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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".
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".
Which had the look and feel of an LG Prada, or a Mio A701, or a dozen other candy bar phones. But I digress...
This has NOTHING to do with Apple denying the Obama Administration's demand to add backdoors to their operating system.
Personally I think Apple should sue the shit out of everyone with a device that weighs the same as an iPhone. Because, well, that's pretty much what they're being allowed to do anyway.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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!”
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).
Someone got shot? Imagine that. People get shot every day.
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.