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Court of Appeals Says Samsung's Legal Payments To Apple Should Be Reduced

Posted by samzenpus on from the lower-my-bill dept.

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.

6 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Fuck Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Fuck Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      2. The shape of a phone is a trade dress intellectual property, not a patent.

      Which no company in the world should own in the first place. Just bloody stupid.

  2. Not reduced enough, I guarantee it by Jax+Omen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unless, of course, it's being reduced to $0.

    Whole case was insane to begin with.

    1. Re:Not reduced enough, I guarantee it by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A year before the iPhone was announced Samsung released a digital photo frame that looks exactly like it. The only difference is that it wasn't a phone. That's how mid 2000s electronics looked.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Oh come on by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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".

    1. Re:Oh come on by toonces33 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The communicators in the original Star Trek were sort of like this. The original Moto Razr copied some design elements from that - if you just take that phone and permanently flatten it, you have something roughly the same shape and size as an iPhone.