In Wake of Samsung Verdict, HTC Does Not Intend To Settle

Taco Cowboy writes "The recent lost by Samsung in a court battle against Apple apparently does not put a dent to other parties determination to fight Apple, inside and outside of the court system HTC's Chairperson, Ms. Cher Wang, has publicly re-iterated her belief that the $1 billion jury verdict against Samsung in the U.S. 'does not mean the failure of the entire Google Android ecosystem.'"

Comments

How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[crazyjj]

Putting aside the question of whether a company can patent stuff like a rectangle with rounded edges and other obvious design features, all these patent lawsuits of recent years have made me wonder how it's possible these days for any software or hardware startup to even get going. It seems almost a given that any company that comes up with any new idea or piece of software these days, and subsequently makes even a modicum of money off of it, is pretty much guaranteed to get hit by a slew of patent lawsuits, some perhaps from big-name companies with deep pockets and lots of lawyers.

As someone who has thought about going into indie software development myself, this scares the hell out of me. I can't imagine investing a ton of time and money into some innovative new product, only to be drowned into bankruptcy by patent trolls and the software big guns who have quietly patented every obvious element of design and every trivial element of every bit of software and hardware (even those with with decades of clear prior art). I'm not sure I would even consider trying anymore without the investment of a big patent law firm just to protect me.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[ShieldW0lf]

Tesla innovated just fine. He died crazy and poor while lesser men made themselves the gatekeepers to his creations and robbed the masses blind, sure... but he still innovated. Well, invented... innovation is the dumb-grunt work, really... but the principle is the same.

Just because you're a slave doesn't mean you can't work.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[DevotedSkeptic]

I agree, the patent system is so broken it is only a new venue for attorneys to grow rich, while innovators and consumers suffer. What is even more disturbing and wrong is the ability to patent life forms, or even genes. Centers performing cutting edge cancer research cannot always have access to genes or genomes they wish to study because they are simply unable to afford the price of admission (licensing). It really is a sad state of affairs.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[MrDoh!]

Know how you feel. I had a few voip ideas and at the moment, I can't find anyone actually with a product out that does what I had planned, but when looking at patents, it's a minefield. There's so many patents I could see as /almost/ being the same, methods of communicating type stuff, control channel, that if I did well, I'm sure there'd be a line of lawyers. Still, the lawyers I've spoken with are happy to start the ball rolling, and have recommendations on lawyers to hire WHEN I get sued. They know how the lay of the land is at the moment. I've given up. That slim chance to make enough money to pay for lawyers to fend off the others? Stuff it, not worth the headaches.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[tgd]

This. I can't even begin to think of an equivocal thing that has happened throughout history. Perhaps union busting might come close, but for sweet jesus sake, the way these patent lawyers are working is just sickening. It's funny how you hear so much about tort reform and other such garbage from politicians but you don't hear a peep about patent trolling or the abuse of IP rights which is more of a hampering force on our economy than all of the malpractice lawsuits in the history of forever ever have been or will be.

I feel the need to post this on ever damn patent story on here. Read your history. This is both nothing new, and pretty tame by patent battle standards. The industrialization of the US happened both in spite of, and *because* of these sort of patent battles. The patent battles over things like programmable looms and sewing equipment made Samsung vs Apple look like something Judge Judy would preside over. And the fallout of those battles during the 19th century established the foundation of the companies that went on to fund the continued industrial growth and innovation in the US.

And the answer to how you can innovate these days is simple -- the same way every other company did over the last 200 years. License what you think is critical, ignore the things you think you can get away with, and patent as much as you can because the cheapest way to license patents has always been to cross license patents. Oh, and really study your history. They say there's nothing new under the sun, and in IP and technical litigation, that is absolutely true.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[the computer guy nex]

"Putting aside the question of whether a company can patent stuff like a rectangle with rounded edges"

OK I expect this from an Android fan forum, but I expect more out of Slashdot.

Apple has a trade dress patent. There are around 10 individual characteristics that make up the image of an iPhone. This includes rounded corners, grid of icons that can be swiped, lower set of icons that are static, edge to edge glass, black or white with chrome borders, etc.

Apple does not own a patent over any of the individual characteristics. To say they do is flat out ignorant. To violate trade dress, you need to copy all or almost all of the individual characteristics. Simply having rounded corners is not something that Apple has an exclusive license on.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[VortexCortex]

It's not possible to do anything really, if you're a small time independent. I wrote my own video and audio codecs, encryption algorithms, and distributed file transfer protocols, virtual machine, and put together a secure unified messaging / VOIP / File sharing system. It's basically in beta -- All the features work, and I'm just working out a few small scaling issues. I wrote every line of code myself. My "dependencies" are OpenGL, Pulse Audio, X11 or Win32 -- Basically, an OS, and low level audio / video APIs. I didn't implement anyone else's protocols or formats, and still the Software Patent Minefield prevents me from monetising or open sourcing the system. Fortunately this is a multi-year "free time" project that began as a bunch of smaller learning experiences, not my bread and butter. Eg: "I wonder how would one create a video codec?", I asked myself, then just did it -- The same for making compilers, interpreters, encryption, etc. (cipher block chaining can turn any one way hash into a two way cipher). Making new software isn't really hard at all; It doesn't take genius, just takes time.

Due to the current patent laws I can't afford to publish my software (except to friends and relatives) -- A single lawsuit would be the end of me even though I've never looked at a technology related patent. If I open source the code, that just opens me up to patent trolls so they can try to find their exact way of doing something in my code, then sue me for retroactive "damages" caused -- Yes, even just my own personal use of the code I wrote myself can be considered infringing and thus "damaging".

The messed up thing is that both Patent and Copyright in the USA were created for the express purpose of benefiting the society as a whole. Patents and Copyrights grant a monopoly over works for a limited period of time to incentivize creators to make their works open to the public.... Uhm, that falls flat on it's face when you consider that Open Source projects jump the gun -- They don't want the monopoly at all, and explicitly allow the public to benefit directly at the time of publication. So, since Free (libre) Open Source projects already meet the stated purposes of the patent & copyright laws, forfeiting the monopoly by choice, shouldn't they gain exemption from patent lawsuits to repay them? Ah, but then anyone could just implement a software patent and open source it, and the whole software patent market falls flat on it's face, see? Patents are stupid -- Any Artificial Scarcity of Information is stupid in the Information Age.

The USA's forefathers didn't contemplate a market would exist in which people would create things explicitly for the public to use free of charge. The founders weren't perfect, that's why they allowed amendments... As it stands it's questionable whether one can even place something into the public domain as soon as its created (Automatic copyright + "It's free" + "Nope, changed my mind, its not free" == ??) We should be treating every law with deep suspicion and testing every law's effectiveness via the scientific method. Otherwise we're operating by untested hypotheses. We don't really know if patent or copyright laws are actually beneficial to society as a whole. I'm fed up and ready to do the experiment: Abolish patents.

I say "not possible to do anything", but what I mean is anything of real importance. Making games is a less risky venture, so I'll try that on the side now.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[Nerdfest]

Nice .... so you can try, but you won't be allowed to actually succeed. The New American way?

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[QuasiSteve]

That's the whole point. The "obvious" rectangle with rounded corners only became obvious after Apple came up with it.

I think you're mixing up two words there; "obvious" and "popular".

You remember the 1994 device by Fidler, right?
http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/screen-shot-2012-06-05-at-11-03-06-am.png%3Fw%3D604

To him, a rectangle with rounded corners must simply have been an option. To others, sharper corners were an option. yet others had maybe pondered square devices, or round, or triangular.
Point is - none of them are "obvious" per se - they're simply one of many choices out there that, if you were to ask a person, would come up with.
There's certainly advantages to a rectangle - we're used to rectangles. Be it horizontally when dealing with TVs, computer screens, etc. or vertically when dealing with newspapers, magazines, books, etc.
There's also advantages to making the corners round. Making them razor sharp simply makes them uncomfortable to hold.
In that way you could say it's certainly a more obvious choice than a triangular, sharp-cornered, screen.

The thing Apple did do - through its marketing prowess, among other - is make it popular. But its popularity is not what makes it obvious.

Similarly slide-to-unlock. No, 'slide' mechanisms weren't very popular until the Apple's use of it. That in itself isn't what makes it obvious, though. The average lock on a public restroom stall may be what makes it obvious - because if you ask 100 people to come up with ways to perform an action (not necessarily unlock) given a 2D surface on which a continuous/non-continuous position may be tracked, 'slide' is more than likely to come up as one of the first suggestions.
So why didn't others use it before? Because there weren't 100 'others'. There was Palm, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, essentially. Most everything else were what you would now call 'feature phones' and unlocking those is pretty universal.. '*, OK' or '#, OK'. Maybe that was patented, too, and everybody licensed that from whoever held that patent. I should hope not, though. They copied that model - Windows Mobile required pushing an on-screen 'unlock' button or *, followed by an on-screen button or the 'enter' key, for example. If Microsoft were told by, say, Ericsson that they patented 'a two-tap method for unlocking' and to quit using it and also get all devices banned from sale (instead of just licensing it out for something a little less ridiculous than e.g. $10/device), odds are that Microsoft would have implemented a slide action - and thought of 50 more ways, patented them all, etc.

There is a difference between these two, though.
The former is form following function. Nobody wants to be jabbed in the hands by the throwing star tablet and look at the accompanying screen because it's just impractical - so the rectangle with more or less rounded corners is something that you eventually tend to evolve toward. Granting a patent on that, or even its use as a component in a patent (design or otherwise) is shenanigans.

The latter, however, is completely arbitrary. To use the bathroom stall analogy - there's knobs you have to turn, buttons you have to push, bars that you have to flip over. If the cleaning crew wants to access the maintenance room, they may have to enter a pin, or hold up a card (NFC), etc.
There's so many ways in which to implement a device lock/unlock method that at least when faced with patent litigation, it's not worth the bother to fight over keeping a 'slide' mechanism on your device unless you're fighting it out of principle (i.e. believe the patent should not have been granted OR that it should be FRAND).
That's not to say that the horizontal slide is innovative, ground-breaking, etc. Just a lot more 'meh'.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[firex726]

They go after indie guys for precedent, then they turn around and use it as ammo for the case against the big guy.

The big guys, can and will defend themselves, but it'll be harder for them, if you got a dozen cases supporting your claim.

It's well worth it to spend and not recover $100k on a case against an indie, if it'll make the big guy pay our an extra $1m because of how strong your case is.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[Shagg]

Have you read the D504889 patent?

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[Sique]

The first artist who got a copyright on his own work was Albrecht Duerer - 100 years after the first copyrights (imprimatur, as they were called then) were handed out, and only because he was the Albrecht Duerer , and some people felt that his works were actually his to profit on. The first law to recognize that an artist has a general right to his own works was the Statute of Anne 1710 -- 250 years after the first imprimatur. All those laws and principles were designed foremost to protect the manufacturer, the rewarding of the creator has always been an afterthought.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[the computer guy nex]

I realise your comment is limited, and I haven't read the whole claim, but doesn't the claim to any number of design choices sound ridiculous to you?

Apple owns the identity of the iPhone. You can articulate this identity by detailing a list of specific hardware and software choices that make the iPhone unique. Almost all smartphones are rectangular with rounded corners - and this by itself is completely innocent. Samsung made dozens of purposeful and willful choices to create a product that mimicked the iPhone in almost every way possible. This is not ridiculous whatsoever, and an entire jury agreed.

http://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/samsung-vs.-apple-e1313955567548.jpg

This blatant copying should not be allowed.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Tesla innovated just fine. He died crazy and poor while lesser men made themselves the gatekeepers to his creations and robbed the masses blind, sure... but he still innovated. Well, invented... innovation is the dumb-grunt work, really... but the principle is the same.

Just because you're a slave doesn't mean you can't work.

Nikola Tesla also died long before all this patent happy business the GP is talking about.

Slave?? Tesla was issued at least 278 patents internationally, wikipedia has a list of his American patents. Westinghouse for example licensed Tesla's patents for large sums of money so Tesla was an 'evil IP monopolizer' or 'gatekeeper' as you put it. Also keep in mind that patent trolling was a problem in Tesla's day just like it is today so it's not exactly as if the late 19th and early 20th centuries were some sort of patent lawsuit free golden age of innovation.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[Artraze]

At the end of the 19th century there were a total of about 650,000 patents granted. Now there are over 8,000,000. There's a bit of a difference. Moreover, may of those patent battles were over fairly significant innovations, or at least ones which would require a fair about of investment in terms of time and money to use. Are we seriously comparing pinch-zoom to a sewing machine? Something that requires a day of effort at best and can be rolled out in under a week to something that one builds a manufacturing facility around? It'd barely be the equivalent of using different colors on some knobs on the sewing machine, in terms of relevance to the overall device/complexity. It's something that is _only_ worth patenting to use as a part of an attack portfolio.

And while that's not to say that _never_ happened a hundred years ago (because occasionally it did), these days it's standard operating procedure. I have to side with the OP. This is a different world.

Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days?

[PortHaven]

Samsung should have walked in, and said they stole the idea. They admit it, and they are willing to pay damages. And then show the Palm Pilot Tungsten. And offer to pay Palm a $100 million for their theft of the user interface, rounded edges, and fitting as big of a screen as economics allowed.

That'd have been great...

There's a reason Android is popular

[neokushan]

And it's not because they're like "Cheap iPhone knock-offs".

Re:There's a reason Android is popular

[OoberMick]

What is it then? Is it because it's an ad supported way for google to deliver ads to more people? I hope google dies. I do not want to see an ad supported future for the internet.

So what instead? Pay to visit sites? Or are you expecting sites to run on fairy dust?

Never give in to extortion

[sa666u]

Of course they won't settle. One should never negotiate with terrorists.

Here's the thing...

[sudden.zero]

...it wasn't just the shape of the tablet/phone it was about the overall deliberate copying that Samsung did. The biggest point was that Samsung had internally distributed documents comparing the Galaxy S III to the iPhone 4s, and said documents stated that their device needed to perform more like the iPhone.

HTC isn't Samsung

[gnasher719]

When you put HTC phones, iPhone, and certain (not all) Samsung phones side by side, the HTC ones are the ones that look different. Which means Apple won't succeed, and won't try to succeed, with charges related to design patents. On the other hand, the different looks may also be the reason or part of the reason why Samsung is selling more phones right now than HTC.

Apple is the bad guy.

[Coolhand2120]

I've been following this since day one, and I gota say, Apple comes out looking like the bad guy every time. Litigate > innovate in Apple's eyes. Always has been. Remember the Apple clones? Every card carrying geek here knows that Apple "borrowed" a vast majority of the iPhone's functionality from smart phones that existed 5-7 years before the first iPhone. That Apple suing because they were "copied" is utterly ridiculous, at least to people who watched the smart phone race from the beginning. Only the uninitiated find any validity to Apple's arguments.

And Apple, you feel people are being deceived into buying non Apple products? You who deceive people into buying Apple products with deceptive ads, demagoguery and appealing to people's ignorance about technology? How long ago was it that you claimed the Power PC was better than the Intel chip you now sport? Where did the in house Apple benchmarks go that supported your wild claims that the Mac was faster than the PC. It wasn't that long ago that you changed the meaning of PC (oh that's a workstation, not a PC) so you could falsely claim that your computers were better than any PC running any OS. Deceived indeed. Your empire is built upon deception, hardware lock-in and lack of freedom for consumers.

Re:Apple is the bad guy.

[GrahamCox]

How long ago was it that you claimed the Power PC was better than the Intel chip you now sport?

Well, it was during the time that the PowerPC was better (by which I assume you mean faster) than Intel. Its architecture was always superior to the x86. That was most of the 90s. It was only after Motorola took it over, repositioned it and stopped trying to keep up that Intel's performance overtook it again with new architectures and technologies. Apple just did the pragmatic thing (unthinkable to some) to keep their products competitive.

This is not new....

[rimcrazy]

I worked in the Semiconductor industry from the mid 70's up to around 2003. In the startup phase all startups were sued by the big guns but there was always a method to the madness. You don't sue a company that has no money unless it is defensive. They would all sit back and wait until you started to get successful. They the suits come in and throw a stack of patents 3' high on the table and say "Today we are running a special, we want 1% per foot on your revenue or we will litigate each and every one of these along with a few hundred more we did not bring today and if you settle right now we will throw in a set of Ginsu Knives" Both companies end up settling for something and a cross license deal and life goes on. It is what it is. A lot of the patents are so basic you could not make a chip without violating them. TI has one around injection molded packages that you could not make a plastic package without violation. It's probably expired by now but I'm sure they have "refreshed" it 10 times over.