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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.
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.
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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.
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.
Most Apple buyers don't need advice, they already know they want an Apple.
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.
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.
Apple lost the look and feel lawsuit mainly on issues of standing. But assuming they had won. What would have happened is Microsoft would have had to use very different GUI paradigms in designing Windows. Windows would have had to look and act less like Mac. So they would have used different input methods like maybe the stylus on a tablet / stylus on a resistive touchscreen would have been common. Ideas from OS/2 and NextStep that were circulating in the GUI community about moving towards object oriented GUIs would have been incorporated into Windows. Maybe Be Inc's view of a multimedia desktop (i.e. like Aero). Heck Microsoft might have bough NeXT or Be Inc to transition.
In other words we would have been much better off.
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
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.
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.
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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...
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.
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
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
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!
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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.
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.
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?
Which original IBM patent? One of the ancient ones that have expired? How would any of the single-touch, resistive-screen pen computing tablets apply to a device with multi-touch capacitive screen? And how exactly are the FoxConn workers, who earn a wage around 40% over the regional average for the type of work, "slave labor"? Are you that disconnected from the manufacturing industry as you sit in your comfy chair pretending to be doing a desk job?
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.
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.
It acts to reduce my choice as a user. For example, right now the single best smartphone device on the market, from my perspective, based on features alone, is Galaxy Nexus, which Apple seeks to ban for sale and importation. It is clear that they'd rather prefer me to buy an iPhone, but I've owned an iPhone and find it inconvenient and lacking features that I want. Now the only way for Samsung to get their phones unbanned is to remove features that Apple claims are infringing - which leads to the situation where I have to choose between two products both lacking features due to artificially imposed limitations (on Apple's own products, by design; and on competitors' products, by legal force). That's frustrating.
The Mitsubishi Trium Mondo released in 2001 was a PDA-style cellular telephone clearly in the slate form factor now effectively claimed by Apple.
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