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Appeals Court Reinstates Apple's $120 Million Slide-To-Unlock Patent Win Over Samsung (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple Inc. won an appeals court ruling that reinstates a patent-infringement verdict it won against Samsung Electronics Co., including for its slide-to-unlock feature for smartphones and tablets. In an 8-3 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said a three-judge panel was wrong to throw out the $119.6 million verdict in February. Instead, it ordered the trial judge to consider whether the judgment should be increased based on any intentional infringement by Samsung. In this case, Apple claimed that Samsung infringed patents for the slide-to-unlock feature, autocorrect and a way to detect phone numbers so they can be tapped to make phone calls. The bulk of the award, $98.7 million, was for the detection patent that the earlier panel said wasn't infringed. The February decision also said the other two patents were invalid. That was a wrong decision, the court ruled Friday, because it relied on issues that were never raised on appeal or on information that was beyond the trial record. "The jury verdict on each issue is supported by substantial evidence in the record," Circuit Judge Kimberly Moore wrote for the majority.
Apple didn't even patent sliding to unlock, that was rejected dozens of times. But Jobs kept pressing and revising the application. The "innovation" that finally got granted was "continuously pressing your finger down while sliding to unlock". I'm not fucking kidding, the $120M innovation was "continuously" pressing your finger while sliding it across a screen.
Wrong.
Patent trolls don't actually make products. Apple patented this (whether you think the patent is valid or not is absolutely up for debate), and then used it in products ranging over 8 years of time. Words and phrases have meanings, and they are only fungible over long periods of time. You may not like Apple, so call them bastards and shitheads - both of which probably apply in this case. But don't repurpose a moniker that means something else just because it has the word "patent" in it.
And why did Samsung have to copy it? They were found guilty, and they aren't even appealing that aspect which is tantamount to admission. There's plenty of other android OEMs out there that didn't copy it - don't you think that Apple would have named them in lawsuits as well? There's clearly other ways to implement this functionality that work just as well.
Regardless of if it's a shit patent, Samsung should have recognized that the patent was granted and not willfully violated it. Or, they should have tried to invalidate it as their defense in the original trial, which they didn't bother to do.