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Samsung Infringed On Apple Patents, Says ITC
The U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled that certain models of Samsung phone violate Apple patents, and are likely to be blocked from import to the U.S. From the article: "The patents in question are U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949, which relates to a touch screen and user interface and U.S. Patent No. 7,912,501 which deals with detecting when a headset is connected. The ITC said Samsung didn’t infringe on the other two patents. In a statement on the matter, the ITC said the decision is final and the investigation has been closed. ... As was the case with the previous ruling that saw Apple devices banned, the ban on Samsung devices won’t go into effect until 60 days but can be blocked by a favorable ruling following a presidential review. That seems unlikely as such a block has only been issued once since 1987 – last’s week’s ruling in favor of Apple."
Hammer is coming down ... on foreign companies.
As though Apple were an American company? I've heard they have some sort of design office in California somewhere, but in any meaningful sense they're at least as much of a foreign company as Samsung. At least Samsung has some fabs in Austin and whatnot.
I'm fine with a little protectionism if it means protecting American operations, but people get very confused about the difference between where a company's headquarters are and where it operates. It's like people who say my Toyota is a foreign car. It's 85% value added in the US - a lot more American than almost any Ford or GM model.
They are both just companies doing the same stuff that companies normally do. None of it so far has really affected the consumers much. Neither of them is getting one up on the other either, so in the end they are just wasting their money. If people are unhappy with the way that corps work, we should be rallying to change the laws regulating them rather than wasting our energy debating the relative merits of common place aggressive troll lawsuits.
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Taxes mean nothing. Ask yourself this, who 'contributed' more to the party? Who supplies better drugs and hookers?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They both blatantly copied each other constantly, misused patents, misused lawsuits and injunctions, etc. All these individual little patent disputes are really annoying. They should each be barred from suing each other for anything that happened prior to a certain date so we can be done with this. Then, if they want, they can just duke it out in a paintball game or Mario Party 9 or something.
And they are together keeping all other competitors out of the race through fear of being sued. They have no reason to stop. Together they are winning.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
it is neither fair nor non-discriminatory for the holder of the FRAND-encumbered patent to require licenses to non-FRAND-encumberd patents as a condition for licensing its patent/quote?
And why not? Patent for patent seems like the most reasonable form of trade to me.
Anyway, so far as I can see, from Samsung's (and everyone else's) perspective, what this story shows is that if you play nice - i.e. FRAND your patents - then this will cost you in long term when assholes like Apple come with a bunch of effectively essential, but legally non-FRAND patents of their own. So I suspect that future telecommunication standards created by corporate committees will drop the FRAND requirement, and form patent cartels instead. Which, of course, we're all much worse for. Thanks to the only kid in the room who insisted on not letting anyone play with his toys...
Do YOU think it's fair to patent gestures, shiny icons, and rectangles? We can go down this rabbit hole all day.