Samsung Ordered To Pay Apple $290M In Patent Case

itwbennett writes "After 3 days of deliberations, a jury has ordered Samsung to pay $290 million to Apple for infringement of several of its patents in multiple Samsung smartphones and tablets. The verdict is the second victory for Apple in its multiyear patent fight against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Last year a jury in the same San Jose courtroom ruled Samsung should pay just over $1 billion for infringement of five Apple patents in multiple Samsung phones and tablets. But afterward, Judge Lucy Koh ordered a new trial to reconsider $450 million of the damages after finding the previous jury had applied an 'impermissible legal theory' to its calculations. Thursday's verdict is the result of that new trial."

Comments

Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to Groklaw!!!

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[i kan reed]

From wikipedia:

On August 20 2013 an article appeared on Groklaw saying it was to be closed down due to government monitoring of the internet, particularly e-mail.[6] Jones wrote "What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7... I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure."

The NSA scared them out of business.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought PJ got disenfranchised by various government-related secret cases and may have been served with an order that made her unable to participate in an unbiased discussion.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or she used it as an excuse to retire like she said she wanted to do a long time ago.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[NatasRevol]

If anyone should have stood up to an (illegal) government order, it should have been PJ.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[ls671]

While at it: Or used it as a cover while in fact moving to work for them...

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tells you how a tight a grip the US government has on its people. Pretty convenient actually, don't like an activist website? Send them a secret order to make them snoop on the website's participants, website shuts down on its own accord without any messy arguments over one amendment or the other.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

BS, the US govt does not have a tight grip on me or anybody i know.

groklaw wanted to quit before, my take is, using this as an excuse.

groklaw could continue to function as it was, just disclose the risks, in my mind it was a "phew, I don't need to do this any more" pretext.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? WTF did Groklaw do that would warrant such a thing?

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[jareth-0205]

Seriously? WTF did Groklaw do that would warrant such a thing?

That is a terrible way of looking at it...

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[gnasher719]

The NSA scared them (groklaw) out of business.

Mostly as a reaction to the Lavabit case. Which had some justification as a protest against what the NSA is up to, but not justified if you are afraid of email surveillance.

Lavabit made the mistake of storing emails in an encrypted form which Lavabit was capable of decrypting. That made legal demands to access the decrypted data possible. To be legally safe, as a service provider you must provide end-to-end decryption where it is impossible for you to read the messages. And the NSA can't break S/MIME with decent encryption.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Neuroelectronic]

Challenged power (and lost)

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[interkin3tic]

Probably a terrible way of PHRASING it. "What functions did groklaw carry out that were compromised by NSA spying?" was maybe closer to what he meant. That was my first reaction when I heard that news: I thought they just explained laws to anyone who was curious, didn't make a whole lot of sense why they needed secrecy for that.

I remember asking a similar question, and I forget the answer. I think it was something like "lawyers could talk to Jones and about their cases confidentially."

There was also something about the original point of the blog, exposing SCO bullshit, was finished.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[jafac]

If you're being monitored by the NSA, and if you're a journalist, that excludes a huge amount of potential sources who might talk with you. Certain sources would shy away from any contact which might be monitored by the NSA. (this is true whether any of Snowden's revelations were true or not - only if the revelations were credible).

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Bing Tsher E]

Groklaw was successful in the issue it was founded to pursue.

Possibly she didn't want to become a 'March of Dimes' outfit. (The MoD was founded to defeat polio, when a polio cure happened, they became an issue-of-the-day operation. Organizers gotta organize, ya know.)

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[marcosdumay]

I thought they just explained laws to anyone who was curious, didn't make a whole lot of sense why they needed secrecy for that

No, you are not seeing the big picture. GL more than once gathered (and published) evidence of wrongdoing of well connected people. The entire point of mass surveilance is punishing such kind of behaviour.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[Anonymous Coward]

if by "retire" you mean "finish the sex change", yeah.

Darl? Is that you...?

That's a lot of nickels.

[intermodal]

Hope Apple's ready for all those coins./

Have you noticed?

[i kan reed]

Have you noticed these summaries never include what the patents are anymore? Samsung didn't even claim they didn't intrude on the patents, just that they made what their market research said was a good idea.

All you have to do is comprehensively patent every element of your design, and if any of it is a good idea, you'll get to sue anyone in the same field.

Re:Have you noticed?

[ackthpt]

Have you noticed these summaries never include what the patents are anymore? Samsung didn't even claim they didn't intrude on the patents, just that they made what their market research said was a good idea.

All you have to do is comprehensively patent every element of your design, and if any of it is a good idea, you'll get to sue anyone in the same field.

It's all a crap-shoot anyway. Odds are Apple holds a patent for something they don't use, but if you develop it independently and roll-out to market, you get shot down because they see you as encrouching on their turf*.

Next up, in a month or two: The reversal.

*everything, everywhere.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Nerdfest]

And if you try your case in certain places, you'll win. With Apple, apparently even if you lose, you win.

Re:Have you noticed?

[ausekilis]

The real question is at what point do these ideas become "common knowledge" enough that the patent should be no more. After all, every TV is rectangular in shape, with button (touch) controls in the lower right or right hand side. That's right, this is the USA where the patents are made up and the durations don't matter.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was only a trial on DAMAGES. Therefore, it was irrelevant whether Samsung infringed Apple's patents, because that was already determined to be the case.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

This case had nothing to do with infringement. Samsung has already been found guilty, and they were ordered to pay $450 million in damages.

The judge threw out the jury's damage figure because of concerns over how they calculated it, and ordered a new case to decide how much the damages will be. The new figure is $290 million.

There was no opportunity for samsung to claim they're not infringing, they've already been found guilty. Thy could appeal the original lawsuit but not this one.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Pinhedd]

Samsung can't argue that they didn't infringe on the patents, that was already settled in the case. This was simply a retrial on assessment of damages. Samsung can (and is) appealing the original verdict and will most likely appeal the new damages as well.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what "you" refers to. In the instant case the participants are mulch-billion dollar corporations with many thousands of employees. What seems like a big deal to you is an ordinary business expense to them.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right. I'm going to file a patent for "a device that makes use of electricity to do something" and make billuins of dollars suing every company that infringes on it. Lol

Re:Have you noticed?

[ackthpt]

And if you try your case in certain places, you'll win. With Apple, apparently even if you lose, you win.

Apple's legal research team are working on splitting the Litigon, a particle with quantum spin which is capable of detecting where and when someone has violated their Intellectual Property.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is for the appeal.

The retrial was not to retry the whole case, but just the monetary aspect of it following the jury's verdict that it was guilty.

Now that the motions in relation to the original trial are coming to an end, they can finally get the wheels in motion to appeal.

Re:Have you noticed?

[zieroh]

That fails both the "novel" and "obvious" tests.

Re:Have you noticed?

[pete-classic]

If Apple (or someone) files a patent application it is on the public record*, if they don't, they can't make a claim. So . . . how is Apple meant to make Samsung do its due diligence?

*37 C.F.R. 1.11

Re:Have you noticed?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Which doesn't preclude him from acquiring a granted patent...

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

that case was rife with problems - the jury foreman has admitted to swaying the jury with incorrect interpretations of law, didn't admit to having previous legal issues with seagate, now partially owned by samsung, etc. On top of that the jury decided to never actually inspect the patents for obviousness (and thus invalidate them) even though it was part of their responsibities.

Re:Have you noticed?

[VortexCortex]

Apple's legal research team are working on splitting the Litigon, a particle with quantum spin which is capable of detecting where and when someone has violated their Intellectual Property.

We have been studying matter vs Litigon collisions for quite some time at Apple's Hardly Imaginary Particle Smashing Toroidal Experiment Research fascillity (aka: The HIPSTER Collier). Through friction with other manufacturers Apple's outsourced supply chain provides a never ending stream of Litigons -- Sometimes even through interaction with itself (as TFA demonstrates).

When Litigons collide with normal matter in reality they produce a veritable golden shower of Bogons. This led to the discovery of the Bogosity Field; Now known publicly as the "Apple reality distortion field" in guerrilla marketing campaigns. Apple holds the exclusive patent for the Bogosity Field retroactively and in perpetuity through creating new devices with which to fill the blank in: "Bogons on a ___." [computer, phone, PDA / tablet, set-top box, watch, glasses, Maxwell Smart's shoe, etc.]

Due to the nature of quantum uncertainty it is not observation of the Litigon itself which detects the location and time of infringement, but rather via inference after witnessing the speed and direction of the technology segment's charged Progress particle (The Progress-ion), after collision with Apple's Bogons.

Re:Have you noticed?

[alvinrod]

They're not, but when there are an ever increasing number of patents to comb through, it becomes impossible to determine if there are any out there that you violate. Add in a number of inane patents like "X, but on a computer!" and it just becomes cheaper to deal with the legal consequences after the fact. Whether a person thinks software should be able to be patented at all, I think everyone can agree that the system as it is needs an overall.

Re:Have you noticed?

[fido_dogstoyevsky]

The real question is at what point do these ideas become "common knowledge" enough that the patent should be no more. After all, every TV was rectangular with rounded corners in shape, with button (touch) controls in the lower right or right hand side. That's right, this is the USA where the patents are made up and the durations don't matter.

Sorry, couldn't resist fixing that for you.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's ramifications if you impose tariffs on a foreign company's products that compete with a local company's. However, if you just tax them through courts instead, it's all ok, right?

End-runs around pesky laws and the constitution is all government knows these days.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Hognoxious]

system as it is needs an overall.

Sounds messy, I'll get my overhauls.

Re:Have you noticed?

[TheP4st]

Irrelevant as routinely patent reviewers fail in identifying the lack of "novel" and "obvious" when approving patent applications.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Solandri]

Actually, Samsung can argue that they didn't infringe on the patents. The jury cleared their tablet of infringement because of copious prior art. It found that they infringed on the iPhone, but that was most likely because of a technicality (they missed a filing deadline by a day), the judge disallowed Samsung from showing the jury prototype designs they were working on in 2006 prior to the iPhone being made public.

Anyone who wasn't sequestered like the jury and saw the evidence the judge disallowed knows Samsung didn't "copy" the iPhone's design. It's because of a technicality that the legal decision deviated from reality.

This is probably why Samsung rushed their watch device to market. If you think about it, a computer on a watch is the next logical step to the shrinking mobile computer. Samsung wanted to establish with absolute certainty in the public record that they didn't copy anyone when making a smartwatch. No way a technicality can prohibit them from telling a jury what is common knowledge.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Pinhedd]

No, they cant.

Attorneys cannot make arguments for matters of fact that are not in dispute. As far as this trial is concerned there is no question as to whether or not Samsung infringed on the products that are the subject of the trial, that was settled by the previous jury. The only question is what the actual damages are.

This is a retrial ordered by the trial court to reassess damages on products that the previous jury found that they did infringe. The trial judge found that the jury used a legally impermissible method of calculating damages, and that damages had to be reassessed in those cases. If the appeals court later finds that the entire trial needs to be done over due to the fact that the judge and jury dropped the ball entirely then infringement can be reassessed at that point.

Re:Have you noticed?

[michelcolman]

Do you have any examples of Apple suing people/companies for violating patents that were not already part of Apple's products? In the Samsung case, they were clearly litigating because of the way Samsung stole their design. You can argue about the validity of rounded rectangle design patents, but they were part of their actual product and Samsung only started producing them well after the introduction of the iPhone.

Companies can and do sue for submarine patents, but to specifically name Apple in this context seems a bit of a stretch.

Re: Have you noticed?

[DJRumpy]

Which would be be invalidated if it was ever leveraged.

Far too may on here seem to lack basic knowledge about trade dress. Samsung doesn't even deny that they heavily copied Apple at this point. Their executives state they were in a design 'panic' due to the iPhone.

This was to address lost profits for Apple that Samsung took as a result of Samsung copying trade dress and infringing on various patents. It's also the reason a CPA was noted as a key factor in the amount awarded.

Re:Have you noticed?

[ppanon]

End-runs around pesky laws and the constitution is all government knows these days.

So Apple is a branch of the US government? Here I thought it was one of those private corporations that the free marketers claim are the solution to the inherent evil of government. Or did government troops somehow force Steve Jobs at gunpoint to start this litigation and then similarly forced Tim Cook to continue it?

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Let's say some uber-responsible company has the means and motivation to comb through every patent and publicly-visible patent application, and looks to see if anything like what they want to develop has been patented. Well, everyone tries to patent everything these days, so all they find are some stupid crappy patent applications that'll never fly, and aren't closely enough related to what they're doing anyway to overlap, so they go ahead and make their product.

A few years later, those crappy patents have been granted and the company is sued over them, causing high legal expenses. The company can fight in court and may lose, or just pay up and be done with it.

The crux of the problem is that patent trolling is currently a viable business model, and the large number of questionable or outright bad patents is a big part of it. Sure, some companies are ethical and will avoid unscrupulous practices, but the fact is that if there's money to be made doing X, a lot of people are going to do X.

Re:Have you noticed?

[Wovel]

That point is reached when the patent expires...

Re:Have you noticed?

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, the patent system has been publically known to be badly broken for more than two decades, for reasons that have been discussed hundred if not thousands of times on this forum. There are many aspects of the system that are broken, but at a minimum it is indisputable that the system, in its current form, creates an artificial demand for the services of legal professionals. It necessarily follows that for legal professionals to sustain the existing system involves ignoring ethical conflict of interest when those conflicts work to the long term benefit of the profession.

At this point, the inevitable conclusion is that all patent actions represent unethical practice of law. The right to ethical practice of law being a fundamental right, protected in the USA as one of the most important rights arising under the 9th Amendment, news like this merely shows that the legal system -- including the legal profession, not just the politicians -- regards the Bill of Rights as toilet paper, suitable only to be defecated on. It was inevitable that this would happen: once they got through using the first few sheets (Amendments) in this manner, the rest of the roll was fair game.

Ethical lawyers, of which the USA appears to have a lack, would insist on fixing the system and removing the unethical elements before proceeding with such cases (or allowing such cases to be heard, in the case of judges). It is theoretically possible to have a patent system that does more good than harm, but that isn't what we have today. What does it say about our legal system that many members of the legal profession are routinely violating their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights? What does it say about our legal profession that they silently sit back and let this happen? Perhaps they're do busy counting their money to have time to deal with minor matters like the oaths they swore to uphold the Bill of Rights. Or perhaps unethical conduct is such a norm in the profession that nobody is willing to be the one that throws the first stone.

Re: Have you noticed?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Which would be be invalidated if it was ever leveraged.

You have a thoroughly unjustified faith in the "justice" system.

Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

[intermodal]

Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

Re:Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

[i kan reed]

I'm worried about you, intermodal, do you have early onset Alzheimer's? You just made this post a little bit ago.

Re:Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

[intermodal]

That one had the wrong link. Due to Slashdot's lack of an edit button, I fixed it and posted an advisory on the other to mod it down.

Re:Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

[Anonymous Coward]

Coins are generally not considered "legal tender" in that you cant use them to pay any debts.

Refusal to accept the coins is not deemed to refuse of payment.

Re:Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

[Anonymous Coward]

Coins are generally not considered "legal tender" in that you cant use them to pay any debts.

When did that happen? Last I checked coins were in fact considered "legal tender".

Re:Hope Apple's ready for all those nickels!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies!

Google search for "Coins are generally not considered 'legal tender'" yields:

Coins and banknotes are usually defined as legal tender.
no law specifies that pennies cease to be considered legal tender

Yeah, wrong link. Mod parent way down.

[intermodal]

Would it kill Dice to install an edit button?

Re:"APPEL FANBOI LOL" commenst aside...

[ackthpt]

The verdict clearly shows that Samsung did capitalize on Apple's enormous investment into R&D and should pay.

Tech R&D or Legal R&D?

It's so hard to tell these days without a scorecard.

I have an idea!

[HussamAl-Tayeb]

Samsung should pay the 290 million dollars to Apple in 5 cent coints and take it to Apple headquarters in trucks!

Re:I have an idea!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Air mail would be better. They could just air-drop it. ;-)

Re:I have an idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's brilliant. Hopefully they'll use pennies this time :D

Re:I have an idea!

[blackest_k]

I swear I thought turkeys could fly :)

Re:I have an idea!

[AmiMoJo]

Or better still in iTunes Store vouchers.

Re:I have an idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

That could be difficult to pull off if these circulation estimates are accurate.

Re:I have an idea!

[Wovel]

30,000+ tons is a lot to drive around. Keep in mind Samsung actually (barring successful appeals) owes Apple closer to $890 million, $600 million from the original trial is still intact. The Gas would probably cost them another billion.

Re:"APPEL FANBOI LOL" commenst aside...

[killfixx]

HAHAHAHA!

Wait! Are you serious?!

Hhahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahhahhahahahahahaha!

Thermonuclear war

[Tough Love]

Apple remains obsessed with thermonuclear war instead of introducing products that people want. Meanwhile its market share keeps slip, slip, slipping away.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

But its profits stay sky high. Market share is only relevant because Samsung and other Android phone makers have dumped countless cheap worthless phones on the market, and get to claim market share. But Apple will keep selling at far larger profits, because yes in fact people really do want their phones and tablets.

Sorry, your Apple hatred doesn't fly anymore.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Tough Love]

But its profits stay sky high.

You know Roadrunner vs the Coyote? You know how Coyote dangles in the air for a while before cratering? It's like that.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[g0bshiTe]

Seriously, it's pretty much only in the US where the iPhone is seen as some status symbol to the yuppie crowd. The rest of the world is happy with their Samsung phones. Not to mention my Samsung Galaxy that costs as much as an iPhone is far from cheap and worthless, yet I can do whatever an iPhone can and get this, I'm not locked into iTunes.

Sorry, your swinging from Apples nutsack doesn't fly anymore.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read and learn about "Market Share"

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/07/android-market-share-smartphone-users-google-apple

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah so there's this giant market called "China"....

Re:Thermonuclear war

[sdsucks]

Holy fuck the ignorance on here is even worse than last time I bothered to visit this site. +4 Insightful for this stupid comment?

You have quite clearly never been to Asia and you are 100% wrong.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[amicusNYCL]

Market share is only relevant because Samsung and other Android phone makers have dumped countless cheap worthless phones on the market, and get to claim market share.

Hyperbole aside, another way to state that would be to say that many many people find Apple's price point too high for what they get. You can make a blanket statement to make it seem like all Android phones are cheap and/or worthless, but that is demonstrably untrue. The top 10 smart phone list is a good microcosm of the market in general. The highest ranked phone is the iPhone 5S, and likewise the iPhone is also the single best-selling phone. Out of the other 9 places on the list, 8 of them run Android and 1 is Windows Phone. That sounds about accurate. Out of those 8 Android phones, not a single one can be described as either "cheap" nor "worthless" by anyone without a large anti-Android bias.

yes in fact people really do want their phones and tablets.

Some people do, sure. My mom and dad both use iPhones, in fact they work great for older people. But in this market the iPhone is starting to look like the cookie-cutter option, it is the Toyota Prius of smart phones. The iPhone has lost its status symbol luster, it's no longer the phone that people buy to be seen with like it was during the first couple models. Samsung and HTC phone have replaced the iPhone in that regard. The iPhone is just the phone for people who are already locked into the Apple environment. I have the HTC One, which is second on that top 10 list. My phone has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, compared with the 5S's dual-core 1.3GHz chip. My phone has twice as much RAM as the 5S. My phone has a larger screen (4.7 in), higher resolution (1920x1080), and higher pixel density (468ppi vs 326ppi) than the 5S. My phone can also stream native HDMI. It is objectively a better device. The only part of the 5S that you might consider to be superior is the software, and that is completely subjective. You might think iOS is fantastic. Quite obviously, a large segment of the market does not agree with you. I was not lamenting the lack of iOS when I paid $600 to buy the One outright.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah so there's this giant market called "China"....

The largest smart phone market, actually. Samsung has a market share of 21%, while Apple has a market share of 6%. China has several domestic vendors also.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[_merlin]

I use a Galaxy S3, and I hate iOS and its locked-down ecosystem, but your comparison of select numbers doesn't tell the whole story. Android typically needs more RAM than iOS for the same tasks because the app platform requires JIT compilation and garbage collection. These developer conveniences come at a cost. Also, clock for clock the new Apple CPU cores outperform the more popular ARM cores by a pretty wide margin. You need to compare a real-world task rather than core count or clock speed. That said, I still think my Galaxy S3 is objectively better because it can do circuit-switched video calls, scan directories on an SD card for photos/music, side-load apps, and have its firmware upgraded/downgraded painlessly over USB. Clock speed and RAM don't even come into it.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again a pleasure to see an "apple fan" bragging about their godlike company's profits.

I know when i select a product the company's profit margins (which i am paying for) is an important consideration.

PS - If they "dumped cheap worthless crap" it only counts as marketshare when people buy them. Since someone bought them they cant be "worthless".

Not everyone needs a > 500 phone. I got a $59 android as an "emergency phone" for my daughter. Apple got anything in the market which might be suitable for her?

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

samscum finally gets slapped.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

That is where people buy Xiaomi phones right?
Dude's a total "steve jobs clone" but they are cheaper then iphones and in chinese.

In case you haven't noticed, Apple's had some issues with China : http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/04/tim-cooks-apology-to-chinese-customers-fully-translated-published-online

Plus there is the whole "slave wages to make them" issues.

An average Chinese earning some 60-90 month making these things isnt likely to spend a few months salary to buy one.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[thegarbz]

Nice try Anonymous Fanboi, but while Samsung have a dozend or so phones on the market they have overwhelming marketshare from only two product lines, the Galaxy S series, and the Galaxy Note series, and both of them are premium phones.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Trogre]

Asia, yes I know it well. Where millions of people have cheap essentially no-name brand phones and tablets.

That Asia?

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Smauler]

From your linkie : "Only about 51% of the smartphones in peoples' hands in the US are Android phones."

That's a lot. The percentage is growing.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Tough Love]

A lot of Apple's product stasis comes down to the idiotic decision (from Jobs?) to go with fixed pixel resolution which really limits their room to manoeuver on screen resolution and aspect. While Android scales everything on the fly, Apple apps have to be recompiled, probably the source code has to change too. To dig out of that mess Apple needs to bite the bullet and go to variable resolution just like Android. But the logistics of doing that are apparently just too scary for pencil pusher Tim Cook.

Look, even Steve Wozniak says this is stupid. I say, totally typical Apple. When Jobs died Apple lost the mojo but kept the hubris.

Tim Cook: wears the turtleneck, but doesn't fill the shoes.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Algae_94]

But its profits stay sky high. Market share is only relevant because Samsung and other Android phone makers have dumped countless cheap worthless phones on the market, and get to claim market share. But Apple will keep selling at far larger profits, because yes in fact people really do want their phones and tablets.

Sorry, your Apple hatred doesn't fly anymore.

You are basically saying that Apple is a luxury brand and doesn't need large volume of sales to make large profits. Lets compare this to other markets.

Bentley makes luxury cars. They don't sell large volumes, but make good profits. Ford and GM sell massively more cars, cars that you might call "cheap" and "worthless". Guess which companies touch far more lives and can make or break the introduction of technology to their products?

This is very similar to what happened to Apple in the desktop market. They strove for a higher end machine that lost market share to IBM AT clones. That has not changed since. Recently their minimal market share in desktops has increased somewhat, but it is a) still very small and b) mostly caused by a bump in the company profile from mobile devices.

Before you get your self all worked up. I am not saying that Apple doesn't make great products. I am saying that their business tactics tend to move them into the smaller marketshare higher profit sector and they tend to give up their advantage in defining a new market.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if you were replying to me or not (daughter, $59 android)....

Not an apple fan, nor an android fan. I go with what suits my needs.

Needed a cheap "disposable" phone for a teen. She's dropped it twice, once when we were running home in the rain so it hit pretty hard. The battery fell out when it hit the ground and while we were looking around for it the thing actually filled with water (heavy rain, it was in the middle of a dark driveway screen down).

Guess what, after it dried out it still works but now the "water indicators" are set. Do i care? Even if i had to replace it was a grand total of around $65 anyhow. This is not the same as the people i see on the trains with their broken Iphone screens which are around $100 to replace as her screen never broke.

Maybe when she's older we can revisit her needs and get something better but for now she needs a phone and maybe to listen to a bit of music.

Anyhow, background info.
Current phone is a blackberry (it is for work).
3 of my TV's are powered by AppleTV's (Reasonably priced, look good and the remote is easy for the kids/wife) -Jailbroken of course..

Have an older Mac G4, still runs but way underpowered these days.

I just find it mindboggling when a apple fan brags about apple's profits. As a shareholder that might be a great thing, as a consumer not so much. They could lower the price and take a lower margin, or keep the price the same and pay the chinese a bit more with a small hit to margins.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Android typically needs more RAM than iOS for the same tasks because the app platform requires JIT compilation and garbage collection. These developer conveniences come at a cost.

Ya, tell me about it. My fart app runs smooth as butter on my 5S. I can't find a fart app that comes even close for Android. All the Android fart apps sound like crap.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that the "Apple CPU" is the same ARM Chips with an apple logo and "apple" name right?

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

But Apple will keep selling at far larger profits, because yes in fact people really do want their phones and tablets.

Have you even seen how much it costs to build the galaxy s4? $237 (parts and manufacturing) for the 32 gigabyte version which retails for $729. I would hardly call that razor thin margins

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple remains obsessed with thermonuclear war instead of introducing products that people want. Meanwhile its market share keeps slip, slip, slipping away.

I am leaving the iPhone and OS X "ecosystem" behind after using it since the very first
Macintosh.

Why ?

Because Apple chose to cripple local sync for iOS devices in the Mavericks version of
OS X.

Words cannot express how disgusted I am that Apple has removed the ability to sync my
PERSONAL information without sending that data to iCloud. Well, I am not going to send that
data to iCloud or any other cloud. I will not allow Apple to coerce me into using their cloud.
Instead I will switch to a dual boot Windows / Ubuntu machine and a non-smart phone
and be better off in the end because of it.

Tim Cook is a clueless bean counter. Apple's corporate stance ignores the needs of its
most loyal and hard core users who have been buying Apple product since before iOS
devices existed. We who have been using computers since the days of the IBM 370 and punch
cards don't need some douche like Jony Ive removing features we care about.

Apple is on the way down the toilet, mark my words. You don't piss off your core customers
and come out of that smiling, not in the long term. Personally I look forward to seeing Apple
go down the tubes, and I am quite sure I am not the only former Apple user who feels this way.

/

Re:Thermonuclear war

[_merlin]

It isn't. Apple acquired PA Semi a few years back, whose main claim to fame was designing low-power PPC cores. The two most recent generations of the iPhone/iPad SoC have used ARM cores designed in-house by former PA Semi employees. It isn't used in any other devices. But I think you're missing my point - the CPU performance isn't even close to the top of my list of priorities for a mobile phone.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

But Apple will keep selling at far larger profits, because yes in fact people really do want their phones and tablets.

There are a lot of clueless noobs who want the Apple toys, but many of the crowd who have been
using Apple since before iOS devices existed are leaving because they have had enough of things
like Apple removing the local sync feature from OS X.

You're a myopic knowitall fanboy and you have no idea what is really happening in the big picture.
Apple under Cook and Schiller and Ive is committing seppuku by making design choices
which piss off serious Apple users very badly. So while some idiots are still buying Apple iOS toys,
many of us serious users have bought our last Apple product. The end result will be that Apple's customer
base will be mostly people who produce little or nothing in their lives. That's not a customer base
which will bring long term success unless you are selling quantity rather than quality. You see, Apple
has premium prices but the user experience at Apple is being damaged by bad decisions such as getting
rid of local sync, and the result is that the price for Apple stuff doesn't correlate with the significantly reduced
value Apple products provide when important features are removed from OS X without so much as a warning
to users. So the value is not there, and that means the price cannot be justified if you examine the price to
performance ratio of the product rationally.

As an Apple user since the days of the Apple II, I genuinely look forward to never dealing with Apple again.
And I am not alone. If Tim Cook stays in power, Apple will die, just you wait and see.

.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

When Jobs died Apple lost the mojo but kept the hubris.

Tim Cook: wears the turtleneck, but doesn't fill the shoes.

The above is the most accurate and well written comment on Apple I've ever seen on Slashdot.
There are few words but the essence of the state of Apple in 2013 has been expressed beautifully.

I am a long time Apple user ( since the first Mac ) but for me the writing is on the wall and I
am certain I will never buy another Apple product. Apple is becoming a company which I
actively dislike. The latest OS X, Mavericks, is full of changes which lack substance as tools
but instead simply look different. Worst of all, Apple removed Sync Services from the OS,
which means that sync of Address Book, Notes, iCal, and Mail can now only be done via
iCloud. For myself and many others, putting my personal data up on a remote server such
as iCloud ( BTW, ICloud in many cases runs on servers owned by Amazon and Microsoft ! )
is anathema, and it is unacceptable. I WILL NEVER USE iCLOUD FOR PERSONAL DATA,
and Tim Cook must be even more clueless than he appears if he approved this idiocy.
We users are not morons, Mr. Cook, and we DO NOT LIKE Apple attempting to coerce
us into using iCloud by making it impossible to sync any other way.

I vote with my wallet.

Goodbye OS X and iOS, goodbye to the unjustified arrogance of the Apple store
employees, and goodbye to me being dismayed to learn that a company I have paid
a lot of money for their products doesn't care one bit about how their bad design choices
have adversely affected my user experience. You can tell that Apple has jumped the shark
when they are wasting time screwing around with a stupid headquarters building which looks
like a space station. Hey Apple : users don't care what your pretentious building looks like, USERS WANT
STUFF THAT WORKS THE WAY THEY NEED IT TO WORK.

Android and Ubuntu, here I come.

Oh, and fuck you, Tim Cook, you're a clueless tool.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

I just find it mindboggling when a apple fan brags about apple's profits.

Perhaps I can help you understand.

The "fan" to whom you refer is obviously a stupid person.

Stupid people say stupid things.

The stupid fan saying stupid stuff is exactly what
you should expect.

Your mind should be 100% un-boggled now :-)

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like it's a bad thing.

To hell with brand name products they are worth shit in the long run anyways.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Solandri]

A lot of Apple's product stasis comes down to the idiotic decision (from Jobs?) to go with fixed pixel resolution which really limits their room to manoeuver on screen resolution and aspect. While Android scales everything on the fly, Apple apps have to be recompiled, probably the source code has to change too.

The crazy thing is, Apple pretty much pioneered scaling during the 1980s. The whole point of Postscript was to make fonts scalable. If you hooked up a Mac to any Apple monitor it would autosense the display size and supported resolutions, and automatically scale the GUI so a 12 point font would always be the same linear size. I don't know what they were smoking when they decided to make iOS a fixed resolution.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple massively benefited from its competition - for the mobile handheld platform as a whole. Those effects are not really calculable and were fully leveraged by Apple in the process of getting developers to write applications for their devices. Its easy to cry foul afterwards, but it is not really new if you know em.
It enabled them to implement the smartphone as a platform which developers can generate an income from instead of being a single manufacturers side trip with unpredictable outcome for everyone who puts effort into products for iOS.

Samsung is probably not too dissatisfied after all, without these devices they would have faced the same fate as Nokia or Siemens with their phones. It could be rumored that this is more or less the payment for an early warning - after they developed the processor for the iPhone and therefore could get a hold of the product plans before anyone else.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was supporting GP's assertion that iPhones are not highly coveted there, rather than besmirching Asians' hypothetical satisfaction with sub-par devices.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of years of human evolution have led to this: portable supercomputers that produce fart noises. Truly the apex of human development.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[redneckmother]

"Tim Cook: wears the turtleneck, but doesn't fill the shoes""

Oh. I thought that was a foreskin.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Trogre]

I think you misunderstood my point. The vast majority of those devices will be running some version of Android, and very few if any will be counted in global market share figures.

Therefore my assertion is that Apple has even less market share than is immediately apparent in big-name sales figures.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[mcgrew]

Market share is only relevant because Samsung and other Android phone makers have dumped countless cheap worthless phones on the market, and get to claim market share.

Worthless? You iFans are even crazier than I thought you were. My $100 Kyocera will do everything your iBling will do except die if I get caught in a rainstorm (it's waterproof) and try to send me on a runway when I'm trying to park at the airport.

But other than BAD things, my $100 phone can do anything your iBling can.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Wovel]

Actually you are locked out of iTunes. However with an iPhone I can access any content from anyone. Everyone makes an iPhone.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Wovel]

Keep telling yourself all that, it seems like you are starting to believe it. Talk about trying to justify your own behavior. wow.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Wovel]

Why would you ever take the massive performance hit of variable resolution when you make all the hardware too. Apple has already shown it can create multiple screen sizes and it works well. They will release a larger screen phone when they think it is advantageous for them. The premium (and larger phones) from other manufactures is not where Apple is losing marketshare....

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Wovel]

Not according to Samsung at their investors conference. Maybe you missed it.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[thegarbz]

If you were talking about their announcement that S4 sales have dropped and the drop was offset by the "budget" Galaxy Express you should really evaluate what a "cheap worthless" phone (GP's words which I'm replying to) actually is. The Galaxy Express outperforms the iPhone 4s on most metrics.

Not bad for a budget phone eyh?

Also of note is it has been precisely 2 quarters where the flagship phones weren't the best selling. I'll wait before declaring that a trend.

Re:Yeah, wrong link. Mod parent way down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Then we couldn't see what crazy doge manga you are reading this week.

wow! such asian! big eyes much peasanthood

Anyway, we have all seen the hoax story about Samsung paying their $1B in nickels so really nothing of value was lost.

patents

[Anonymous Coward]

you won't believe who actually owns them

Re:Death Spiral Watch:

[Anonymous Coward]

> You pepole who are healthy have a choice to make; fund Obamacare or buy a NEW CAR.

Yes, that speaks volumes about some aspects of the American mindset.

Re:Wait for the new Apple Spaceship headquarters

[Anonymous Coward]

Then play space invaders with one ton packages of nickels.

Re:Yeah, wrong link. Mod parent way down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it kill intermodal to use the preview button?

From the article

[g0bshiTe]

I get the impression had Samsung not overtaken Apple in market share Apple wouldn't have gone after them for patent infringement. I love how they omit which patents were infringed as well.

Re:Yeah, wrong link. Mod parent way down.

[intermodal]

Yes, it would.

It's not about innovation

[ggraham412]

In an age where you can patent a rectangle, is it really about innovation anymore?

This isn't an example of bad Samsung capitalizing on Apple's good ideas. This is about major corporations being encouraged to stick their flags in the obvious and make else everyone pay. Whether you pay Apple or whether you pay Samsung (who then has to pay Apple), you're paying up and up for a fucking rectangle and whatever else is in their catalog of the obvious.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anubis IV]

Before I say anything else, I want to say that I agree with your overall point. But I do take issue with the inaccurate statement that you started it off with.

In an age where you can patent a rectangle, is it really about innovation anymore?

The patent you're speaking of was a design patent (which in many ways more closely resemble trademarks than utility patents (with which we are more familiar) in how they are handled), and the claim you're referencing was but one of many included in that particular patent. For a design patent to be enforced against another entity, all claims of the design patent must hold true. So while they may have patented a design for a rectangular device, a competing device would need to infringe not only on that claim, but also on all of the other claims as well before it could be considered to be infringing on the patent itself.

Apple's patent was no more for "a rectangle" than Bell's telephone patent was for "a device". Suggesting that someone was able to patent merely "a rectangle" is a gross mischaracterization of what actually occurred, and only serves to detract from your otherwise very valid point.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but you clearly don't understand how design patents work. No-one has patented the 'rectangle' as a design element, nor could they. This case between Apple and Google is not about single features (e.g. 'rectangle') but about a combined set of features that collectively constitute a design. If we accept the iPhone has a particular design, then someone else copying enough of those features in one of its phones can amount to infringement. That's what has happened with the design patent case here, and it does indeed include the rectangular shape, but also numerous other elements combined with it.

I guess it's become trite to say this kind of thing, but it's sad to see the simplistic, uninformed, knee-jerk reactions of people on Slashdot these days. The ironic thing is, I'm Australian but have taken a bit of time to read up on design patent law in the USA, whereas so many of the American commentators here haven't bothered so make these ignorant criticisms.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

How the heck could this drivel be rated +5, Insightful??

Re:It's not about innovation

[gnasher719]

In an age where you can patent a rectangle, is it really about innovation anymore?

Fucking idiot being modded up as insightful.

You are an imbecile who doesn't know the difference between a utility patent and a design patent. Apple has design patents on the design of iPhone and iPad. Design patents are not about innovation. Design patents are about the design, very similar to copyright. So complaining that "rectangles are not innovative" in the context of a design patent is stupid.

Next, you seem to think that Apple got a design patent on rectangles. No, they haven't. They have design patents on designs that involve a complete design, of which _rounded_ rectangular shape is just one component. Everyone is free to make phones or tablets with rounded corners. Everyone is free to copy any single aspect of Apple's design patents. As long as they are different from Apple's design patent in _one_ aspect. They mustn't copy _all_ parts of the design patent at the same time.

Next, you seem to think that Apple is the only one with design patents involving rectangles with rounded corners. I'll tell you another company: Samsung. Samsung has design patents for the Galaxy S3, and guess what: It has rounded corners.

Re:It's not about innovation

[docmordin]

In an age where you can patent a rectangle, is it really about innovation anymore?

I just wanted to notify you, informally, that you've infringed upon my patent that details a process for complaining about patents. I'll make sure that my lawyers send you the appropriate notice paperwork by the end of next week.

Re:It's not about innovation

[unrtst]

So while they may have patented a design for a rectangular device, a competing device would need to infringe not only on that claim, but also on all of the other claims as well before it could be considered to be infringing on the patent itself.

Granted, the GP oversimplified the design patent, but what in that patent really made it all that worth of the design patent? If they had submitted just a rectangle, it would have been rejected, right? So there is a level of simplicity that is rejected. The elements they have laid claim on from that patent are, IMO, not only obvious, and with past precident, but natural to that type of device. Rounded corners? duh... no one would want really sharp corners in their pocket. Grid layout of icons? a grid... really... a grid? Square icons with round corners? Nah, I've never seen that before, nor would be be extremely obvious on a device that has both horizontal and vertical orientations, right?

I get what your'e saying, but you haven't listed all the features that made it worthy, and you provided no justification for them, and just made it sound more complex than it really was. The GP didn't list them all either, and over simplified it (to make a point). I read the GP's post as saying he believes the design patent covered far to simple/obvious of a thing, and it's silly that it was granted. I'm not sure if you're saying it was deserving of the patent or not, but I don't think anyone would argue it was for more than a rectangle. The question is, was it enough? The rectangle, and in particular the proportions, size, and contour, were at the center of the case, regardless if that is not all that was in the patent.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Trogre]

Given that smartphones and tablets are just the current generation of PDAs, Apple, Samsung et al should count themselves very lucky that Palm and Sharp didn't file thousands of stupid frivolous patents.

Instead of just dozens, perhaps :)

Re:It's not about innovation

[Smauler]

If everything Apple designed was so obvious, then why is it that no one made the iPhone before Apple did?

LG Prada. Go look it up. Look what it looks like.

Re: It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

The LG Prada came to the market AFTER the iPhone. FFS.

iPhone Keynote 9th January 2007,
Prada keynote 18th January 2007.

And it wasn't even remotely alike. The Prada was a useless brick and nothing more than a souped-up feature phone with a horrible screen and aweful software.

Stop spreading this stupid debunked internet myth.

Re:It's not about innovation

[LordLucless]

The patent you're speaking of was a design patent ... and the claim you're referencing was but one of many included in that particular patent...Suggesting that someone was able to patent merely "a rectangle" is a gross mischaracterization of what actually occurred.

Here is the patent in question. Please show me the "many" claims other than the rectangular shape that demonstrate the OPs "gross mischaracterization".

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

http://visual.ly/braun-or-apple

Notice some of the Braun designs were from the 1950's?

Can you please provide some more Xerox innovations (oops, apple)?

Re:It's not about innovation

[VortexCortex]

The patent you're speaking of was a design patent (which in many ways more closely resemble trademarks than utility patents (with which we are more familiar) in how they are handled), and the claim you're referencing was but one of many included in that particular patent.

That's bullshit mate. They patented the rounded rectangular slab with touch screen (thus few buttons) and a grid of icons. The rounded rectangle tablet was in everything from Soylent Green to Star Trek. The touch screen I had in the 90's complete with GEM desktop's grid of icons. Putting a few bits of existing tech together and documenting the only real practical design shouldn't be allowed just because you had enough legal budget to do so. At 10 paces folks can't tell the difference between my older HP IPAQ PDA and dark desktop w/ icons. They couldn't tell the difference between the iPhone / iPad and a Samsung phone or tablet either. So what.

Let me tell you something about design patents. The Fashion Industry and Automotive Industries are all about design. They market heavily on design and yet they have no design patents or copyrights in the USA. Despite NOT having such patent protections these markets are more lucrative than nearly any other patent protected markets. So, here we have clear evidence that design patents aren't needed. They're pure anti-competitive bullshit, and unless you have empirical evidence to show vs a control group that patents are beneficial then you're full of shit.

Doesn't matter how "correct" someone's statement is regarding application of current patent law -- The laws themselves are bogus. We don't know if they're harmful or helpful, only that other evidence shows design patents and copyright aren't necessary for progress in design. Anyone with half a scientific method would never agree to run world economies based on untested hypotheses.

You're bitching about some pedantic bullshit about how the laws cover this or that -- Sure, go fuck yourself though. It's like someone saying: It's bullshit that you can have design patents, then you go on for a paragraph about what a design patent is -- As if we don't already know that they're bullshit; And you have NONE -- ZERO evidence to prove they are not, in fact, harmful unnecessary burdens or beneficial in any way.

Re:It's not about innovation

[rmdashrf]

The design is OBVIOUS.

- proportions

Hey it needs to fit in your hand and you need to be able to manage it with your fingers. The proportions of the device are related to the proportions of the human hand.

- size
Even though hands come in different sizes, there's probably a size that will be both usable for people with small hands and people with bigger hands.

- contour
Rounded edges. Wow. Not having rounded edges are uncomfortable in your pocket. Oblong, well oval or round phones are not comfortable in your pocket either and you'd also like something that doesn't use more space other than to house the required components, of which the size of the touch screen is probably the most important factor.

Most people handed the same components would come up with the same generic design.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey dipshit, just because you weren't born when the designs that Apple stole were introduced, doesn't mean Apple didn't steal them.

http://visual.ly/braun-or-apple - some elements borrowed from Braun designs almost 50 years old when they were taken doesn't make them innovative...

Where's the innovation in blatantly copying 50+ year old designs, then add in the 5000+ year old design copying for their rectangular shape with rounded corners using basic (20+ year old) windows icon layout design - wowsers - brilliant, simply brilliant thinking there (NOT)

Apple's *designs* and devices were merely incremental changes in existing technology that had all been thought of elsewhere.

There was never anything unique or brilliant in the iPod (they were Johnny-come-lately there), or the iPhone as they just stole other design elements from several sources and slapped them together in ways that other manufacturers were already developing.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

If everything Apple designed was so obvious, then why is it that no one made the iPhone before Apple did?

Watch some startrek or any other scifi.
nothing Apple does is innovative, It's just marketing and you fell for it.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Dragonslicer]

Minor correction - I think the patent is this case is D504889, which is an older version of the rounded corners patent. It still has about the same amount of detail as the D670286 that you linked to.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Dragonslicer]

Next, you seem to think that Apple got a design patent on rectangles. No, they haven't. They have design patents on designs that involve a complete design, of which _rounded_ rectangular shape is just one component.

What other components are in the design patent in suit?

Re: It's not about innovation

[Smauler]

The Prada did not come to the market after the iPhone... how the fuck is a keynote relevant, anyway? Images of the Prada were already released the year before, and the Prada was on sale before the iPhone.

Re: It's not about innovation

[Smauler]

Here is an announcement, here is an image. Both of these date from 2006.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang. So the rectangle is patented already? Ah well, I guess I can still patent the Hypercube... still good

Re: It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about a conscious strategy which has been in the works a long time.

USA let's you patent basically anything. When a foreign company becomes a nasty competitor, it gets sued for patents. Guess who wins in the US court? It's the domestic company almost all the time - you cannot win 100% to keep a certain plausibility.

You see how the system is rigged?

Now add the economic espionage of NSA to the mix. Happy times!

Re:It's not about innovation

[beckett]

The design is OBVIOUS.

this argument is invalidated by Samsung successfully carving niches for a 5" note, a 7" tablet, and phones with wider and taller screens than the iphone's. the iphone itself has also grown an extra row of icons in height. there are criteria regarding screen size selection that have outgrown the original 'human hand' argument.

Rounded edges. Wow. Not having rounded edges are uncomfortable in your pocket. Oblong, well oval or round phones are not comfortable in your pocket either and you'd also like something that doesn't use more space other than to house the required components, of which the size of the touch screen is probably the most important factor.

I too, have 20/20 hindsight. You also focus on the hardware design, and fail to acknowledge the blatant copying of the the IOS look and feel. it wasn't accidental, there are 132 pages which look at every aspect of the iphone with the intention to copy software features wholesale.

Most people handed the same components would come up with the same generic design.

This is precisely the argument, except the components were proprietary at the time. During the development of the phones in dispute, Samsung was responsible for mfg. parts for the iphone and ipad, including screen. of course they would have intimate access to the components ahead of the competition, which is how apple stays ahead. Samsung abused their agreements with apple, and were given an unfair competitive advantage./p

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you can actually talk logic to these fag-fucks? Let them have their little "I don't have to think-for-shit" talking points like the faggots on Fox News.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Americans have a long and proud history of being fucking stupid.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Hognoxious]

If we accept the iPhone has a particular design, then someone else copying enough of those features in one of its phones can amount to infringement.

Design patents cover the decorative/aesthetic aspects of a functional device. Rounded corners are not a decorative aspect; they have a practical purpose - spreading load in an impact to reduce damage.

Likewise the arrangement of icons in a grid; it's the simple and obvious thing to do because it works, like having wheels near each corner of a car rather than two on one side, one on the other and one in the middle. Any other arrangement is ipso facto dumb.

Re:It's not about innovation

[serviscope_minor]

I too, have 20/20 hindsight. You also focus on the hardware design, and fail to acknowledge the blatant copying of the the IOS look and feel.

Yopur hindsignt is not 20/20. You mean that Samsung blatently copied the look and feel of the AT&T broadband phone: exactly the one that Apple also shamelessly ripped off.

If you stick this:
http://www.xorl.org/people/krw/ipaqalone.jpg

Next to your "blatent copying" link then you see that the Samsung one with it's flat icons and non-rounded corners to the icons looks an awful lot like something made in the late 90's.

Re:It's not about innovation

[TheP4st]

No-one has patented the 'rectangle' as a design element, nor could they..

Really? https://www.google.com/patents/USD670286?dq=apple+rectangle&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yqqOUvetHuKyiAem5YGYAQ&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA

Re:It's not about innovation

[marcosdumay]

The GP was certainly talking about the distribution of the icons on a grid. NOBODY ever tried to distribute icons on a grid.

Apple was even nice enough to restrict their patent into colored icons, letting the entire set of phones with black and white screens (that's because nobody tought about a color screen before Apple - NOBODY) copy their completely new idea.

Re:It's not about innovation

[PortHaven]

Really, cause it sure as hell was. Because there are many designs that were extremely similar to Apple's, with the exception that they had a few more buttons.

No, you're right. It wasn't about a rectangle. It was about a fucked up system that protected a company viewed to be more American. That was it...

EVERY item Apple sued Samsung over had prior art that you could easily find on Google.

Re:It's not about innovation

[PortHaven]

No I don't, what I say, is that Samsung copied the same fucking OS that Apple copied for it's iOS.

Palm, omg, a rounded rectangle device with a grid of icons and a touch screen. Holy Shit, why the hell isn't Apple suing Palm....Er....(switch that).

So really, the one huge huge patentable thing Apple had, was a design patent to use only a single button on the front of the phone. It's amazing. Let's all bow down and worship Apple's innovation. Or light a match, smoke a stogie, and toss the butts into the patent office and watch one of America's most broken systems come to a brilliant end.

Re:It's not about innovation

[gnupun]

Let me tell you something about design patents. The Fashion Industry and Automotive Industries are all about design. They market heavily on design and yet they have no design patents or copyrights in the USA. Despite NOT having such patent protections these markets are more lucrative than nearly any other patent protected markets.

Only an idiot would not protect their valuable property. Check this link about Ford suing for design patent violation.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed something, Apple stole the whole iphone/touch form factor from Sony and even had copies of Sony's blueprints. Samsung were not allowed to present this in the US court over some technicality, because had they done so, no one could legitimately have sided with Apple on the court case.

Don't forget, the US snooping isn't all about seeking "terrists", it's about gaining a commercial edge and passing information on to US corporations.

Re:It's not about innovation

[speedplane]

It's not just a rectangle. It's a rectangle with curved corners. Further, the glass extends end-to-end extending over the bezel and giving it the appearance of a single monolith. From a lateral position, there is a slight curve, rather than sharp corners. There is only a single button placed directly in the center and symmetrically opposing is the camera. All ports are on a single side with the main port centered. These are all distinctive features and calling it a "rectangle" oversimplifies it greatly.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Wovel]

Obvious but no one ever bothered to patent it before. Even if you looked at the silly link above from Samsung in 2006 (claiming it is prior art), not a single one of those phones has anything like the same proportions.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Wovel]

Accept of course not a single thing about that interface looks anything at all like an iPhone or any Android phone....

Re:It's not about innovation

[Wovel]

And of course neither of them support the ridiculous statement by the original poster...

Re:It's not about innovation

[Wovel]

Yeah, the automotive industry doesn't use design patents... LOOK HERE IS A PATENT FOR A ROUNDED WHEEL:

http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATD474440&id=FkkPAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=automotive+design+patents&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false

Maybe this wheel:
http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATD543493&id=oiCAAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=automotive+design+patents&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false

Here is Volkswagen's patents for rounded vehicles!
http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATD559735&id=rESnAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=volkswagen+design+patent&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q=volkswagen%20design%20patent&f=false

Should I keep going or you prepared to point out how you just made up everything you said without taking 10 seconds to even look.

Ok here is one more for fun:
http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATD421906&id=H1gEAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=ralph+lauren+patent&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q=ralph%20lauren%20patent&f=false

That's right, Ralph Lauren did patent a square bottle cap.

Re:It's not about innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

An unrounded rectangle tears holes in your pocket. A non-rectangle is not suitable for fitting a display. Putting the glass end to end maximized the display area per footprint, which is pretty crucial since you want to minimize phone size for practical reasons and maximize display size for readability reasons.

All of this is basic functional stuff, and in fact Samsung had designs like that it was not allowed to show in court.

Wrong title.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple hasn't been awarded 290 million, but 890 million. 600 million have been awarded in the first trial. This one was only about the invalidated part of the 1 billion verdict.

Is it a waste?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Sometimes I think that all this litigation is a terrible waste of human effort. Then I try to imagine all these lawyers doing something more productive with their time instead, and I just can't.

Re:Is it a waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I think that all this litigation is a terrible waste of human effort. Then I try to imagine all these lawyers doing something more productive with their time instead, and I just can't.

Maybe if we had something like a mock trial system for them. We could fund it with a paltry few million; let them all think they're really doing something useful yelling at each other all day. Meanwhile the rest of the world can move on. Oblig: Simpsons 'world without lawyers' reference.

Re:Is it a waste?

[walterbyrd]

It's not a waste for Apple. Apple has been pulling these scams since the early 1990s.

Shameful excuse for a company.

Re:Is it a waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always the "B Ark". Just sayin'.

Re:Is it a waste?

[jddeluxe]

"Sometimes I think that all this litigation is a terrible waste of human effort. Then I try to imagine all these lawyers doing something more productive with their time instead, and I just can't."

How about committing suicide en masse?

Re:Is it a waste?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Can you imagine all the lawyers committing suicide? That seems just as hard for me to imagine as all the lawyers becoming productive members of society.

Re:Is it a waste?

[TsuruchiBrian]

No it's not a waste for Apple. It's a waste for humanity.

Re:Is it a waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of lawyers serve no practical purpose to society other than to defend you from their own kind.

It's an industry that artificially creates it's own demand, instead of fulfilling a natural one. It's basically a giant extortion ring siphoning wealth from society, instead of generating any itself.

Re:Is it a waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I think that all this litigation is a terrible waste of human effort. Then I try to imagine all these lawyers doing something more productive with their time instead, and I just can't.

I can help your imagination :

You forgot to consider the option of the lawyers all committing suicide.

Truly, this would be the most productive thing lawyers could do.

Lawyers are parasites, just like fleas, ticks, bedbugs, lice, and all the rest.
We'd all be better off without them.

Re:Death Spiral Watch:

[Anonymous Coward]

Any questions?

Yeah! When will the Republicans repeal EMTALA so the people who bought a NEW CAR get to die in the gutter when they ram it into the tree and the hospital decides they're full up on charity cases right now, rather than making the rest of us pay for their care?

design patent?

[harvey the nerd]

No telling which a 5 year design patent for a hand sized rectangle with rounded corners was involved. Again,

Re:design patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

a 5 year old design patent on a 5000+ year old design you mean right?

You know, the clay-stylus that was rectangular shaped with rounded corners where the clay would be peeled off of, and baked to harden.

That thing that was used in ancient Egyptian times thousands of years before Apple existed... You know, that design...

What is more productive

[nurb432]

Than making millions of dollars for yourself and your firm?

Re:What is more productive

[TsuruchiBrian]

It's not productive because nothing is being produced. It's just taking money from one group of people and giving it to another. It's redistributive rather than productive.

Making phones is productive. Advancing technology is productive.

Re:What is more productive

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not productive because nothing is being produced. It's just taking money from one group of people and giving it to another. It's redistributive rather than productive.

In other words it's white collar welfare.

Re:What is more productive

[TsuruchiBrian]

Welfare is the provision of a minimal level of well-being and social support for all citizens, sometimes referred to as public aid. In most developed countries, welfare is largely provided by the government and to a lesser extent charities, informal social groups, religious groups, and inter-governmental organizations.

Welfare is more than just wealth redistribution.

Re:What is more productive

[nurb432]

Right, commerce at its core is redistribution of wealth. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be worth doing.

Re:What is more productive

[TsuruchiBrian]

Also I wasn't commenting on the merits of wealth distribution, merely the waste of spending lots of human effort in determining how wealth is distributed.

If it was one guy spending 1 hour every day or even a computer program deciding how much money everyone got, fair or not, that would not be much wasted human effort.

Unfortunately we spend a fairly large percentage of our GDP on figuring out how to distribute the rest of it.

Re:What is more productive

[TsuruchiBrian]

The goal of commerce and welfare are different types of wealth distribution. Welfare seeks to redistribute the amount of wealth each person has, to ensure a minimum wealth level.

Commerce seeks to redistribute types of wealth, so people can properly benefit from wealth, while not necessarily changing the amount of wealth people have. (i.e. trade). It doesn't do the owners of Sony any good to own 1 million playstation 4s if they can't sell them for other things like cars and fancy dinners.

Usually when people talk about wealth distribution, they are talking about the former (i.e. wealth amount redistribution).

Maybe Not So Good For Apple

[Nom du Keyboard]

Apple claims that Samsung hurts the market for iPhones.
B.S.!
If you want IOS and the Apple App Store you have to buy an iPhone today every bit as much as you ever had to do so.
The Samsung phone is a different creature in a different environment.
Apple couldn't even make enough smartphones to supply the whole world provided that the did have a monopoly on them.
Aside from the fact that Apple never should have been granted these patents, I mean really, how long before Samsung -- who still supplies a lot of the iPhone and iPad components because nobody else can -- announces a sudden price increase that more than pays for this judgement out of Apple's own pockets?
I hope real soon.
And I'm left to wonder if this is taxable income in the USA for the famously tax-avoiding Apple? If not, then they just laundered a giga-buck into the good 'ol USA.

Re:Maybe Not So Good For Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple claims that Samsung hurts the market for iPhones.
B.S.!
If you want IOS and the Apple App Store you have to buy an iPhone today every bit as much as you ever had to do so.
The Samsung phone is a different creature in a different environment.
Apple couldn't even make enough smartphones to supply the whole world provided that the did have a monopoly on them.
Aside from the fact that Apple never should have been granted these patents, I mean really, how long before Samsung -- who still supplies a lot of the iPhone and iPad components because nobody else can -- announces a sudden price increase that more than pays for this judgement out of Apple's own pockets?
I hope real soon.
And I'm left to wonder if this is taxable income in the USA for the famously tax-avoiding Apple? If not, then they just laundered a giga-buck into the good 'ol USA.

You're being ridiculous either by design or by ignorance. Samsung copied the iPhone EXACTLY, even to the point of using Apple icons in their presentation booth's decor. Stop pretending that Samsung is innocent. Samsung's business model is to copy refrigerators, phones, microwaves, or whatever product someone has built and brought to market, and to use cheap labor to wiggle into the market. They are a product Xerox machine. No ability of their own other than to steal other's product design.

Re:Maybe Not So Good For Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Rofl you are aware samsung created many patents no phone would exist without right? and saying they copied the iphone exactly shows you have never used a galaxy device, most of the things they got sued over are things in aosp (ie google did the copying as evidenced by them suing over the galaxy nexus). My nexus 5 (made by lg and designed by google) is far more like an iphone than the captivate apple named in the suit.

Actually, $890 million

[gnasher719]

Originally Samsung was ordered to pay about a billion dollars. Then it turned out that the jury had made mistakes in the calculation of damages. Therefore about $400 million of that billion had to be tried again, while $600 million of the judgment was deemed correct. So in reality Samsung is now ordered to pay $600 plus $290 million.

Judge Lucy Haeran Koh is of Korean descent

[Anonymous Coward]

so is Samsung.

Re:Yeah, wrong link. Mod parent way down.

[Algae_94]

If only I had mod points... It's up to you to determine what I would mod this.

No, Samsung did not try to pay Apple in Nickels

[Press2ToContinue]

Believe everything you read on the Internet, do you?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/samsung.asp

Re:No, Samsung did not try to pay Apple in Nickels

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh - the loser apple-hating cocksuckers need their fucking blankies.

US Court sides with US defendant

[msobkow]

No surprise there. Samsung apparently wins the cases overseas, Apple wins them in the US. The whole system is rigged, flawed, and useless. Down with software and "design" patents!

Re:US Court sides with US defendant

[Anonymous Coward]

The Korean courts should answer in kind. Tit for tat.

Re:US Court sides with US defendant

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want a picture of who they side with. Samsung produces parts locally in the US. They help the US middle class out while apple buys those parts from samsung and ships them to china thus hurting the US middle class and enriching only the upper class in the US. Samsung in reality helps the US out more than apple does, the court seems to be siding with the Upper class only.

Fire up the dumptrucks!

[ALeader71]

I feel a parking lot full of loose change in Apple's future. Maybe this time it will happen!

worst summary ever

[vux984]

"After 3 days of deliberations, a jury has ordered Samsung to pay $290 million to Apple for infringement of several of its patents in multiple Samsung smartphones and tablets."

Ok.

"The verdict is the second victory for Apple in its multiyear patent fight against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Last year a jury in the same San Jose courtroom ruled Samsung should pay just over $1 billion for infringement of five Apple patents in multiple Samsung phones and tablets."

So, first they one a billion in court, then this win for 290 million.

"But afterward, Judge Lucy Koh ordered a new trial to reconsider $450 million of the damages after finding the previous jury had applied an 'impermissible legal theory' to its calculations."

Oh... ok... so not really a billion. 450million is being reconsidered, but there is this 290 million win. Still good for apple, though right?

"Thursday's verdict is the result of that new trial."

Wait what? So this isn't new money they won, but rather that of the 450M of previous win they we're fighting to keep, they've just lost 160M.

Wouldn't that have been the correct way to start?

Something like "Trial to reconsider $450M of previous $1B settlement has been reduced by $160M to $290M."

And that's assuming the patents stand up long enough for the checks to get written, something I understand may not happen as the patents themselves are facing invalidation.

Seriously, this article made it sound like another big win for apple, when in reality its really news that their one big win has been cut down...yet again.

Re:worst summary ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I thought I was the only one that was wondering this. Only in a universe ruled by the holy Steve can you consider a reduction in the size of the money originally awarded to you a victory. That's in the "mission accomplished" category of news.

Re:worst summary ever

[marcosdumay]

And that's assuming the patents stand up long enough for the checks to get written, something I understand may not happen as the patents themselves are facing invalidation.

Last news I have (from the time GrockLaw still existed), most of the patents were already invalidated - but the judge decided that this small fact shouldn't change the veredict.

Re:worst summary ever

[vux984]

Last news I have (from the time GrockLaw still existed), most of the patents were already invalidated - but the judge decided that this small fact shouldn't change the veredict.

My impression was that the judge assumed that would be sorted out in the appeal.

Re:worst summary ever

[marcosdumay]

Yep, my impression is that the judge assumed that the appeals court is the right place to hear Samsung's defense, sort if the law actually applies, and look at the facts.

Re:worst summary ever

[Wovel]

Not really, the $450 was vacated a while ago and there was already a lot of stories about that. There was a new trial with a new jury. Samsung claimed they should pay $52 million and Apple claimed like $342 million...

Re:worst summary ever

[vux984]

Not really, the $450 was vacated a while ago and there was already a lot of stories about that. There was a new trial with a new jury.

Its still an overall reduction to their first win. To claim it is as *another* victory for apple is silly.

Its not a new win, its a lesser award from the original win.

Samsung claimed they should pay $52 million and Apple claimed like $342 million...

So they just took the difference and awarded that to apple? (342-52 = 290) Lol

Becoming isolated island

[Anonymous Coward]

To tell the truth, Apple can not make any phone or tablet by themselves. They should rely on ecosystem to achieve further innovation.
But, what they are doing is isolating themselves from their former the strongest partner. even though SW is still very important, hardware is also
highly essential for the further innovation, such as flexible device. without strong partnership with strong partner, Apple will become follower in the
futher. Apple should not forget that Steve Jobs had visited Mr Kwon, CEO of SEC, to ask strong support to make i-Phone in the past.

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember clearly when this finding was announced. I remember posting that Samsung would weasel its way out of it because they are a Korean Chaebol (type of corporation in Korea) that puts revenue directly into ordinary peoples' hands that serve Korea, unlike their Western rodent counterparts. It matters to Samsung because what they do has real, tangible, and serious social ramifications for Koreans when they get hit with a lawsuit.

It could mean high schools don't get the upgrade they were hoping for.

Round 2 of a still ongoing match?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Amen to that.

Basically, the way the legal process goes, Apple still hasn't "fully" won its match against Samsung. This isn't Apple's second victory if by victory we mean the guy who gets the gold medal, the championship belt, the cheer leader's hug, etc. Apple may have won the round/lap/inning/half but a victory it's not.

Great example!

[ArchieBunker]

What an example they showed. Simply give up!

Groklaw

[blp]

Oh how I wish Groklaw were still publishing so that I'd know the whole story here.

Re:Groklaw

[Anonymous Coward]

From wikipedia:

On August 20 2013 an article appeared on Groklaw saying it was to be closed down due to government monitoring of the internet, particularly e-mail.[6] Jones wrote "What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7... I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure."

The NSA scared them out of business.

Copied from elsewhere on slashdot.

Samsung Ordered To Pay Apple $290M In Patent Case

[Anonymous Coward]

Never liked Samsung anyways., Good for apple

Apple Wins For Invalidated Patent

[meehawl]

It's pretty incredible but sadly predictable that Apple can keep winning over juries in its home county of Santa Clara to award it damages mainly for a patent (pinch to zoom) already declared invalid twice by the USPTO. Thanks however to the US's weird system, Apple can go on appealing until 2017 or 2018 before it finally runs out of people to whine to. I'd like to think that sanity could prevail then, but as recent experience shows, the US President would have no qualms about vetoing any adverse judgement against Apple but would be okay letting it stand against Johnny Foreigner.

Re:"APPEL FANBOI LOL" commenst aside...

[Sudline]

My R&D department informs me that there is a troll here.

Re:"APPEL FANBOI LOL" commenst aside...

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be falsely equating verdict and truth. Do you also falsely equate law with justice, legal with right, and illegal with wrong?

uhmm..

[SuperDre]

So not really a second victory, as Samsung now has to pay out a much lesser fine than originally..

Re:uhmm..

[Wovel]

I think $890 million is still a pretty hefty fine.

Obama should put an end to this war

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama should just put Samsung out of business by executive order. Let's face it, the Law hasn't stopped him from doing anything, so why not just rule by decree and put an end to this madness? It'd sure save the few Americans still paying taxes a few bucks by driving down the cost of Obamaphones.

Apple RDF Fail

[RavenLrD20k]

If Apple has too many more victories like this, they're finished. Having a 16% reduction in the amount of assessed damages is not a "second victory".

There was prior art for each pateent *fumes*

[PortHaven]

It's sick and disgusting. There was prior art for EVERY patent Apple sued Samsung over. Every single one could be invalidated by prior art you could find on the web.

Go figure....

PATENT office should be burned to the ground and never rebuilt.

Re:There was prior art for each pateent *fumes*

[Wovel]

I bet you can't even say what any of those patents are...

No, the verdict shows

[PortHaven]

American courts are pre-disposed to American companies. Every patent that Apple sued Samsung over, has prior art you can locate simply with Google searches.

And Samsung was refused being able to submit a lot of evidence. It's disgusting.. FUCK crApple.

Re:No, the verdict shows

[Wovel]

Show us one of those searches and explain how it shows prior art for a particular claim. I realize you can't because you are just making crap up, but it was kind of fun asking.

Not just ANY jury...

[PontifexMaximus]

A SILICON VALLEY jury. Keep that in mind when reading this. The original $450m award that is being retried was also awarded by a Silicon Valley jury, IIRC. But, don't expect Samsung to get any help from that moron in the White House, He's allowed Apple to lobby him for blocking the sale/import of Samsung products and didn't (and won't) enforce the same conditions on Apple.

you KNOW what is going to happen here

[swschrad]

Samsung will buy $290 million dollars worth of iPhones, slap a Samsung sticker on them, and offer them for $1.98 as unlocked phones. give the receipt to the judge, and say "there, got it."

Re:Yeah, wrong link. Mod parent way down.

[mcgrew]

Ah, yes, an edit button... so you can say something funny, get it modded +5, then edit your comment to be a GNAA troll linking to goatse.

Use the goddamned preview button, that's for, you know, EDITING.

Who Are On These Juries

[Anonymous Coward]

And where can I get some of what they're smoking?

DIY - Rhino Lined a Brand new -in the box- MacBook

[Anonymous Coward]

DIY - Rhino Lined a Brand new -in the box- MacBook Pro !!!

Ultimate durability! After pricing out laptop covers I decided to do my own, for a fraction of the price!!!
Check out the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwlGZLTuGRk