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Will Apple Vs Samsung Verdict Be Overturned?
An anonymous reader writes "While there's much talk of Apple asking for more money from Samsung, there's less talk of the likelihood that the verdict will be overturned completely. Based on voir dire, and the foreman's subsequent statements to the press, it seems he failed to follow the law."
If its Android that appears to be breaching patents surely they should be suing the Android/Google collective.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
At this point Apple is actually copying Samsung, Samsung is a full generation ahead of where the iPhone in both hardware and software is, so anything that Apple does to the iPhone is just following Samsung, I think Samsung should come back and drive Apple into the ground.
I take this is some sort of troll attempt. Tested, Windows phone 8? indemnification? no one offers that.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Is anyone else sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung?
I sincerely hope microsoft is paying you to create new accounts and shill on slashdot. Because if you're just doing this for free, that's pretty sad.
Conversely, if MS is wasting money trying to get slashdotters to like the windows phone, that's really funny.
Apple and Samsung remind me of the seagulls in "Finding Nemo"....... "MINE!MINE!MINE!MINE!MINE!MINE!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4BNbHBcnDI
Waiting for times when inspiring innovations in technology get more press than who in a courtroom wins the right to extract money from them.
I'm not sure how anyone could even offer 'tested' in the present legal climate. Aside from the fact that individual judges and juries are unpredictable, are there even enough paralegals with relevant knowledge of US patent law to throw at the problem of determining whether a given complex system is noninfringing or legitimately licensed against all currently valid patents? That's an epic task search and (somewhat)natural language processing problem.
Indemnification is at least possible; but if you are practically guaranteed to have a few trolls hit you for low to moderate millions in the rocket docket, and there is the possibility of a huge lawsuit or two, it isn't going to be inexpensive, since it'll basically amount to insurance...
What this site really needs is an AI filter that sends all Samsung vs Apple news/comments directly to /dev/iamsickofthat
I loved his position that a piece of prior art could be dismissed because the implementation discussed ran on a different processor architecture. Judicial functionaries have a proud history of pulling distinctions out of their asses and calling them 'tests'(later given first names, if they catch on more broadly); but that one was classic.
Yes, well unfortunately if companies go with "something tested like Windows Phone 8", there is no business model because nobody will buy their products.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Nice try Steve Balmer!
God is imaginary
Android isn't!
Heck, google should go patent these same things, pinch and zoom, etc.
The juror himself said it!
The iPhone uses the A4 (or A5 or whatever it is now) processor, android ones don't. If Samsung tried to run their code for pinch-and-zoom on the iPhone, it wouldn't run without errors.
This means that Samsung could patent, and the iPhone's prior art wouldn't invalidate!
You heard it here first! Juror gives everyone the ability to patent almost everything in the software realm, by making patents processor specific. .... more specific than ".... on the internet" patents!
Yeah that quote was pretty bad. But I actually feel some sympathy for the jurors.. this case was so full of complicated issues, of trade dress, prior art, infringement, etc, and there were so many of these questions at hand (700??) that I don't know how any jury of laypeople could ever really untangle it all. I think they did just what most people would do. Boil it down to a couple of overly simplistic litmus tests, that you can just hold up each one to and say "yup,"yup","nope".. x700. Which of course is the wrong thing to do but that's just what happened. In this case, with the help of the foreperson who was clearly empathizing with the patent-holder from the beginning.
The USPTO is a patent minefield, granting obvious stuff simply because certain Americans think its hard to do.
Corroborative commentary which by no means reflects the view of the author of this comment and merely serves as an indicative backdrop to the post as a whole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdIWKytq_q4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE
Even understanding simple issues like what was actually at issue seem too hard for most.
It wasn't Android that was in dispute but Samsungs own extensions that made it more Apple like which is why Google didn't pile in.
Note: Google/Motorola has now piled in and is asking for a United States wide ban on all Apples products.
http://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/2012/er0917kk3.htm
One might see this as a retaliatory strike, who can tell, you reap what you sow.
But you have a to call to question the sanity of a process for instance that in the SCO v IBM case is still rumbling on after 9 years in the USA where as in the rest of the world, Germany for instance ... a simple and commensense approach was merely to say go away SCO and pay £30,000 euros every day you keep spouting bollocks.
How long will the Apple v Samsung go for I wonder?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120923233451725
On what? Long filename schemes that weren't the least bit inventive?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
why are they not attacking these patents directly?
Samsung lawyers are doing that as well in one of the many filings. Basically calling each of the patents asserted by Apple invalid due to indefiniteness because of vague words like "substantially centered", ambiguous use of dotted lines in the design patents, and so on.
See comment here for a brief summary.
excerpt:
Claim 50 uses such a term of degree, requiring that the first and second "boxes of content" be "substantially centered" on the touch-screen display. JX 1046.49 (emphasis added.) [...] There are no tests, parameters, or other criteria for determining whether such a box is or is not "substantially centered."
Everything that Apple sued over is prior art. Seriously.... 100% of it. I don't understand why Samsung's legal team didn't just go camp at the USPTO with their prior art and get those patents revoked. No patent = no law suit. What a bunch of screw ups. And Apple is infringing everyone from HTC to Mitsubishi to Nokia to IBM with their "patents". Feel free to pile on and offer up your own examples of prior art.... http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/457/prior-art-should-invalidate-apples-patents
I'm a big Android fan, I've used various Android ROMs on my rooted phone, and on my tablet. Over Labor Day I got my hands on a Samsung Galaxy 5 Player. This was unlike any Android I've used before. The UI was re-worked quite a bit and my first reaction was "This feels more like an Apple device". The desktop (for lack of a better word) was set up so the home page was the first window, and all extra were on the right (like Apple, where android has the home be the center window). The icons in the app tray had a background image put behind them that made it feel very apple like. The Samsung apps on it looked like Apple apps (Like a notepad that had the same icon as Apple's app). It wasn't a stretch to see many of the UI elements were taken from the iPhone. It was to the point where I had to search for settings, because the UI was more Apple-like than Android-like.
As much as I hate to say it, as I really loathe Apple products... I think Apple has a case here for the specific devices that the look/feel were copied. The Samsung S3 has a much more "Android" feel to it. It isn't Android, but a custom ROM Samsung made using Android to make their own version of an iPhone.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Good to see paranoia reign supreme on Slashdot. Of course it must be that he's a paid shill, and not one of a hundred more reasonable and boring possibilities such as:
1: He genuinely thinks that Microsoft's phone is a safer bet in case Android gets in more trouble
2: He's a fan of Microsoft products or dislikes Google (yes, someone can still like a company, yet not work for them).
3: He said it ironically/trollingly to get a reaction, as he too dislikes the patent mess, and wants people to get fired up about it (to motivate them or something?)
4: He's somewhat ignorant about the whole (complicated) situation (as I suppose everyone is to a degree)
5: Any combination of the above
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Gonna have to go with #1. Makes the most sense.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I think Apple has a case here for the specific devices that the look/feel were copied.
There is no such thing as look and feel in law. There is only a creative attempt by Apple to make some new law by suing Microsoft over trashcans etc some years ago, and there is "trade dress" in copyright law... a long shot.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If Samsung's defence was based on the Apple patents baing invalid because of prior art, why are they not attacking these patents directly? It may be a tough way to go but their current strategy is in trouble.
Because they have their own portfolio of obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents that might become worthless if they create any legal precedents against obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents?
If you want to see patent law cleaned up, don't expect it to come from a trial between two big patent holders.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Not really. We are not an insignificant group in the tech world. We are the support reps, admins, developers, bosses, and coworkers of many many people. We tend to be the more tech savvy and more then likely have large numbers of friends and family who come to us for advice for tech purchases.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
For that matter, didn't anyone here read google news the next day? There was an article about one of the jurors saying that the foreman had a patent, and explained to them IN THE JURY ROOM how it worked, and they thought that prior art was so complicated that they skipped it.....
That's as miscarriaged as it gets.
mark
You have to realize that Samsung was repeatedly refused to allow relevant evidence or experts. It was extremely frustrating, and Samsung eventually got pissed enough to release stuff out in the public. Which stopped some of the injustice.
Most of it stemmed from an email bias. Where Samsung was accused of destroying evidence by not keeping emails. Apple wasn't keeping the emails either, and just pleaded that they don't do those sorts of things.
This case was a boondoggle.
***
Just the fact that the jurors were selected from Silicon Valley is in and of itself enough to claim extreme prejudice to this case.
What I find really fascinating is that we've got two jurors with previous patent case experience. Talk about a non-random slice of the population.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We do have copyright laws for style. Fonts are protected, even though the alphabet is clearly in public domain. We have many lawsuits over the look of a logo, even the use of color in an advertisement... Plan on Red background with white cursive lettering? Coca-Cola will be in touch with you.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Do you have any problem distinguishing between a robot and a half eaten apple?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Agreed, it is a waste of space and time. We should be talking about bitcoins instead.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Microsoft does offer indemnification.
Actually, there is no "look and feel" currently, but years ago, Lotus won a lawsuit against Borland for exactly that. It took a number of years to get the verdict reversed, and in the interim, Borland was pretty much crippled. They couldn't obtain new investors. They couldn't even find anyone to buy the company. Despite this they still developed products like Delphi that were significantly better than anything M$ developed. Eventually the verdict was overturned.
The final result of the financial squeeze was the firing of Philippe Kahn and the takeover of Borland by the bean counters. It was all downhill from there. The Lotus case proved that a crappy lawsuit can actually destroy a company over a period of years.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
Fonts are protected, even though the alphabet is clearly in public domain.
Interestingly enough, fonts in America are not covered by copyright, although the computer instructions that describe a font are. It is legal to clone fonts in America of you do it optically, and don't copy any code. This is how, for example, Microsoft could create Book Antiqua, which looks virtually identical to Hermann Zapf's Palatino.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Fonts are NOT protected by copyright US copyright law (much to the chagrin of font designers ... yet somehow we survive and people still come up with new ones) what is protected is the "software" to display the font can be covered by an end user license agreement (the infamous EULA) and restrict you from using the font package as provided for you in the software on another computer without a license. You can and it is entirely legal to do so in the USA is copy the exact characters (Manually not with a software program) and document with a video that is how you are doing it, then release it into public domain. The font file is protected by copyright because it involves "code" and the judge and jury on the precedent setting cases didn't know what computers were .... and felt that the code that displays the font as true type (or a font manager program) can be copyrighted without any knowledge of the code itself being unique in anyway or worthy of a copyright.
What you are referring to is a Trademark (style) this is not a copyright and a company can protect its logo or colors and can sue if another company tries to use their trademark look they have to prove though that it will cause market confusion or give them impression that it is being endorsed by that company. For example a HS football team can not take the look and colors of an NFL team without permission, however a car dealer can wave flags and display the colors of the local football team without any special permission (or any team for that matter)
Do you have any problem distinguishing between a robot and a half eaten apple?
Depends, am I in Japan and how much have I been drinking?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I have 2 Samsung devices, a tablet (P7500) and first Galaxy S and even though I try hard, I can't get what on earth is "apple like" in them.
Default video player? MX Player is all I use, default one supported less formats
Background image? Samsung uses shiny pics with vivid colors, how is it "apple like"?
And how is having WIDGETS on the home screen "Apple like" pretty please?
How could one own Samsung's phone and not know that, dear Petron?
Trade Dress is pretty significant, and Samsung definitely did copy Apple's trade dress in some ways (although it's certainly arguable that Apple copied a lot of it from elsewhere, making the point quite moot in this particular case). However, Trade Dress must be purely aesthetic and thus by definition non-functional. Rounded corners and certain UI elements are functional and thus the applicability of some of Apple's Trade Dress arguments is questionable.
NOW, SAME FOR MR. TEPMAN, AS WELL AS TO MR. HOGAN. YOU ALL HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE, BUT WILL YOU BE ABLE TO DECIDE THIS CASE BASED SOLELY ON THE EVIDENCE THAT'S ADMITTED DURING THE TRIAL?
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: YES.
THE COURT: OKAY. MR. HOGAN SAYS YES.
I had a Galaxy S1 and now have a S3. The S1 - you could say it looked like an iPhone 3GS, but no one would confuse the two phones. It was clearly bigger, the back was different, it was different colours, it felt different to hold/use, and it had SAMSUNG in big letters across the front.
The S3 looks nothing like any Apple device.
The wall warts looked nothing like the iPhone ones for either of those phones. The packaging looked the same - you know, a rectangular box. Pretty much all phones come in such a box, probably since before the iPhone.
In that they "modified Android to look more like iOS" - they built their own home screen/launcher (TouchWiz). The launcher now looks much the same as stock android, and the home screen is barely different to any other home screen app. The only way you could say they copied Apple would be in the ordering of the icons on the bottom row, which is mostly seen in their marketing.
I think the similarities are vague and only on the surface. As soon as you use either device you would not think they were similar.
When it all comes down to it, I don't really care whether they were found guilty. It doesn't look like they were trying to clone the iPhone, more like just present a fairly familiar interface so that iPhone users would feel at home.
Was the $1bn fine fair? I really don't think so.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Don't you have that the other way around? I'd say that given the direction Apple is going in with its phone and tablet offerings they are trying to create their version of recent Android-powered devices. From multitasking to drag-down notifications to bigger screens to the demise of *beep* iTunes for some functionality to, well, you name it. All those 'new' things Apple comes up with have been done before in Android (and many other systems, but Apple-Android folks seem to prefer dichotomies).
Then again, the same could be said for their original iPhone. They might copy and mix with style, but it is still copying and mixing. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they don't try to create exact copies to confuse potential customers (they didn't) or turn around after copying something to claim they invented and innovated and came up with it all by themselves (they did...). That is what separates Apple from most other companies in this field - their stuck-up arrogant nose-in-the-air holier-than-thou attitude.
--frank[at]unternet.org