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Feds Ask Supreme Court To Void Apple's $400 Million Award From Samsung (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the San Jose Mercury News technology blog: "The $400 million awarded to Apple in a patent-infringement case against Samsung is a moving target... On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a "friend of the court" brief to the Supreme Court, asking justices to void the $400 million award and send the case back to a lower court to determine if a new trial is needed... Samsung has argued that it should be liable only for profits attributable to a specific design that violated a patent, not an entire phone, and that the law should be interpreted to impose liability related to "components of the phones, rather than the phones themselves, according to the brief. The department came down on Samsung's side on the component argument, and blasted a federal circuit court ruling that had upheld the jury award.
Ironically, earlier this week Steve Wozniak was praising Samsung for its innovation, both in virtual reality headsets and with a Samsung camera that takes a picture whenever you say "smile".
Ironically, earlier this week Steve Wozniak was praising Samsung for its innovation, both in virtual reality headsets and with a Samsung camera that takes a picture whenever you say "smile".
I guess the golden Apple age is really over.
That this award was not about some unique, non obvious mechanism. It was because Samsung phones had the "look and feel of an iPhone."
"friend of the court" my ass ... the judgement should stand and the Department of Injustice needs to butt the hell out.
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Last month I went to Taipei to interview a retired display device geek for a story I'm writing. He explained that the touch display technology was originally German, and that his mentor bought it from the German firm hoping to use it in touch screen ATM (CRT based, I think) when the German company went chapter 11 ("They had a great technology, but no application"). They got it to work on small LCDs, and the Taiwanese group pitched it to a company making Ipods for touch displays, he's not sure how it went from there to telephones. Apple got the guys mentor to open a shop in Vancouver to claim the device was independently developed there rather than Taiwan. I still don't have all the history covered, still grey areas, and I've been studying this for years. I don't understand the utility of asking juries to award $400M patent awards based on "telephones" with "rounded corners".
Gently reply
This is the Obama administration giving their friends at Apple the UFIA.
Steve Wozniak was praising Samsung for its innovation ... with a Samsung camera that takes a picture whenever you say "smile".
20th century innovation: The solid state transistor. The integrated circuit. Laser. Space travel. The internet.
21st century innovation: A "camera that takes a picture whenever you say smile". Selfies. Facebook. The "selfie-stick".
The next person that loses against the MPAA/RIAA should then bring this document out. Since only profits should be repaid then the person should owe them nothing as it is commonly known that due to creative accounting techniques music and movies don't make money.
This has NOTHING to do with Apple denying the Obama Administration's demand to add backdoors to their operating system.
It is concerning they haven't posted on this yet.
The other day Slashdot posted a story about a court filing that happened in early 2015 - over a year ago. This particular story is about as fast as Slashdot gets - the news sites covered it Friday, two days ago. I'm sure Slashdot will have a story about the shooting in the next few days, probably after more is known so there can be better discussion.
They did support apple. What happened?
http://saveie6.com/
I assume that a lot of the people that were shot were iPhone users, given what the place was...
Obviously this is pay back for Apple not currying Justice's favor by opening up iOS. What an embarrassment of Justice.
Samsung would not have sold nearly so many smartphones if it couldn't tout them as being everything an iPhone is.
That story is gonna be swept under the rug lest it undermines mainstream rhetoric. Hold your tears Leftists! They were just statistics.
I don't understand the utility of asking juries to award $400M patent awards based on "telephones" with "rounded corners".
Even if it's a bit chancy, it's a great way to launder and write off 400 mil... The "lawsuit" is just another way of transferring funds
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
> they are either incompetent or uncaring, possibly both.
"They" is mainly a computer algorithm, users vote on stories in the Firehose to determine what appears on the front page. So yes, the algoritm is uncaring.
Beyond that, this isn't "Headline News Now, Up to the Minute Reporting of What's Going on Today". There are sites that do that. Slashdot isn't one of those. Try CNN or Fox.
Refuse to crack a phone for us? Well, well...I guess we'll just be filing a "friend of the court" against you in every case we can now. This is "banana republic" level of corruption and judicial interference.
That might be ironic if Woz was a part of the lawsuit and claimed that Samsung never made innovative products. But that's not the case.
I keep seeing posts like this. If they aren't song lyrics, they should be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Both the Patent law and Copyright law are in desperate need of fixing, and letting courts bumble their way around is not the way to go.
Current Patent law is drafted with the idea that you patent whole devices, at which point if you build something covered by patent without getting a license you should be liable for your "total profits". But today patents cover small bits in the device, and each device embodies thousands of patents. Courts (especially the Supreme Court) can say "Congress didn't think about that when it drafted the law, so we'll 'interpret' the language Congress actually wrote [total profits] to mean something that makes sense [the part of the profits which is attributable just to the infringed patent]. But this is a bad solution -- much better would be for Congress to change the law. At that time other urgent fixes (like the term of patents, the windfall rules for making out-of-patent and out-of-production rare drugs etc) can also be made.
Copyright law is similar: rather than hope courts will restrain themselves (lowering absurd damage verdicts like the Jammie Thomas case) or restrain Congress (how did Eldred v Aschroft do?) we need to get Congress to fix the copyright term at something reasonable (say 20 years, renewable with registration once).
It's neither (incorrectly reported as) "ironic" nor coincidental that Woz is praising Samsung; he calls tech the way he sees it without a political agenda.
Especially as Apple's design is preceded by a shockingly similar Nokia Display Product (now ViewSonic) mobile entertainment center. That was thicker and had a TV tuner inside.
Anyone who has any experience dealing with the federal government can tell that there's just no way they could make a conspiracy work, even if all the involved parties agreed (which is also impossible).
lucm, indeed.
Seriously? So we're going to dissect the phone down to it's constituent components and base award off those that offend. Dude it's a fucking phone. The whole package not bits and pieces. There's a reason Google shoves stuff down your throat and does not let you pick and chose. Citing a 1920's case is a bit of a reach and also dubious of its conclusions.