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Obama Administration Refuses To Overturn Import Ban On Samsung Products
Chris453 writes "In August 2013, President Obama issued a veto to an import ban of the iPhone 4S after Samsung won several court battles against Apple claiming that the iPhone 4S violated several of Samsung's patents. A few months ago, Samsung was on the receiving end of a very similar case filed by Apple. The International Trade Commission decided that several of Samsung's phones (Transform, Acclaim, Indulge, and Intercept models) violated Apple's patents, and should face import bans. Despite the similarities between the two cases, the Obama administration today announced that it would not veto the International Trade Commission import ban against Samsung products. The move that could spark a trade dispute between the U.S. and South Korea."
US politicians, bent you say? Surely not!
Just more evidence of China's influence over the American economy.
This is yet more proof that Obama is utterly corrupt. He vetoes a ban on Apple's products but not on Samsung's. How much more blatant can you get?
One was a US court ruling, the other a ruling by the International Trade Commission. Presumably, the ITC ruling affects imports to other countries as well.
Samsungs's products are crap, anyway (IMHO).
Both companies suck ball, especially Samsung with their newly introduced regional SIM-locking crap...
One more reason for me to dislike him ;)
Apple is an American company. Obama is the American president. We are in America. Don't feign surprise. It just makes you look stupid.
Samsung can take their complaints to the SK govt. Actually, they don't need to because they're a Chaebol - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol) A supermassive mega-corp that literally alone controls 20% of the SK economy. They OWN the SK govt (along with about 4 other companies they control 90%)
No tears for poor Samsung. Sorry.
...some politicians who would fight FOR the UK and give US the benefit of some bent decisions.
Our lot seem to prefer to shaft us at all times...
I read the summary and now know all of the details of the two cases and will now give you my strong, educated opinion of the matter.
Samsung's patents were standards essential patents which they promised to license under FRAND terms.
Apple's patents are not standards essential as proven by the fact that Samsung has designed around them in their newer products. Further, Apple made no promise to license their non-essentail patents under any terms, let alone FRAND terms.
I know many people are going to rage and rail over this claiming favouritism or whatever injustice but the truth of the matter is this is as it should be.
What is their patent on a "headphone jack sensor"? Is this anything like the sensor that portable radios have had for decades that let them switch off the speaker when the headphones are plugged in?
Rabble rabble rabble!!!!!!!!!!
Does your parliament still wear powdered wigs? I'm sincerely curious.
Patent enforcement should be purely economic. How much money did the infringing party make off using the patent, how much did the patent holder invest to create the patent, and therefore how much do they owe to the patent holder? Restitution should consist entirely of monetary awards.
The patent holder is often not the most capable or appropriate entity to utilize the patent. Enforcing bans like this is anti-competitive and doesn't help anyone. The patent holder would be better off receiving money from a more competent implementation of its patent, than banning all competitors and forcing everyone to use their incompetent device.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
I am not familiar with these import bans. Who sets them, and what power does the president hold here?
Bush, Obama, Putin, Merkel, Assad, Berlusconi, Gadafi, Mubarak, ..
Dubya's dubious international policies have alienated a large part of the world.
But Obama wants everybody to have the USA.
Does anyone know which models are being banned? All the articles I've read say that it's "older" phones, but that's a little vague.
If it's phones released before the Galaxy S3, I'm not sure anyone should be too worried.
Is Obama really THAT stupid? I mean seriously. He's continued to prove that he's clueless about virtually everything (except maybe golf). He only became president to en joy the perks of the job without the actual work involved. And you wonder why we're screwed eight ways from Sunday.
Nice work, liberals. Bloody sheep the lot of you.
Pax Vobiscum
The text for this item is misleading, failing to account for the reasons given for these decisions. And anyone still suggesting this is American bias for their own companies, please explain why the EU is leaning in the same direction? It's not like the EU is pro-US in many decisions.
Obamas decision, and the EU's charges against Samsung (not Apple), hinge around the use of standards-essential patents as a weapon to stifle innovation and competition.
I'd rather not see such obviously one-eyed political slandering pandered as a tech item on sites like Slashdot - save it for the tabloids.
North Korea is promising death and destruction. South Korea can't afford to get
it's feathers too ruffled.
somebody needs to get that stupid destructive nigger out of the whitehouse
I guess Samsung didn't pay enough to our Politicians.
It is not about stupidity. It is about control. Obama is a sockpuppet for his corporate sponsors. He does not have his views, he just reads all this crap from his teleprompter and signs whatever his corporate sponsors want him to sign. That's all. After ending his silly presidency, he'll have his well paid, warm chair in Goldman Sachs, Apple or some other corrupt corporation. He'll have his speeches paid $500'000 a pop. Just like Bill Clinton or Tony Blair.
You see, staying in office isn't an end in itself for modern politicians. It is merely an interim position in their quest of getting insanely rich. Their carreer begins AFTER they get out of office and stays until they collect few hundred milions dollars or so. Staying in office for entire life like those pesky congressmen do is so old school.
Samsung's patents are FRAND because they are over actual technology, you know, stuff like radios, modulation techniques, and other things actually developed in a lab.
Apples patents are for things like bouncy scrolling, and slide to unlock.
User interfaces are also "actual technology", Linux die-hards gripes notwithstanding.
No more FRAND patents. No company making actual technology has any economic interest in putting its patents under FRAND terms. Decades of cooperation on technology standards come to an end.
Samsung didn't put its patents under FRAND because of the goodness of their hearts - it's because they get guaranteed royalties at a Fair and Reasonable rate from every participant with the standard. That's a nice income stream, provided they don't start being jerks about it and demanding unreasonable rates from people they don't like.
But even more importantly, your fundamental point is wrong:
If the holder of FRAND patents cannot negotiate with an infringer for a fair price, and the infringer can also sue over its own patents and demand outrageous royalties per device, then the end result is clear.
These pair of decisions do not mean that FRAND patent owners "cannot negotiate with an infringer for a fair price". It's just that they can't hold the infringer's products hostage by preventing import. Basically:
Don't forget that Pelosi can make Obama jump and ask "how high".
I'm guessing Samsung did not bribe the Obama camp and are now being punished.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Reading the comments I'm proud of you. It's nice to see reliable and predictable posts. As expected most of you don't RTFA (as per protocol) and don't know the difference between a SEP and a non- SEP.
Makes the ill informed comments so much more fun. I live the smell of some mindless fanboy brawl in the morning.
Please.....continue. Be my guest.
Let the hate flow free. Come to the dark side. Wanna have a cookie?
May the brainfart be with you.
He bailed out Apple in order to "preserve the market" or some such claptrap. How is treating Samsung differently remotely consistent here?
Because one is a patent on a non-standard user interface, and the other is a patent on a standard radio technology. Because the owner of former did not agree to let others use the technology, while the owner of the latter voluntarily said "yes, everyone can use this technology and I will not exert undue pressure or attempt to get injunctions against you, and will instead accept a reasonable monetary royalty."
The subtleties of the two bans don't really matter since that wasn't the stated reason for giving Apple a free ride last time around.
You're wrong, it was explicitly the reason:
"The Policy Statement expresses substantial concerns, which I strongly share, about the potential harms that can result from owners of standards-essential patents ("SEPs") who have made a voluntary commitment to offer to license SEPs on terms that are fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory ("FRAND"), gaining undue leverage and engaging in "patent hold-up", i.e., asserting the patent to exclude an implementer of the standard from a market to obtain a higher price for use of the patent than would have been possible before the standard was set, when alternative technologies could have been chosen."
Flaming hypocrisy.
Of course getting near the presidency will ensure that your candidate is just like any other corrupt white guy regardless of whether your candidate is black or a woman. No one should ever had any delusions in that regard.
Apparently not.
The reason for vetoing the ban on Apple had NOTHING to do with "a simple workaround" being available or not.
this is not a rationale, it's rationalising.
It is no mystery that Obama gained a lot of the younger, social networking votes over the past few years. They are also predominately Apple Fanbois. He is also making sure he doesn't lose his support base by enraging these very vocal user of the web. Can you imagine the backlash if he were to do what was right and fair on the legal basis? Better for him to be internationally objectionable than nationally (voters).
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
"This is the reality... Samsung abused FRAND patents towards Apple"
This is indeed what Apple claim.
However, the courts did not agree.
Yet here you are pretending that Apple's claim is "reality".
What colour is the sky there?
His Imperious Majesty, Obama I, Jiber of Clingers, Giver of Phones, Closer of the Ocean, et cetera, et cetera has stated his preference for Black berries from the barbarian country to our north. He has no need for phones from the Orient, and thus neither do his subjects.
However, the French broke the supply lines from the UK and did most of the actual fighting that resulted in wins.
Sorry, you thought that the Mel Gibson movie was factual? It was only slightly more factual than Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.
PS you can hardly talk: you couldn't beat a bunch of paddy farmers. Despite carpet bombing the hell out of them.
Slapping "Obama" on a headline just starts up a bunch of uninformed hyperbolic responses that add zilch to the discussion. I'm not a lawyer, so I'd like to know what the difference is between both cases. I'm assuming they're not symmetrical.
BTW, to you editors: Fuck you and all your red meat summaries.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yep, the U.S. would sure suffer after losing access to that giant market.
When Obama took the podium and showed off all the citizens that are going to benefit from the ACA he fielded a question about the website crashing and he cited that Apple had bugs in its latest rollout and they fixed them but that didn't mean that Apple was a failure. Obama loves Apple. (period)
At lea'st be con'si'stent and write 'samsung's, patent's, pre'sident's etc.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
These aren't all that similar. One violation dealt with standard essential patents that Samsung refused to fairly license to Apple. The other dealt with design patents that Samsung willfully copied as evidenced by the fact that they refused to remove the offending issues and instead offered workarounds. The only similarity is that there were two cases and two injunctions. The similarities end there. There is a huge difference between banning a product because it copies your patented design versus not banning a product because it needs a standards essential patent that the owner refused to license to you at reasonable costs.
Samsung says a lot of things. They have given several conflicting statements about this whole region locking thing. Every time you talk to a support person, they'll tell you something different.
The thing is, in reality, Note3 owners (who have the region lock) have already demonstrated that none of Samsung's claims about when the lock disappears are true, it stays firmly in place regardless of "activation" or the number of calls you made on the "activation SIM".
usa is dead
Just like oil sales in non-Dollar currencies, these phones pose a threat to the Dollar. When it's oil sales, U.S will fabricate reasons to start a war to "correct" Middle East political attitudes and thus oil-sales, but with smart-phones you can just place an import ban. U.S is getting desperate to save their Dollar, who knows what they will do next. Industrial sabotage aimed at Samsung? Start a war over smart-phones and other popular electronics?
Signature intentionally left blank.
Or a bunch of goat herders.
I wonder why he did that?
http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/apple-inc/6fba97b1038744ad8ab27d5fac99bfd7
http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/samsung-group/803d3e5b892545db9b30ea9236d67c2a
Oh, that's why.
It's deprecated now. It ran on Android 2.2 and in August I got a notice from my carrier that they were no longer supporting my phone since it could not have the OS upgraded. At the time, it was a little under two years old, so I bought a Samsung Galaxy Exhibit to replace it, which has some nice slick Ice Cream Sandwich action going on instead.
Unless the Indulge was significantly altered from the time I bought mine, Samsung loses nothing by that one being blocked.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Boom - no more exports of Apple products from China to the US, fuck Obama and his illegal antics.
If I was Korean I'd ban all US products of all types, just to make a point.
And truth be told, I really don't mind our government favoring American business.
This will end up at WTO. If US wants to stand it, South Corea will win the right ignore US copyright, or some other cute advantage.
Meanwhile, the only people who profit from this are the lawyers. On both sides.
sustainable living
Signed,
The rest of the world
Apple is now officially a shit company run by lawyers and accountants. Two years after Jobs and they are dead in the water. It's not that they CAN'T come with any good ideas, it's just cheaper to buy politicians and judges.
Apple pie.
Obama uses an iphone. That's why he lifted the ban on it. He didn't want the product that he uses banned. He doesn't use any of samsung phones, so he doesn't care about that one.
Obama gave a bullshit excuse for why he vetoed the Apple ban, claiming he wanted to try to end all this patent warfare, blah blah. But when it comes to a product he doesn't use, he's not quite so willing to spout those same excuses.
Apple fanboys, predictable no matter what position they hold.