Samsung Claims iPad Mini, iPad 4, New iPod Touch Also Infringe Patents

SternisheFan writes "Here we go again. Korean electronics giant Samsung has added three new Apple products to the list of products that the company claims infringes on its patents. In a filing to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Samsung has added the iPad mini, the new iPad 4, and the fifth-generation iPod touch to an existing lawsuit that covers devices such as the iPhone 5, iPad 4, and earlier iPod touch devices. According to the filing, Samsung believes that 'good cause exists' to add these three devices to the original infringement claim, 'because Apple's new products were not yet available when Samsung submitted its original contentions on June 15, 2012 or its first motion to supplement its infringement contentions on October 1, 2012.'"

Comments

Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[jjeffries]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[MightyMartian]

Yes. Apparently this is what we now call "innovation".

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[History's Coming To]

You can also play the "launch all the missiles for the hell of it" card. Which is what's happening - these devices are on convergent evolutions and they're arguing over the current tiny ideas instead of the next big ones. Good reference though.

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[viperidaenz]

If one side nukes you, the only way to not lose is to pack up your shit and go and live with the other side, before the bombs detonate/the fallout reaches you.

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[ozmanjusri]

Actually, in the patent game, both sides get to increase their cost-to-customer as well as barriers to market entry for small players and startups. For big companies, patent wars are a win, which is why they so willingly participate.

For their customers, on the other hand...

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[trout007]

Or be the lawyers.

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[aztracker1]

Maybe the best way to address this is for a judge to simply embargo the classes of products from involved parties until the issue is resolved.. then we're not pushed into getting the new shiney for a while, and the companies can bite it until they then push the government to abolish patents... I honestly believe that there are some genuine innovations deserving of patent protection, but that our government is too inept to actually come up with a system that rejects more patents than it grants.

Re:Global Thermonuclear Patent War

[symbolset]

Or to be off-planet at the time. Offsite backups people!

And, in other news - Black Friday Patent sales....

[DontScotty]

And, in other news - Black Friday Patent sales are expected to open at 10 pm this evening.

Patents on "Duh", "Obvious", and "Send me a memo titled Shit I Already Know" are expected to go quickly.

That does it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm copyrighting infringing a patent. Anybody who violates my trademark will have to undergo an auto-da-fe.

Re:That does it!

[iluvcapra]

"This, being the best of all possible worlds, God saw it fit to invent the Rope."

(Sound of gallows trap door opening.)

Mooooooooommmmm!

[SIR_Taco]

Samsung: 'Apple's looking at me!!!!'
Apple: 'Am not!'
Samsung: 'Are too!'
Apple: 'Am not!'
Samsung: 'Are too!'
Apple: 'Am not!'
Samsung: 'Are too!'
Apple: 'Am not!'
Samsung: 'Are too!' ...

Previously from our last episode:

Apple: 'Samsung's looking at me!!!!'
Samsung: 'Am not!'
Apple: 'Are too!'
Samsung: 'Am not!'
Apple: 'Are too!'
Samsung: 'Am not!'
Apple: 'Are too!'
Samsung: 'Am not!'
Apple: 'Are too!'

Re:Mooooooooommmmm!

[Rogerborg]

Yehbut... Apple started it.

Did too.

And the winner is RIM

[lucm]

Anyone noticed that while Apple and Samsung are fighting each other in court, RIM stock is going up? Of course nobody will say that an obsolete, buggy device on an unreliably network is infringing on their patents. Quite brilliant: let the big boys beat each other down and step up as the safest choice for nervous enterprise customers.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[cavtroop]

Interesting, but not relevant. I work for a corporation that just standardized on the iPhone (against my recommendations). RIM was never even at the table. Sales, Marketing and even IT guys just don't want to be seen with a BB device anymore - they all want either an iPhone (mostly) or a Samsung GIII (minority). That's it. Its more about cool factor and being seen with the device, even in the business world.

As part of the evaluation, we spoke to close to a dozen other companies that recently went through the same process, and pretty much got the same response - that the users overwhelmingly refused to have anything to do with a RIM product, and wanted the flashy new iPhone or GIII.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[Aranykai]

I dont know that i would consider that trend significant given the stock history over the last 5 years.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[lucm]

As part of the evaluation, we spoke to close to a dozen other companies that recently went through the same process, and pretty much got the same response - that the users overwhelmingly refused to have anything to do with a RIM product, and wanted the flashy new iPhone or GIII.

I'd be curious to know where people put the Windows 8 phone in that lineup.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[Anubis IV]

RIM may not be taking punches from the big players, but that's only because they're being trod underfoot by them. And if you look at their long-term stock trends, rather than focusing on just a small part of it, you'd see that as well.

It's not like Apple or Samsung are going away anytime soon. Either Apple loses and has to pay damages + licensing fees for these patents (which they have plenty of money to be able to handle), or Samsung loses and things continue on as they have. Either way, RIM continues to lose major contracts with governments (as was reported here last week), loses even more contracts with businesses that are switching to newer devices that can do more (e.g. so many software developers at the company I work for use iDevices that the company bought Apple TVs for all of the conference rooms so that any of us with iDevices can use AirPlay to show our mobile screen on the projectors or TVs; not to mention Yahoo letting employees get any major smartphone except for a BB), continues to be viewed as the has-been brand that few people want for personal use, and gets pushed into more and more niche markets overseas, where they'll eventually disappear due to lower margins and increasing demands (e.g. being forced to give up private data on their network in India).

BB10 is their only hope at this point, but it's unlikely that it will be able to turn things around for them, I'd guess. I might feel differently about it if they had a recent history of putting out products that were well-received, but they haven't exactly been doing that. Besides which, Palm went under after putting out WebOS, which was universally acclaimed as being an excellent OS, which is more than I'm expecting with BB10. RIM seems to be in a bad spot at this point, so I don't see how they can hope to recover. I even have a friend working for them...we've been trying to tell him to get out for years, but he staunchly refuses to believe that they're in trouble, despite thousands of employees getting laid off and other signs of impending trouble happening all around him.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[finkployd]

I think it is less "cool factor" and more "RIM devices are at best 5 years behind the tech curve in almost every way imaginable". Seriously, if you want security above usability and productivity, you need a mainframe with dumb terminals and motorola flip phones.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[petman]

It's interesting how the trend is totally the opposite in my part of the world. I work in a fairly large corporation here in the third world and Samsung/Android is arguably more popular amongst corporate users compared to the iPhone. In any meeting, it's not uncommon to see two-thirds or more or the attendees sporting Samsung Android phones.

Re:And the winner is RIM

[Xest]

Sorry but you're offering nothing more than a meaningless anecdote.

Looking at the actual Q3 figures, RIM is shifting 2 Blackberrys for every Windows Phone, and Apple is only shifting 2.6 iPhones for every Blackberry, which given Apple's high sales figures doesn't exactly put RIMs sales in too bad a light. You've also got to consider that the the smartphone market has seen explosive growth in recent years, so RIM is still shifting far more devices now, than it was prior to the iPhones release in 2007. It's shifting more than twice as many devices now than it was then, even though it hasn't kept it's marketshare up due to failing in the consumer arena.

But to focus on your anecdote, I'd question the wisdom of any company who basis their purchasing decision on users simply wanting to have a flashy phone, rather than wanting to actually get work done and be productive. Of the companies I know still using Blackberrys they do so because:

1) They still offer the best battery life
2) They still offer the best enterprise integration
3) They still offer the best hardware for typing out e-mails and so forth
4) They're still more durable than all Apple and most Android smartphones

My previous employer also looked at iPhones but didn't go with them largely because of battery life, it was an engineering firm and they made many sales to companies like Codelco in Chile, and they may fly from there straight to another country, like say, Dubai, and follow this pattern for a number of weeks. When you're in the middle of the Atacama you don't get chance to charge every 5mins, you go to the airport and sleep on the plane so no fancy hotel room where you can charge overnight, and then you end up somewhere where it can be +50c, but oh dear, guess what? The likes of the iPhone are only rated to work, and I quote from Apple's website:

Operating ambient temperature: 32Â to 95Â F (0Â to 35Â C)
Nonoperating temperature: â'4Â to 113Â F (â'20Â to 45Â C)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)

It can get below -4c in the Atacama quite easily too, oh, and you can easily be over 3000 m altitude to boot. Travelling to some tropical places, or particularly dry places and you'll even breach the humidity limits. All of which the sales guys at the old place I worked used to do, some could breach all these limits within a couple of days.

Look, it's great that where you work your sales and marketing guys get to play the hipster and run round with their shiny phones, but the fact remains that RIM still holds an enviable chunk of the business market - seeing as most their sales are business whilst most of Apple's sales are consumer, I'd say that RIM likely far and away still hold a much bigger portion of the business market than Apple (though undoubtedly less than Android now).

I'm not even a fan of RIM, I'm a fan of Android and I own a Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus (both of which I fucking love and would highly recommend by the way), but it gets tiresome to read these sorts of anecdotes which basically amount to "My dad says RIM is not cool anymore". That's great, but the figures are still nothing to be scoffed at even now, RIM is still important in business, and there are still damn good reasons why some companies still choose Blackberrys regardless of your assertions about sales guys not wanting them because they're not cool - guess what, some sales people do actually work for a living, and hence need a device that can support that and allow them to be productive whatever environment they're in. The businesses still using Blackberrys are the business who care about actually getting things done rather than using company funds to enlarge a sales, marketing, or IT guy's ego.

I'm not saying RIM necessarily even has a bright future, but this isn't about anecdotes or partisan fanboyism, it's about the facts - the cold hard numbers, and right now RIM is still a major player in business, and Blackberrys still have a number of advantages depending on your business needs. The idea that they've somehow vanished from the business world is just completely false.

We have to get rid of software patents

[jgerry]

This level of insanity cannot continue. It stifles innovation, and practically guarantees no small players will ever design a new mobile device or OS.

Re:We have to get rid of software patents

[Dyinobal]

Or as the big corporations would say, "Working as intended".

Re:We have to get rid of software patents

[Master Moose]

What better a way to compete than stopping the competition.

A pre-emptive strike to neutralise an attack before it occurs.

Let the others know that they are welcome to try and compete, but you had better have a huge legal fund.

Arghh....

[ls671]

Let's put an end to this please. Void all current and ban any further patent suits. Then, everybody can go home and have a party with Warren (Warren Cuccurullo) to celebrate the end of patent wars!

Lawyers game

[dimeglio]

Well it's going to be another good year for law firms. I expect Samsung to have their fun as well but it's unlikely they'll have much of a case vs Apple. They might win some but lose many. Lawyers, they will all the time.

Re:Lawyers game

[Karzz1]

I know this is not your point, but do you realize that Apple has been *losing* most of their lawsuits against Samsung and that the US lawsuit Apple did win will probably be overturned on appeal?

Re:And, in other news - Black Friday Patent sales.

[Chewbacon]

wouldn't it be Grey Thursday, then?

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when patents were for cool inventions designed to solve a real-world problem.