Apple Again Seeks Ban On 20+ Samsung Devices In US

An anonymous reader notes that Apple has renewed its patent attack against Samsung, asking U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh to prohibit Samsung from selling over 20 different phones and tablets. Apple made a similar request after it won a $1 billion judgment in 2012, but Koh did not allow it. An Appeals court later ruled that Apple could resubmit its request if it focused on the specific features at the center of the 2012 verdict, and that's what we're seeing today. Apple's filing said, "Samsung’s claim that it has discontinued selling the particular models found to infringe or design around Apple's patents in no way diminishes Apple’s need for injunctive relief. ... Because Samsung frequently brings new products to market, an injunction is important to providing Apple the relief it needs to combat any future infringement by Samsung through products not more than colorably different from those already found to infringe."

Comments

How about no?

[ZorinLynx]

Competition is good for the market place. Apple is already doing well enough; no need to do them any favors.

Re:How about no?

[MightyMartian]

The law is an ass.

Re:How about no?

[Sarten-X]

This is Slashdot! We don't care what any silly judge says, or what the law says! We'll voice support for what we want the law to be, specially tailored to our limited knowledge of this situation, based on our own prejudices for or against the companies in question.

Re:How about no?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except we already know that this was a Kangaroo court.

This patent war is a prime example of what is wrong with patents. The jury in this case decided based on one man's vendetta against Samsung. Go ahead, look it up.

You might learn something.

Re:How about no?

[Solandri]

This particular judge disallowed Samsung from showing the jury its prior art (phones that it had in the design pipeline before the iPhone was announced) because the Samsung lawyers missed a filing deadline. She let the letter of the law (a filing deadline) override the intent of the law (to get to the truth of the matter).

Apple's tablet infringement claims were thrown out because of the copious amounts of prior art which the jury saw. The $1 billion judgement likely would've been thrown out too if they'd seen Samsung was working on iPhone-like designs before anyone outside Apple even knew what an iPhone was. In this particular case, the prejudice is in the jury, not the general public which got to see the documents the judge disallowed because of a technicality.

Re:How about no?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Actually what I find more disturbing than a biased juror is how Obama permitted apple to sell its phones even though samsung won a ban legally, yet didn't grant the same favor to samsung in the exact same circumstances. That's pretty obvious favoritism, and unlike the biased juror, it's perfectly legal and not subject to appeal.

Re:How about no?

[Cederic]

Bollocks.

Apple's patents were bullshit to start with, and are continually being overturned at the patent office. Samsung shouldn't _have_ to work around them, and it's far from clear that Samsung even infringed in the first place - that trial was a fucking farce.

Samsung's patents may be FRAND but that doesn't mean that people should be able to use them without paying a fair or reasonable amount. Apple used them and refused to negotiate. Just what the fuck are Samsung meant to do in that circumstance? Ignore the patent?

Obama was playing petty protectionism and nothing else. Sure, Samsung may own half of Korean politics but that doesn't make Obama's corruption any less.

Re:How about no?

[g0bshiTe]

Let's leave race out of this shall we?

Apple is a terrorist.

[jedidiah]

Apple is a terrorist asking for the suspension of basic civil liberties just to suit their own bottom line. If there are other devices that "infringe on their rights", they need to go through the complete process to ban those. They should not get a free pass on due process. If they want to be anti-competitive jackasses, they need to follow the rule of law while doing it.

Re:Apple is a terrorist.

[mark-t]

Apple did not invent what we now call the smartphone. The iPhone merely has the distinction of being the first really popular such device.

IBM came out with their touch-based "Simon" phone in 1993, which although it had a black-and-white screen and lacked multitouch capabilities, still had many of the features we associate with smartphones today. Users dialed with a onscreen keypad, and Simon included a calendar, address book, can be understood alarm clock, and e-mail functionality.

A Swedish company, Neonode, came out with a touch screen phone in 2003 (arguably unimaginatively named the N1m) that even utilized gestures, including the now very familiar "slide to unlock" functionality... which so many people associate with the iPhone these days (although in actuality, the intuitiveness of slide-to-unlock gesture is really quite obvious when you compare such an operation to that of sliding a deadbolt open).

But arguably neither of these phones looked a lot like the iPhone... But this in no small part because technology really needed to catch up to the concept. Nonetheless, if you look at pictures of either of those devices, especially in operation, you will probably recognize many familiar concepts which we now come to expect in a smartphone today.

Enter the LG Prada, in 2006, a fully multitouch smartphone unveiled not that long before Apple publicly unveiled the iPhone, and which looks so similar to the iPhone that LG actually accused Apple of copying *THEM* (although in actuality, their release dates were near enough to each other that it is unlikely that either had had any significant influence on the other).

So perhaps, instead of anyone copying anybody else, smartphones look and operate the way they do because it is a design that comes spontaneously from a combination of the evolution of technology, intuitive operation, and overall practicality... not, as you put it, imitation that is both "transparent and egregious"

eh ?

[Pop69]

Apple want an injunction to ban the import of future devices that the court hasn't found to be infringing?

How does that work ?

...not more than colorably different...

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

LOL. This from a company that uses rounded corners as a patentable way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. By that light, being a different color sounds like "innovation" to me ;)

Stop shotgun approach: Uh, why?

[Chas]

I think you're misunderstanding why this is done this way.
You have multiple devices partly due to having multiple, mutually exclusive carriers.

In addition, you may have a couple tiers of products, as not everyone is going to go for the Uber-'spensive top end device.

Their approach allows them to hit multiple carriers at multiple price points.

On top of that, having multiple offerings means they have a better chance of finding the devices people want and then slimming down their offering portfolio later, as they refine the devices that people are buying and abandon the ones that don't sell and finding a way to roll any possible unique/desirable features down into other devices.

Apple gets away with "You will fit your lifestyle to what we offer you. And LIKE IT!". They get away with it because they're Apple and people know that they're expected to put up with Apple's crazy bullshit for "teh schmexy".

For people who refuse to be cookie cutter'ed (see "sane people"), there's a plethora of choices and you can pick the one that intersects someplace acceptable along your "needs" and "budget limits" lines.

Current patent system is crazy

[spike6479]

If we had the same crazy patent environment when cars were being developed, every car would have a different way to control it. Patents should protect true invention for a relatively short period of time to allow the inventor to capitalize on his work. Now they are just barriers to keep the markets closed. Big companies cross license patents to keep their monopolies.

Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

This "is a matter of law" only when law is on Apple's side. When Samsung got some of their devices blocked at ITC, they just came to Obama crying and Obama administration overturned ruling by decree. For me it's plain corruption, not a matter of law. Apple is a parasite who abuses laws when it suits them and using political connections to ignore laws when it works against them.

Re:Um, no.

[pablo_max]

Perhaps not. But who gives a fuck if Samsung hides from taxes in Korea. The US is not in Korea last time I looked.
But, your buddies at Apple hide out in Ireland and pay only a tiny percentage of taxes they otherwise would. Meanwhile, we are firing teachers left and right. We cannot afford to fix our roads and bridges. But no, lets help companies like Apple and GE make insane profits operating in our society, while they contribute almost nothing back to it.

Dear Al Quaeda

[PortHaven]

Do the world some good, next time, target the U.S. Patent Office, Mosanto, and the Federal Reserve.

It'll be extremely awkward, we'll find it so hard to hate you. It'll be like the time the KKK counter-protested Westboro Baptists leaving us all going WTF, how did we wind up on the same side of the line as those !@#$s

Patents encourage innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents stifle innovation, because I go to all the trouble to create some new software from scratch, and then some greedy shyster walks up and demands I pay money to him. Even though he never created anything. He just patented a list of buzzwords describing some idea he claims to have had, but never implemented.