's very, very true !!
I've independently come up with a lot of new ideas, but my lawyers tell me they found existing patent coverages that are so broad, that even when the existing patents themselves are not similar with my new inventions, they effectively rendered my new inventions "invalid"
And I suspect that I am the only one who is frustrated and hamstrung by the broken patent system
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The Mitsubishi Trium Mondo released in 2001 was a PDA-style cellular telephone clearly in the slate form factor now effectively claimed by Apple.
Da Blog
those "Before iPhone, after iPhone" and "Before iPad, after iPad" images Apple fans constantly post
Yes, they are a silly. This timeline clearly shows that after the miserable failure of Apple's first phone, Apple took a couple of years off to copy HTC and LG before releasing its second phone, the iPhone, directly copying their design.
Da Blog
there was a foreman who was an engineer and has multiple patents. And led the juries, to protect the patents because he'd want "his" patents protected.
More precisely, he is a patent troll who patented the DVR several years after ReplayTV and Tivo released their DVRs to market. He probably recognised a kindred spirit in Apple, which thus managed to get confirmed patents such as pinch-to-zoom (first implemented by Myron Krueger in 1983) and slide-to-unlock (a trivial, obvious gesture but actually patented three years before Apple by Swedish company Neonode).
Additionally, he's been going around grandstanding, giving interviews where he reveals that he instructed the other jury members not to actually read their deliberation instructions because he acted as an expert witness for them in interpreting the law (thus being an expert witness giving testimony to the jury yet unavailable for cross-examination by Samsung). Mistrial material right there.
Da Blog
I don't see how pinch zoom is obvious at all. In fact I distinctly recall arguments on slashdot that pinch zoom on the original iPhone was backwards, and the closer your fingers got together the more you should be zoomed in (this is kind of like the eternal argument over what "scroll up" -- most people say you start at the top of the document and scroll down, but some insist that you start at the top and scroll up to the bottom).
Don't get me wrong -- I don't want pinch to zoom to be patented and the touchscreen market to be fragmented, and I see your prior art and it looks good to me. But I don't even see how it's obvious in retrospect, although I guess it must be for people to claim it's obvious now. It's not particularly skeumorphic. I get that it's kind of like stretching some material but stretching doesn't persist that way without distortion and then allow itself to be pushed back together.
So? Market cap is worthless unless you plan to sell stock, or trade it for something else. Oh, and if you want to do either what matters is what the person you're giving the stock to values it at, not what the current stockholders value it at. Usually they're related, but if you're talking about a lot of stock that breaks down fast.
So, Apple is worth more in market cap than 5 of its competitors. What's it going to do, issue a ton more stock and buy out its competitors? Gee, getting a 20% premium on their stock price will sure make its competitors upset... And issuing that much stock is likely to affect the market cap anyway.
The only thing that the market cap really directly relates to is the ability to do stock deals to buy much smaller companies, not ones that are worth tens of billions of dollars or more. And Apple would probably just pay cash for a small company anyway. That's why many really question the value of the market cap number is - it doesn't really translate into some real reserve of money the company can use.
Sorry - I will amend my last statement a little. There is another area where market cap does tend to matter - if somebody else wanted to buy Apple they'd have to find some way to give out more than $600B to its current stockholders if they want them to be likely to approve the deal.
Even that tends to be a bit murky though. If somebody were to buy Apple they could use Apple's own assets and stock value as part of the deal or as collateral for financing. This is like buying a house - you don't need $200k in cash to buy a $200k house - a house purchase could in an extreme case be nothing more than a deal where one person sells the house, but all the money goes to the bank, and the buyer gets the money to buy it from the same bank, so in the end it is nothing more than changing the name on the mortgage and paying a ton of fees.
So, market caps are even of limited value in looking at acquisitions. Usually what you need to do a hostile takeover is to convince the shareholders that one way or another they'll get more money with you in charge than with the current manager. That might involve up-front payment for their shares (if you can give somebody $120 today for stock that they just bought for $100 they'll be happy), or a compelling promise for more later. Neither is likely to happen to Apple right now.
...IIRC did not even have a music player...
FWIW, it did have a music player.
Diesel.
Sounds like you have a problem with the very idea of a design patent...
And whaddya know... There are several patents dating back 100 years for sardine cans....
Oh god, this sort of horseshit is just infuriating...google fashion IP rules. Then piss off and read the links. Of course fashion is protectable and of course copying is a big problem