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Appeals Court Bans Features From Older Samsung Phones
walterbyrd writes with news that Apple has finally emerged victorious in a long-standing patent case against Samsung — though it's more of a moral victory than a practical one. Samsung is no longer allowed to sell some of its older phones unless the company disables features that infringe upon Apple patents. "The market impact will likely be limited, since the lawsuit was filed in 2012 and covers products that came out that year, like the Galaxy S3. Furthermore, software updates to Samsung software mean that the patents may not be infringed anymore. For instance, Samsung's Android phones no longer use a 'slide to unlock' feature on the bottom of the phone. In dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Sharon Prost paints a sharply different picture (PDF) from the majority. 'This is not a close case,' she writes, noting that Apple's patents cover a spelling correction feature it doesn't use, and two others cover 'minor features' out of 'many thousands.'"
This is the court case where Samsung presented Apple blue-prints showing the entire iThing UI and hardware design was lifted from Sony, who strangely haven't sued Apple. The documents were too inconvenient and the judge ordered they be removed from the record citing they arrived too late. Yes, too late, despite rendering Apple's case moot.
Can't have those slitty eyed eastern types showing a trendy US corporation ripping off the nations that build their products, then pretending to have invented it. Ban the gooks!
Slide to unlock?
Pretty much every android devices use that, even Windows 10 uses that junk that, is Apple going to sue Microsoft for it?
So the 'slide to unlock' feature is some sort of amazing proprietary invention?
What's next, patenting the layout of the 0 ~ 9 dialpad?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Is this the case where a different court wanted Samsung to pay Apple several billion dollars because of these minor patents? Which was about Samsung's total profit on the phones.
My Galaxy S3 is still plugging along and is a far better phone than its contemporary iPhone counterparts. The Samsung software is another story but I don't use those apps.
12:50 - press return.
Yes, the slide to unlock is an amazing invention. And the word correction feature is worth $102 on a phone that costs $149.
The majority found error in the lower court's requiring that Apple must prove that the infringement was the sole cause of the lost sales. But the minority opinion points out that the lower court never stated such a requirement. According to the minority, "The words “sole” and “predominant” are not even present in the district court’s opinion."
In technical fields, the level of sloppiness that permeates the work of the courts, is just not possible. Such accidents as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, or the sinking of the Sleipner A oil platform in a Norwegian fjord, are, after all quite seldom, and even then, the mistakes leading to the disasters were not nearly as glaringly obvious. In the courts, such mistakes are made every single day, multiple times in almost each and every single court opinion, because it has no consequences for the judges.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
None of the features seem unique or original by themselves; this seems more of a case of alleged general copying. For example, slide-to-unlock just mirrors physical locks, and auto-links in memos, similar to Intellisense (per URL's, phone numbers, etc.), have been around quite a while, and would be difficult to defend on their own.
But if somebody seemingly copies the same grab-bag of features and puts it into a similar package, does that make for a general infringement?
For example, suppose a store sold a gift basket with certain kinds of perfumes, soaps, and chocolates. It sells well and the industry takes notice. A competitor then sells a similar looking gift basket with similar kinds of products.
None the products by themselves are protect-able by copyrights or patents, such as "peppermint soap", but the similarity of selection of products perhaps could be seen as some kind of I.P. infringement. To me it's a stretch, though.
Table-ized A.I.
Apple can't make a claim to the basic feature, they didn't even invent it.
So Apple can't claim it is unique, good. That makes it essentially unprotectable under pretty much all IP laws except - possibly - as a registered trademark.
But they can say samsung used a similar feature and the placement of this feature was identical.
Wait - WTF? So what they have isn't theirs - they didn't invent it - but because Samsung put something like what they had in a similar place on their device makes Samsung somehow an infringing act? That they chose the same, pretty much logical (from a thumb accessibilty standpoint) place to put it?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Correction, it's an LG, not a Samsung. (I traded it with somebody else recently for an Apple with a faulty button, so it's not brand new.)
Table-ized A.I.
The real problem in this case, evidenced from post case interviews with the jury foreman, is that despite the majority of the trial being about prior art to invalidate Apple's patents, the jury was so confused that the jury foreman (the only member of the jury with any experience with patents) persuaded the jury that it was not their job to judge the validity of the patents. His reasoning was that since the patent office had granted them they must be valid. This was based on his experience of having a very hard time getting the patent office to accept his patent, because they kept raising prior art.
This was in direct contradiction to the written instructions to the jury, and should have resulted in a mistrial, since the jury foreman brought outside evidence into the discussions. The other important feature is that there is a difference in how patent claims are evaluated by the USPTO and by the courts.
Regards,
-Jeremy
I've heard that Apple did pay royalties to Xerox for GUI technology. But, by most accounts they got a lousy deal.
Table-ized A.I.
it's more of an immoral victory than a practical one
Fixed that for Soulskill
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I was about to post the same observation.
At the time all I could think of was how asinine the suit was and what a pretentious jerk Apple was being.
Now I think that Samsung was never worried either way because they could just continue business as usual and by the time the suit actually caught up (whether you agree with the ruling or not) it would already be way too late to actually affect Samsung. Brilliant, if this was the plan of some bean-counter all along.
I've heard that Apple did pay royalties to Xerox for GUI technology. But, by most accounts they got a lousy deal.
Well, they got more money out of it than by marketing their own GUI systems.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Xeros was shitty at computer hardware
Table-ized A.I.