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Court of Appeals Says Samsung's Legal Payments To Apple Should Be Reduced
Mark Wilson writes: Patent lawsuits in the world of technology are nothing new, and the case between Apple and Samsung resulted in one of the largest fines ever being handed down. Samsung was order to pay $930 million in damages after a court found that the company had violated Apple patents with its smartphone and tablet designs. Today the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned part of the original ruling, saying that the jury was wrong to say that Samsung infringed on Apple's trade dress intellectual property. The exact details of what this will mean are yet to come out, but it should lead to a fairly hefty reduction in Samsung's legal costs.
If only there was one convenient place where all the information about Apple v Samsung was collected, including all the reasons for this reversal...
It's sad to see a marketing company that copies everyone else fleece an innovator like Samsung. At least the amount is being reduced since patenting the shape of a smart phone is absurd.
Unless, of course, it's being reduced to $0.
Whole case was insane to begin with.
Also, as anyone who makes things (any things) knows, sharp corners have thin edges, which break, get dinged up and worn down. Chamfering edges and corners makes them last longer. It's also easier to mold, and to make molds - you can use a rotating mill bit rather than hand-chiseling.
I had never seen a black rectangle with rounded edges before the iPhone! ... ...well unless you count the TV I had as a child. And the TV I have now. And probably half the electronics in my house.
The whole "trade dress" concept seems a bit silly to me in the first place but ti is beyond stupid when they can claim something as simple as their rounded rectangular design as being "trade dress".
I've never heard the term "trade dress" before. What does it mean?
The full court documents go into some details about the reasons for the decision. It explains that "the requirement that the unregistered trade dress 'serves no purpose other than identification' cannot be reasonably inferred from the evidence" (trade dress patents cover design elements that are functional as well as aesthetic) so a recalculation is in order.
The article is confusing two things here... First is trade dress, which is part of trademark law and covers the look and feel of something. It's under the commerce clause of the Constitution, and is codified in the Lanham Act at 17 USC 1051-1127. Trade dress is also a common law doctrine (and some states, particularly the original colonies, have their own state trademark law), and accordingly, there is such a thing as unregistered trade dress rights (there are also registered trade dress rights).
Second is design patents, which are part of patent law and also cover the look and feel of something. It's under the patent clause of the Constitution, and is codified in the patent act (35 USC 100 onwards). There is no such thing as an unregistered design patent or a "trade dress patent".
Finally, neither trade dress nor design patents can cover functionality. They only apply to aesthetic features or "surface ornamentation".
"But wait, Theaetetus," some Slashdotters protest. "Rounded corners are always functional, because otherwise, you'd cut your fingers off on the sharp edge!"
That's true, and neither the trade dress nor the design patents cover the concept of rounding a corner... Instead, they cover this specific radius of curvature. Specifically, why would you choose rounding the corner? To avoid sharp edges. Why did you choose a 1/8" radius instead of a 1/6"? An arbitrary aesthetic design choice.
Moving on to the real point here...
The jury found that Samsung infringed the (i) unregistered trade dress, (ii) registered trade dress, and (iii) design patents. With regard to the first one, the unregistered trade dress, Apple has the burden of proving that it's nonfunctional. They failed to do that, because the design as a whole offered some utilitarian advantages. So the damages placed by the jury because of (i) should be struck.
Turning to (ii) the registered trade dress, this had nothing to do with rounded corners. The registered trade dress covered the 16 icons on the iPhone's home screen. The Court held that those icons have functional features, since they tell people whether they're clicking on email or a browser. So, since they're functional, the damages placed by the jury because of (ii) should also be struck.
That leaves us with (iii), the design patents. Here, however, the jury was instructed to disregard any functional elements and focus just on the aesthetics. And here, Samsung loses, because they can't show any error in that.
So, the jury award is reduced to just what is applicable to the patents, not the trade dress.
As an aside, the court also upheld the validity of Apple's utility patents over Samsung's objections. So this is a net loss for Samsung.
For example, take the Samsung Epic 4G, which the jury counted as $130.1M in damages. It infringed all but one of the patents, but wasn't found to infringe either the unregistered or registered trade dress. So this judgement won't reduce that award by a penny. Same thing for any of the Samsung Galaxy S II models other than the Showcase, which collectively are $250M.
PJ totally buys into the Apple Kool Aid. Every scenario was taken by fiat to be what Apple claimed, and any attempt to ask if some alternative view was possible led to shunning, refusals to converse and insistence you leave.
What Compaq or SAMBA did and was fine was STILL fine, but when some company did the same to Apple, gaining interoperability with their boot system, was 100% illegal.
Because it's Apple, not MS or Intel. Or, likely, anyone else.
She was on the side of Apple here too, but left before it went very far and got ridiculously obvious what her double-standard was. Lots of posters were beginning to notice. That was likely the last straw for her, not the largest straw by a long shot, but the last one she could take: being taken to task for a double standard showing her own arguments would refute her this time, when they were good for her before.
I'd already stopped going to Groklaw by then. It's not worth watching someone intelligent dump it on the roadside, there's no entertainment in that for me. And she didn't attempt to converse, only edicts emitted on the subject. Totally against the site's ideals.
Could you tell the difference between a 1/6th inch radius corner and a 1/8th inch radius corner at 1 foot? No? Then the court farce where people not knowing the difference between a Samsung and Apple phone is apparent under your claim. Did you point that out at the time? No? then you're a hypocrite.
Oh, by the way, the patent didn't have the radius of the corner. They didn't even have the ratio of the device, the sides were dotted, therefore not part of the design patent.
Stop claiming BS ideas just so Apple get to win in your mind, you brainwashed moron.
Or maybe like others, your "problem" is China (well, Korea, but one AC moron didn't know the difference, which is hellishly amusing, so I repeat it for irony), whilst Apple are "American".
I can see why you replied to this as AC -- you responded to a well-crafted argument with complete drivel...