Slashdot Mirror
Jury Finds Apple and Samsung Infringed Each Other's Patents
An anonymous reader writes "A U.S. jury concluded Friday that Samsung had infringed on two of Apple's patents and that Apple had infringed on one of Samsung's patents. Prior to the trial, the judge had ruled that Samsung had infringed on one other Apple patent. Samsung will receive $158,400 in damages, although they had requested just over $6 million. Apple will receive $119.6 million in damages, although they had requested just over $2 billion and a ban on certain Samsung phones. Some say that a sales ban is unlikely to be approved by the judge. The jury is scheduled to return on Monday to resolve what appears to be a technical mistake in their verdict on one of the patents, and Apple may gain a few hundred thousand dollars in their damages award as a result."
Time for the Affordable Cellphone Act!!!
Totally worth it. (For the lawyers making baaaaaaaaank)
Ah yes, jury of peers!
Apple: Wholesome innovating American company.
Samsung: Foreign named company made up of slanty eyed little people who steal ideas and technology from wholesome innovating American company. Besides they have that crazy little fat leader and they send missiles over our allies! Huh? North and South Korea - that's like North and South Carolina. It's the same country!
1. A method for doing stuff on a thing. Actually it's a modern patent, so the mere idea of using a thing to do stuff without bothering to elucidate the useful information which is how.
2. The claim of (1) but like on a computer.
3. The claim of (2) but like totally using the internet.
4. The claim of (3) but like on a device but with a means of communication.
5. The claim of (4) where the device is also portable.
6. yeah and battery powered too.
7. and uses like a radio.
8. like 7 but may or may not do voice communication.
9. like any of the above with with a touch screen.
10. The claim of (9) whereby the touch screen represents physical elements
11. And the claim of 11 where it doesn't,
12. ooh and maybe rounded corners too.
13. The claim of (1) but this one is so obtusely worded that if you manage to read it correctly (and we're pretty sure neither the judge, patent examininers or jury will) we atually managed to patent the idea of using buttons on a portable device so lolz to you.
Sure I'm cynical, but whenever I see a patent in my area of speciality it's either the vague idea of doing something that people have been trying to do unsucessfully for ages, a totally obvious aggregation of two things that really is obvious to anyone in the field who happens to have that problem and of course, completely not novel in any way at all and has simply been done before in its entirety.
Not to say all patents are bad, but it's the woeful 99.9% giving the remaining .1% a bad name.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I would have thought the "Look and Feel" --type patent suits were dead and buried after Microsoft won vs. Apple back in the Win3.1 days. I can't see how anyone would agree that, e.g., patenting the 'swipe-to-scroll' designs should be valid. So what the heck should be patentable? An Apple patent on a smart phone that doesn't have a microSD slot? (sarcasm). Voice-activation using a fake name (Siri) vs. a company name (Hi Samsung; OK Google)? Production of Gorilla glass I might understand being patentable, but any phone mfr could purchase that material (and I doubt any of these patent suits were related to anything so mundane and realistic as materials science). I just don't get it.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Its us the consumer who ends up picking up the tab for the legal bills, and in the end we just find out what we all knew already, they all steal each others ideas. Thanks Apple.
What the mods failed to see with the GP is that the American jury is going to have some prejudices against the foreign company - especially an Asian one.
All in all, Apple has this great reputation in the US, it's considered to be the poster boy for innovation and how USA is still #1!
Most Americans have the view that Asian companies do nothing but copy American companies' products, cheapen it, and sell it for less; while costing the jobs of red blooded Americans.
Rule based on law? Ah, the subconscious is an amazing thing. Dan Ariely, Daniel Kahneman and other Behavioral economists have quite a bit of data on how we humans are anything but rational and our decisions are mostly made unconsciously.
Samsung had no chance.
Apple and Samsung will eventually merge.
You are welcome on my lawn.
do people still think that these days? I mean when it comes to electronics I thought we ceded to the asians years ago. what do we have anymore? sharp??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Apple. Fuck It. Jobs.
Samsung fan: (they're always south east Asians and type in uppercase shouts)
WHY YOU FAC%. LOOK AT SPECS. PROCESSOR IS MORE AND DISPLAY AND RAM, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY. APPLE U ARE CRAZY BRO????
Apple fanboy (always some deluded consumer with no cash)
Apple is amazing, the original. I can't wait tip next year to buy the next iPhone with my savings to do like I dunno apps, man, apps
do people still think that these days?
Yes, they do.
Required reading for internet skeptics
In other news, an impartial californian jury awarded damages to a californian company.
The NY Times has a summary of the 6 patents involved.
They are:
Which of those 6 patents covers a non-obvious idea?
Most Americans? That's pretty much proven false by the sales figures, eh?
Or write code without violating some obscure patent or copyright?
Rick B.
I think that scenario has already played out before a South Korean court.
The summary from the Wall Street Journal:
The Seoul Central District Court rejected all of Samsung's claims against Apple, including a request to pay 100 million won (about US$95,000) in damages. It noted that the two patents are invalid because they can be easily developed using existing technologies.
You can read about it here: http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
In 2012, a Korean court had found that Apple did infringe on 2 standards essential Samsung patents. This is what got Samsung into trouble with the European Union regulators, because you cannot volunteer your technology to become part of a standard and then later hold the industry (or competitors in the industry) to ransom by selectively refusing to license that technology on FRAND terms - this is the same reason that Obama overturned the iPhone ban, by the way.
you believe everything on the Wall Street Journal, don't you?
I do not like these patent suits. I actually have a patent but made nothing on it as I worked for the government at the time. We patented the device I worked on so someone could not duplicate it and keep us from making it for our own use. Patents should have never been allow to descend to the level (software nuances ) of these disputes. If Samsung didn't actually steal the code, then how is it different than amd/intel disputes of the past?
Samsung infringed on a couple of Apple's inventions.
Apple infringes on an invention Samsung bought for the case.
The award was so low, it is really irrelevant.
you cannot volunteer your technology to become part of a standard and then later hold the industry (or competitors in the industry) to ransom by selectively refusing to license that technology on FRAND terms
You're got it backwards. It's Samsung that has "essential" patents and demanding payment but it's Apple that's refusing to pay anything for them. So ironically, thanks to the US's obvious native-company favouritism, a company with essential patents (like Samsung's) can't get money or redress, while a company with trivial, obvious patents (like Apple with rounded corners, hyperlinks, search bars, etc) can sue, and sue, and sue, and sue till the sun dies. Basically, Apple gets to pirate Samsung's essential patents in the US, thanks to govt protectionism.
Da Blog