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Apple Wins Again — ITC Rules They Didn't Violate Samsung Patents
An anonymous reader writes "A preliminary ruling from the International Trade Commission found that Apple did not violate four of Samsung's patents in the design of the iPhone. 'The patents in the complaint are related to 3G wireless technology, the format of data packets for high-speed transmission, and integrating functions like web surfing with mobile phone functions.' The complaint was filed by Samsung in 2011, and a final confirmation is due next January. Apple has similar claims against Samsung awaiting ITC judgment; the preliminary ruling is expected in mid-October."
Domestic company wins.
If this were an American company suing an American company, the ruling would be done around 2020. Then the damages would be minimized when a new government is sworn in.
If i ever get in trouble, I want Apple's lawyers defending me. They can't seem to do wrong.
Seems more like they can do wrong exceptionally well ;-)
It's easy: hate software patents for being weapons of anti-competition rather than protectors of innovation, and hate Apple for using the weapons.
Funny how Slashdot as a whole can miss sarcasm even if it slaps them in the face, hard.
-- Cheers!
With 600B+ market cap, whole market moves every time Apple moves. And with 600B+ market cap everyone expects Apple to grow even bigger. In a world driven by money (and only money) the only possible outcome will be Apple winning on all fronts, regardless of how much harm will it cause to everyone else (including consumers). Looking forward I expect judges mysteriously ruling in favor of Apple dubious patents and punishing competition every time regardless of their arguments. And even if tables turn in this debacle and Apple gets burned for the first time, I see Congress quickly passing a law "fixing it" - basically setting competition in an uphill battle against Apple or even outright graning monopoly on consumer electronics to Apple in some way.
Welcome to crony capitalism.
With 0.3-0.6% of GDP directly attributed to Apple and its basically unlimited funds for lobbying (bribing) politicians, your lovely (US) government cannot afford letting them lose their current market cap - it would harm whole market and trigger an avalanche of failing pension funds (lots of them also heavily invested into Apple itself) which in turn would bite government crooks in their lazy asses. Wall Street crooks also cannot afford Apple bubble popping exactly for the same reasons. Given that the biggest thread to Apple's profit is margin compression caused by maturing smartphone/tablet technology, I bet that both government and wall street will do everything they can to keep competition out of this space, heavily influencing courts, panels and commisions dealing with Apple's cases.
It's getting hard to tell who's who around here.
Hi,nice to meet you. I'm neither a shill nor a fanboy. I'm an ass - I don't expect you'll have any difficulty trouble telling me apart from the others. ;)
The ITC is inherently biased for US companies when it comes to bans. A ban can be rejected if it is deemed to hurt the US economy, so there is almost no way a foreign firm can ever ban a US company's products. In fact, I am not sure this has ever been carried out.
Hardware patents perhaps, but personally I don't think software patents have helped in any way to further innovation. They are only a weapon.
So what you are saying is that a guy who pours significant amounts of time into developing an algorithm, making it space and time efficient, modelling it to resolve concurrency issues, etc... should not get patent protection and that you are 'entitled' to use his algorithm without compensating him for all his hard work? Creating algorithms is one example of a software development activity that is by far not always a trivial. I can see why granting a once-click-shopping patent or a slide-to-unlock patent is just plain dumb, I can also see why people are frustrated by big corporations patenting obvious stuff by the shipload and then using the expense of patent lawsuits as a tool to drive small competitors out of business. All of these are things that are wrong with the current system. However, I also fail to see why a guy developing hardware deserves patent protection but a guy developing software doesn't because that's one thing the patent system currently does right, which is giving inventors some protection against being ripped off by predators.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
that's one thing the patent system currently does right, which is giving inventors some protection against being ripped off by predators.
No it doesn't. Unless your legal team and legal budget are bigger than who ever is ripping you off, the current system provides zero effective protection. It has always been a system by the big players (and their lawyers) for the big players.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!