Slashdot Mirror
iPhone 4, iPad 2 Get US Import Ban
Bent Spoke writes "The U.S. trade agency has banned the import of older Apple iPhone and iPad models due to the violation of a patent held by Samsung (PDF). 'The president can overturn the import ban on public-policy grounds, though that rarely happens. Apple can keep selling the devices during the 60-day review period. ... Apple pledged to appeal the ITC decision. The underlying findings will be reviewed by a U.S. appeals court specializing in patent cases. ... The decision could mean fewer choices for AT&T and T-Mobile customers who want to get an iPhone without paying the higher cost of the iPhone 5. Samsung told the commission that Cupertino, California-based Apple could drop the price of the iPhone 5 if it was worried about losing potential customers. All of the iPhones are made in Asia.' It's getting so complicated we need a scorecard to keep track of who's winning these offensive patent battles in the smartphone coliseum."
It's actually worse than that.
Apple's patents are on design, silly things like rounded corners and page bounce. They are easy to work around. Everyone else's patents are on the technology needed to connect to mobile networks and other standards essential stuff which, as demonstrated here, is clearly enforceable and impossible to avoid.
Samsung did offer to license the patent to Apple, as they are required to do under FRAND rules. Most companies don't pay cash for this, they just cross license their own technology patents and call it even. Apple doesn't have any tech patents to bargain with and its design patents are worthless, so they have to pay $$$ instead. Apple didn't like the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory rates so refused to pay, and now the court is punishing them for it.
Patent reform won't help them. Patent reform is only going to destroy their own design patents, not the technology patents they don't want to pay for.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why?
Who cares if they can't sell their old, dull junk?
Nobody any more - only out of touch wanna-be desperates and old people still use iPhones
I'll try to ignore the juvenile condescension dripping off that post and try to stay factual. Millions of people who do not fit your description still buy the iPhone, the iPhone 4 is Apple's entry level phone and entry level devices are kind of important for enticing new customers. The problem (for Samsung) is that firstly, this will be appealed and secondly, the iPhone 4 is about to be succeeded as the entry level model by the unaffected 4S and possibly the rumoured low cost iPhone model. So for Samsung this is mostly a propaganda victory whose magnitude depends on how much the Samsung PR department and Samsung/Google's army of fanboys can inflate it's importance
I found the article linked to in the summary to be a bit confused, there is a somewhat better analysis available here
U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 concerns an “apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system” (an allegedly UMTS-essential patent). Newer iPhones and iPads coming with Qualcomm QCOM +0.84% baseband chips (starting with the iPhone 4S) are definitely not affected, limiting the potential impact of this decision on Apple’s revenues — basically, Apple would have to make the iPhone 4S its entry-level iPhone model and discontinue U.S. sales of older iPhones (and the “new iPad 4G”, the third-generation iPad, its entry-level model for iPads with cellular connectivity; WiFi iPads are not affected at all). Formally the decision also relates only to the AT&T versions of those older products, but Samsung reserved the right to allege infringement by Apple products running on other networks (unless they come with Qualcomm baseband chips).”
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Are you honestly suggesting that Apple had Samsung make their iPhones and then Samsung took those designs and made identical copies on their own?
What... are you stupid? No, of course not. Samsung had no choice. Apple forced Samsung to copy Apple's innovations... by innovating in the first place. You have a lot to learn about Chinese culture, my friend.
What does Chinese culture have to do with it? Samsung are a Korean company.