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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."
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.
OK... I broke with Slashdot tradition and actually read TFA. That said, I STILL cannot figure out exactly which Samsung phones are being specifically banned in this ruling? Is it a top seller like the Galaxy S3 or Note II, or some older phones that only the prepaid carriers offer now?
Not that it really matters... 60 days is probably enough time to come up with a workaround to get around the infringement.
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.
I assume the ungodly ridiculous amounts of verbiage is not to be legally clear, but be legally obfuscating, wearing down patent examiners and causing days of study just to begin to get a handle on what they are claiming.
The one or two cool little tricks being patented, if any, are deliberately obfuscated.
Does anybody even know what little bit is supposedly infringed?
One of the "claims":
6. The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one heuristic of the one or more heuristics, a contact comprising a finger swipe gesture that initially moves within a predetermined angle of being perfectly horizontal with respect to the touch screen display corresponds to a one-dimensional horizontal screen scrolling command rather than the two-dimensional screen translation command.
So if you drag left or right witihin some predefined angle, it shall be considered a horizontal swipe rather than a 2D arbitrary angle swipe. And nobody ever did this before?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If you cannot win in the market, the next step is to win using the law - this is business 101 in the USA today.
From PJ at Groklaw:
But they were given meaning by our beloved economists. In 2008, the definition of GDP was changed to include things like patents and other types of intellectual property. Article here:
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21582498-america-has-changed-way-it-measures-gdp-boundary-problems
So, instead of waiting to see how a corporation (or national economy) actually executes their IP rights and measure the revenue, the GDP calculations attempt to impute a future income stream from them. And then this becomes part of our GDP statistics. IP has become a Potemkin village of value behind which companies (and entire nations) hide the true dire straights of their economy. They are pretty, shiny objects meant to impress investors, who should bee asking whether anyone has the ability to actually produce value with them.
So we aren't going to see a change in the status of patents any time soon. Because now, the economists have a number (fictional though it may be) that pins an amount of GDP to them. And woe to those who attack that and drive us into another recession.
Have gnu, will travel.
You mean, like a mechanical switch that comes built in to the jack chassis?
For crying out loud, I built an amplifier in high school in 1980 that could detect when a headset was detected. Making software detect the same thing would amount to merely polling on a physical line the switch is on and converting the voltage on it to a digital signal of true or false.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why would it be unlikely?
It's the same exact situation, just with the roles revers.. oh.
Yeah, exactly the same - only Samsung has standard essential patents they didn't offer under FRAND terms, while Apple's patents are, well, normal patents.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
It's not the exact same situation.
The Samsung owned patents that Apple was found to have infringed are FRAND patents. This indicates that Samsung is willing to licence those patents out to anyone willing to pay the appropriate licencing fees.
The Apple owned patents that Samsung was found to have infringed are not FRAND patents. Apple made no implied or express promises to licence them.
Both sides sought equitable remedies in the form of sales injunctions and import bans. Equitable remedies are by their very definition appropriate only when financial remedies are insufficient to make the plaintiff whole.
Since the Samsung patents were available for licence under FRAND terms, there's no reason to believe that Samsung could not be made whole through monetary remedies. The ITC ordered the import ban on the iPhone devices not because they infringed on FRAND patents, but because Apple had made little to no effort to negotiate a licencing agreement.
The opposite is not automatically true for the Apple patents as they are not available for licence under FRAND terms.
As you can read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability
the US patent office pretends that one of the conditions for granting a US patent is non-obviousness.
Considering that it is very unlikely that someone swiping a finger across a touchscreen achieves a movement that is 100% horizontal and 0% vertical, it is obvious that any solution of the problem would tolerate a certain amount of vertical movement, and this is what that patent claim is about.
US american companies are promoting politicians with a kindergarten understanding of science, so that they can profit from that bullshit:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/13/07/12/1645228/google-raises-campaign-funds-for-climate-change-denier
Also, the invention of input gestures is not as novel as you seem to believe, because the patent was filed 2008, while for example the video game Black and White had gestures in 2001. Okay, it was mouse gestures, but there is no big difference to a touch screen regarding movement.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
On one hand, if you read claim 1 (the base claim), Apple actually spent effort on designing their own jack, which apparently has a special connector that creates a second circuit that is used for detection. On the other hand, the technical contribution seems to be a bit on the easy side, considering that the actual detecting circuit in figure 3 shows a circuit that is probably obvious to anyone schooled in designing circuits, though not to me.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Sorry, but Apple's "no declared tax residency anywhere in the world" bullshit is tax dodging, pure and simple. The fact that they can't avoid things like sales tax or income tax doesn't excuse the vast amount they do get out of paying.
Apple has found the holy grail of tax avoidance schemes. They claim not to be resident in any nation, for tax purposes. It works by having a shell company in Ireland. Irish tax law says that companies pay tax from where they are run, which in Apple's case is the US. US tax law says that companies pay tax where they are incorporated, which is Ireland. So neither Ireland nor the United States gets any tax revenue from that company, except for what it can't avoid by having US employees and offices. Profits are funnelled to it from subsidiaries around the world. Tens of billions coming and and stored in untaxable bank accounts.
It goes way beyond not just moving profit back to the US to be taxed "twice". In the case of the UK subsidiary it wouldn't be taxed here anyway because corporations only pay tax on profits, and Apple UK doesn't make any due to having to pay huge fees for using the Apple branding. It's the same trick that allowed Starbucks to make a loss in the UK and pay zero corporation tax, despite clearly being very successful and having huge revenue.
Apple are not the only ones to dodge tax. Google does it in the UK, I'm sure if you look you will find Samsung does everything it can to minimize what it pays. Apple is both the worst and largest offender though, especially for a company that tries so hard to maintain a good public image and attract the idealistic hipster crowd.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Moronic Yanks have given their president absolute power - Obama is a dictator for his period in office like all new presidents now. Free to create any laws he wishes. Free to imprison or release any person he wants without oversight. Free to ignore ANY aspect of the Constitution or Common Law.
Now King Obama, with a giant Apple cheque in his family bank account (fully legal under the Law that allows all Washington US politicians to engage in insider-trading or to accept bribes from US companies), freed Apple from the consequences of negative ITC rulings (against all principles of International Law). A Law that is selectively applied is no law whatsoever. So, King Obama is choosing to punish Samsung on behalf of his Apple sponsors. The ITC ruling is irrelevant because the US no longer respects the ruling of this body.
Are you Yanks happy with this situation? Well you were happy when you murdered two million people in Iraq, and destroyed that secular society. You were pleased when Obama the butcher murdered the people protecting their secular regime in Libya. You are happy when Obama the genocidal war criminal sends the greatest terrorist army ever seen in Human history into the secular society of Syria, in order to create an extremist Islamic horror story run by the depraved women-hating, gay-hating beasts that rule in Saudi Arabia.
Hitler had to pretend to be a nice guy at home, because the German people felt they had very high moral standards. By contrast, Obama simply has to say "let's murder those dirty foreigners" and you Yanks stand up and scream "F**k yeah, America is the best". Where the hell do you think this is going to end up?
Does Apple really have to cheat, steal and bribe in order to have great success? Obviously not. But, given no reverse pressure from the moral climate in America, Apple simply gives in to temptation, and allows its wealth to achieve whatever it can, without regard to what is right or decent. But how the hell do you think the rest of the world views your despicable companies, and your despicable presidents? The world has always admired the business success of the USA, and the entrepreneurship of the US people. This alone ensured the US a position at the top table. But this repugnant evil that infests the USA today ensures the US has no long term future - you Yanks want another World War, and everything you do is in preparation for this. Why the hell do you idiots think you are growing your military power so obscenely, and engaging in as many murderous wars against defenceless nations as you can arrange?
These ITC shenanigans are the tiniest symptom of an infinitely greater problem.
Do YOU think it's fair to patent gestures, shiny icons, and rectangles? We can go down this rabbit hole all day.
It's normal for 2008 patents to be enforced on 80's touchscreen technology? Just because you were the first to mass-market an idea doesn't mean you deserve a patent. Apple's touch screen patent covers any type of screen technology or touch technology yet to be invented and "other devices, such as personal computers and laptop computers." Basically they have a patent on moving things with their fingers. Is that normal? (I'll be fair and admit it's a patent on using a touchscreen to move digital things and concede some of the included tech might be as recent as 1990)
I don't know as much about the headphone jack detection, but my 2001 phone could tell when I plugged in my headset. Is adding stereo (featured in my 2005 phone) really such a revolution that they need a patent in 2007? It doesn't appear to detail any new method of detection, other than maybe individual channels, but I think my Pocket PC's did that.
I find it infuriating that the US government is just handing rights, an unfair market position, and a lot of business over to Apple with the touch patent, and so many people are defending Apple. Meanwhile, the government is setting a precedent that with enough lawyers, patents, political connections, and stupid jurors you can claim ownership of what you didn't invent and kick competition to the curb. As a small, inventive company, it makes work look like a game of waiting to get squashed.
The US corporate tax rates are by no means the highest on the planet. Here's a list, but I'll explain it to you in text in case you don't decide to look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
First, the US corporate tax rate varies, from 15% to 51% (including both federal and state taxes - federal alone is 15% to 39%). On the low end, 15% is on the lower side of the list (the only large, developed countries not known as tax havens with a lower rate on the low end are Canada and Russia), and well below the highest flat rate, which is Cameroon at 38%. Notable countries with rates higher than our lowest rates are Germany, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Poland, Turkey, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Australia, France, the UK and Chile. Bangladesh has a rate that ranges from 0 to 45%, which is the highest single rate on the list - obviously above the 39% federal tax highest rate.
So, no, the US doesn't have the absolute highest corporate tax rate. It has among the highest possible corporate taxes for the largest entities, but it is not the "highest worldwide" by a wide margin for the vast majority of corporations who will fall lower on the spectrum than a giant like Apple.
IP has become a Pokemon village of value behind which companies (and entire nations) hide the true dire straights of their economy.
Fixed that for you...
A wild FRAND appears.
Apple: Job's Design, I choose you!
Job's Design used Rounded Rectangle.
IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!
The patent is obvious bullshit. The designer and engineer of the touchscreen incorporated within the design the ability to detect motion on the screen. To then layer an additional patent on there that particular motions are total complete and utter USPTO patent bullshit. It's like saying that touch screen designer didn't design in the ability to detect where on the screen you are touching or what motion you make post touch basically a touch screen that doesn't work at all. That the US Patent passed that is total and complete corruption of the patent system.
As for detecting what is plugged in, seriously what the fuck passed for obvious with the USPTO, seriously. Again a blatantly lawyer titled patent designed to run up fees.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The douchebaggy comes in when company A gives a million dollars in political contributions on the understanding that the tax laws will be changed to save company A a billion dollars in taxes. It's all legal bribery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I don't fault any company from making use of a loophole unless they wrote the actual law to create the loophole they are using.
And this is the problem with the American system. Politicians need fantastic amounts of money to win elections and it is cheaper for company A to make campaign contribution on the understanding that they can write a new tax loophole then to actually pay the tax. Of course companies B to Z also take advantage of the new loophole and then make campaign contributions so they can also write new tax law which company A also takes advantage off. Rinse and repeat a few times and you have the current system where companies A to Z all claim they're just taking advantage of existing loopholes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Obama got $308,081 from Apple in 2012
Obama got $1,000 from Samsung in 2012 (as $250 and $750)
Even disallowing the home team advantage, I really would be surprised if Obama does Samsung the same favour he extended to Apple last week and overturns this ban.
Da Blog
It's douchebaggy when you pretend intellectual property that was developed in California comes from an Irish company for tax purposes and is subject to no tax. The law may say it's okay for an Irish company to pay no US taxes, but that doesn't mean Apple is really an Irish company. Yes they are dodging legitimately owed taxes through corporate structures that are pure fiction. Why anybody would say that's 'perfectly okay' because its 'perfectly legal' is beyond me. Unless you have a political objection to companies paying taxes at all...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...