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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."

28 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Squeezed for cash? by Quakeulf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I didn't think Apple was doing that badly that they have to litigate others for cash to stay relevant. Oh wait, maybe they are doing it to make the others strapped for cash! Or wait, maybe there isn't even a point in doing this. Maybe they should all hold hands and be happy instead. :3

    1. Re:Squeezed for cash? by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Squeezed for cash? by greentshirt · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Very simple, actually. Capitalism with limits. You put a floating cap on profits, tied to measures such as the crime rate and the wealth gap; and put a cap on personal wealth. It doesn't have to be a low cap, say $20 million dollars. Or $50 million. Fuck, make it an even $100 million dollars and raise it every year with inflation. Then watch society transform.

    3. Re:Squeezed for cash? by jbolden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Squeezed for cash? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.'"
    5. Re:Squeezed for cash? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In this story alone we have posts claiming settlement money is needed to keep Apple afloat and Apple are terrorists.

      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.
  2. Hard to like Apple any longer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Hard to like Apple any longer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yup, I share your sentiment. Apple is increasingly becoming a downright scary company, Perhaps *all* their staff should watch those "think different" ads again. The company seems to be almost aiming for a Big Brother badge these days.

    2. Re:Hard to like Apple any longer by Drakonblayde · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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...

      Right, because a stock price that's still over $700/share and 2 million pre orders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours is clearly an indication of declining fame. Most people don't know about or care about this litigation. They just know Apple makes stuff they like. I don't like alot of the things Apple does as a company, but I like the products they make. I don't like the products that their competitors make, they don't fulfill my needs. So what am I going to do, refuse to buy Apple out of some sense of moral outrage? Sorry, not going to make myself less productive as a show of support for some other big mega-corp? Samsung is not some innocent bystander getting picked on by the big kid on the block. There's sin enough to go around for *all* players invovled in the smartphone market, so the moral reprehension is pretty much a wash for me. So in the end it boils down to who has the product I prefer to use. Those are the people who get my money.

    3. Re:Hard to like Apple any longer by MtViewGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The thing is that Apple could get scrutinized like the United Shoe Machinery Company was during the 20th Century. (For those who don't know, United Shoe was sued by the US government starting in the 1940's for abusing patent rights on shoe making machines to eliminate competitors. This litigation eventually wiped out the company.)

      I'm not sure if Apple wants to be in that position, given their enormous clout in the touchscreen computing device market with the iPhone and iPad.

    4. Re:Hard to like Apple any longer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This recent behavior by Apple is no different than they've always acted. They've always been scary, they just haven't had the resources to be particularly dangerous until recently.

    5. Re:Hard to like Apple any longer by GReaToaK_2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It took this long for people to realize that Apple has never been nothing more than a cut-throat Capitalist company?

      Really? Steve Jobs was NEVER a Saint nor was he ever nothing more than Bill Gates (in his Microsoft days) with a "cool veneer".
      I'm sorry to all you Apple distortion field loving fanboys and girls out there but Steve was ALWAYS a vicious business man.
      The difference between Jobs and Gates (besides the obvious) is that Gates changed over time and became an amazing philanthropist. Even in Jobs’s dying days he was still cut throat, admirable if you’re a business person but that’s it.

      I’m tired of the rhetoric. Apple is just another company that since it’s driving force (Steve) is gone has been reduced to pissing matches with patents.

      I hope Samsung wins.

  3. bad looser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If a company has to make profit by law-suits there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

  4. I am but a small cog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I am but a small cog by JackAxe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm in a similar boat. I've been buying Macintoshes since the nineties and working on them professionally longer, but when it comes time to upgrade to a new portable workstation, I'm moving to something like HP's beasts.

      Since my current MacBook Pro 17" is still very capable, I'm cross-grading all of my pro-applications to Windows that don't have a multiplatform license and plan to be in Bootcamp fulltime before end of the year. This is easy for me, since I used PCs first back in the eighties and never abandoned them, even when I moved on to Macs fulltime -- I still build PCs for gaming and 3D work.

      Another area I'm dropping, which is a bit harder to chew on, is IOS development. I'm not going to bother renewing with Apple come next March; but having said that, I deal mostly with enterprise and I noticed a trend towards Android tablets now, so this makes it easier.

      This new Apple isn't a company I respect and care to support. It's going to be a bit tougher to get the wife off her Mac, but eventually it will happen.

  5. New positions? by SiriusStarr · · Score: 5, Funny

    They have to pay for the ex-Google Mappers somehow. It's either that or convince people to start renaming continents.

    --
    Fear the penguin.
  6. The real news is Samsung's motion by robbak · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120922171505170

    The real news is Samsung's motion for JMOL or a new trial. This verdict is hopelessly inconsistent and compromised - the statements made by the jury foreman are hard to believe! - that there is no chance of it standing. If sane, Apple would admit that, argue that the verdict should be tossed in it's entirety, so the important points in Samsung's favor are lost as well, and keep it's powder dry for round 2. I'm not holding my breath for that, as they have shown a willingness to argue that the sky is green from day 1.

    --
    Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
  7. Apple may have a problem, Houston... by Torinir · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple might have a hard time asking for more money from that judgment when Samsung has valid claims which could lead to a retrial.

    http://www.groklaw.net/pdf4/ApplevSamsung-1990Samsung50and59motions.pdf

    Of note: the table of references point to cases of jury misconduct, even though the arguments by Samsung were redacted. Bet on this judgment being tossed out fast.

  8. Obligatory Ice-T by srussia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

    The game being IP.

    --
    Set your phasers on "funky"!
    1. Re:Obligatory Ice-T by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why shouldn't we hate the players? The players spend millions upon millions lobbying to change the rules of the game in their favor, often at the expensive of innovation.

      I know it's fun to mindlessly spout clíchés, but they're not always true.

  9. Not so funny anymore by Damouze · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  10. It's what happens... by Kupfernigk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What happened to the concept of a "jury of peers" as in English law (i.e. equals)? If corporations are people in the USA, then the jury in a trial between corporations over technical issues should consist of retired (as in no ax to grind) design engineers with experience of the patent, trademark and design system. This won't happen because they would rapidly expose the ignorance of the lawyers, simply by the questions they would ask. But it would eliminate an awful lot of bad decisions and legal costs.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  11. If I were a shareholder by darkat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. I can very well hate the player by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple decided to go nuclear, and it is likely to backfire on them. While the patent system is broken for sure, most other large companies seemed to use stupid patents largely defensively. They'd patent everything under the sun so that if someone came after them, they could counter with thousands of patents and see what stuck. In terms of legit patents, they'd do cross licensing.

    Not Apple, they've decided to go nuclear on other players. Sue them for stupid amounts of money, declare nobody can make anything that looks like an Apple product, and so on. They raised the stakes, and thus things are getting nasty.

    So we sure can, and will, hate on Apple.

  13. Swiss by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  14. Try to keep up ... by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Try to keep up ... by shentino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apple is a patent troll because the patents they are beating over Samsung's head are bullshit and never should have been issued in the first place. Yet the court grants the USPTO a wide berth of "deference" when the USPTO is already rubber stamping things expecting the courts to clean up THEIR mess.

      It's a chicken and egg situation where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

      It's a racket.

      And Apple is in on it.

      That makes them a patent troll.

      Worse yet, you can't get a reexam at the USPTO without shitting your position up in court if you get sued later. According to the law, if you botch a reexam you cannot use prior art as a defense in court.

  15. good research to support smaller wage disparity by Chirs · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a fair bit of research showing that well-being is related inversely to the difference in income between the richest and poorest people in a society. The smaller the difference, the better off people are.