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Apple Wants Another $707 Million From Samsung
angry tapir writes "A California jury may have awarded Apple more than US$1 billion in damages in late August when it triumphed over Samsung in a hard-fought case over smartphone and tablet patents, but the iPhone maker is coming back for more: late last week it asked for additional damages of $707 million. The request includes an enhanced award of $535 million for willful violation of Apple's designs and patents, as well as about $172 million in supplemental damages based on the fact that the original damages were calculated on Samsung's sales through June 30."
Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
If a company has to make profit by law-suits there is something fundamentally wrong with it.
are thieving vermin and deserve nothing but contempt from the courts and the public alike. Not one single device they produce is original or innovative in style, form or function, neither was using a fanboi to get a court verdict in their favour (Microsoft surely have a patent on that).
But hope that my action of replacing my broken 2007 MacBook Pro (yes, the Nvidia chip and out of warranty) with a PC will help send a message to Apple.
No more Apple devices in my home.
"Don't hate the player, hate the game."
The game being IP.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
How about the millions of damages for the idea of a tablet computer, posthumously, to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke?
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
This is what happens when you give into a terrorist's demands. You get more demands, closely followed by more terrorists. Blame it on the patent system all you want, it existed for a long time without companies behaving like Apple.
If not by law, I think they have an obligation to their shareholders to defend their copyrights and trademarks.
If I were a shareholder I would be quite worried about the (cr)Apple strategy. IMHO this is a clear signal of lack of innovative ideas. Innovation cannot be a continuos flow and they are reaching their limits. I doubt that the iphone 5 will be a planetary success because of the lack of real innovation in it. It's a sad black thing with infamous rounded corners. It's not appealing neither aestethically nor tecnologically. The competitors do at least the same and also much better. They appear on the descending path.
Samsung in 2011 did $42b in sales and $4.7b in profits. They aren't going to be strapped for cash. On the other hand an award that large would destroy the profitability of their Android strategy. It would turn infringement from a money maker to a money loser.
Bull. Infringement actions like this are typical there is nothing unusual here at all legally. Global scale and high degree of usage by consumers makes the numbers large. But really the only thing unusual about these particular infringement actions is you care about the products being disputed and are following the case.
A cap on wealth? All this will do is turn the creative into criminals and increase nepotism.. I've reached my cap where do I put the money now? Oh my maybe its time for my nephew to open up a 10 million dollar company! Do you see how this works? And if they clamp down on this? Then our best and brightest will all be in jail or wasting time finding further loopholes, sounds like a productive thing for society?
Don't propose unnecessarty laws and restrictions for which you do not understand the consequences.
While an individual doesn't send a large message, every little bit helps and just because each individual message isn't large doesn't mean that a flood of them will be small.
It also helps in that Apple is in a positive feedback loop of their stuff being popular because it is popular. Well, the less people who are seen with Apple products, the more it works to break that feedback loop.
I certainly encourage anyone who is angered at Apple's business practices to find other devices. The good news is that it is perfectly doable. There's nothing Apple has I'm aware of that you can't find a workable alternative to.
Now if you like the stuff Apple makes the best and don't care about their actions, fair enough, but "I can't find anything else," isn't a valid point. Android or Windows Mobile phones work real well, tons of companies will supply you with a computer at any price and quality point you wish and so on.
So the parent has the right of it: If you are mad at Apple, don't buy their stuff. Better still, send them a polite e-mail, letting them know. Even better still, let others know why and encourage them to do the same (don't be pushy though).
There is not going to be a new trial. I think Samsung was treated unfairly. On the other hand Samsung also engaged in serious misconduct during discovery.
There are lots of problems with this filing as well. For example Courts have repeatedly denied a monopoly in the copyright context over the GUI design concepts that Apple seeks to protect here. See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. In Apple v. Microsoft the court never ruled that GUI design concepts weren't protected. The ruled the exact opposite that the expression of functional elements were protected. However, they found that Apple lacked standing not having been the originator of those ideas. Samsung's lawyers constantly intermix BS with truth and the problem is the court is seeing this as dishonest not good lawyering.
If they win maybe they can use the proceeds to pay the swiss railway. by the sounds of it apple believes in harsh penalty for wilful violation. Swiss Rail will be very happy to hear apple feels this way.
Posting as myself since AC would be lame and I can stand for it:
So the brand of the tards can single handely destroy the worlds biggest mobile maker by ridicilous patent claims?
Awesome.
As if there wasn't reason enough to think bad about the people buying Apple products. Or the actual Apple products. Or Apple.
In all honesty though I assume they could raise their prices to afford paying for this or proper licenses, eventually losing part of their position on the market but if that's how it should be then fine. Maybe they had gained too much of the market by not paying for the "technologies" they used. I don't even know what patents and methods they have broken/used unlicensed.
For all I care we could drop patents completely. If that lead to no will to develop future technology in some field then I guess you'd just have to do it collectively and for the benefit of everyone through universities, research funds/prizes/taxes/...
Bullshit. I am not saying that the Patent dispute is valid. What I am saying is that Apple makes hardware and software and sells it. It is not correct to say that defending their patents is how they make their money. What you are thinking of is a patent troll. You cannot expect any company to ignore patent violations, and you cannot fault any company for refusing to ignore them. Unless that company is a patent troll, any claim that they make their money through patent lawsuits is ridiculous. Apple makes their money by designing and selling computer systems.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Blame it on the patent system all you want, it existed for a long time without companies behaving like Apple.
Bull. Infringement actions like this are typical there is nothing unusual here at all legally.
Uh, not bull, that's what he said. There's nothing unusual here at all, legally. That's the problem..
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's just silly. Everyone knows that Apple's just trying to make sure they don't have to compete.
Competition is a pesky thing when you're on top. It's sort of the consumer electronics equivalent of the 1927 Yankees having the entire Philadelphia Athletics team killed on the way to the ball-park.
I mean, you're already 19 games ahead, but a little insurance is always good. And ultimately, it's not about winning, it's about humiliating the competition and making sure you win forever without having to try so hard.
It makes me understand why not everyone is comfortable having a businessman as president.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Mind you, I'd rather government be this magical free thing that nobody has to pay for. But cops, judges, tax collectors, municipal plumbers, soldiers, mayors, senators, councilors, sheriffs, and even prison wardens have to eat too, and every hour they spend on the job of government that they then cannot spend in the private sector has to be compensated.
So the question is, who should pay for this burden?
I'd rather tax the rich simply because they can afford it. The worst that can happen to the number 1 rich man is that he gets down to number 2, and if the government needs more money they both go down to number 3, who joins them on the trip down to number 4, and so on until the government's "civilized society bill" gets paid. There is a LONG way down before a rich man starts truly suffering poverty, or even inconvenience. Until he actually comes up short on something he needs or wants BESIDES being richer than someone else, he's got more money than he can use.
And that's assuming a 100 percent tax on the top bracket, which doesn't even have to be the case.
Why is this bad? Cash is being spread around. The nephew can use the money now, and hire employees for his new company. This is much better than having money rot in a bank.