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Apple Wins $120 Million From Samsung In Slide-To-Unlock Patent Battle (theverge.com)
Apple has finally claimed victory over Samsung to the count of $120 million. "The Supreme Court said today that it wouldn't hear an appeal of the patent infringement case, first decided in 2014, which has been bouncing through appeals courts in the years since," reports The Verge. From the report: The case revolved around Apple's famous slide-to-unlock patent and, among others, its less-famous quick links patent, which covered software that automatically turned information like a phone number into a tappable link. Samsung was found to have infringed both patents. The ruling was overturned almost two years later, and then reinstated once again less than a year after that. From there, Samsung appealed to the Supreme Court, which is where the case met its end today. Naturally, Samsung isn't pleased with the outcome. "Our argument was supported by many who believed that the Court should hear the case to reinstate fair standards that promote innovation and prevent abuse of the patent system," a Samsung representative said in a statement. The company also said the ruling would let Apple "unjustly profit" from an invalid patent.
Apple wasn't first to come up with slide to unlock, there was a Microsoft product that had it years before apple stole and it patented it as their own. Hence in some countries the patent is been voided.
I'm with Apple with the slide-to-unlock idea. AFAIK I never saw that before.
For the "quick link" patent, that seems insane to me. The patent should never have been awarded in the first place, it's something that's obvious to anyone who has learned HTML.
#DeleteFacebook
Anything that is obvious and can be replicated by someone skilled in the art is not valid. The rules say this, but they are ignored the by morons who run the system and gain prestige/profit while hurting actual innovation. Maybe the Trumpenfuhrer will fix this too as part of draining the swamp.
Apple invented many of the features in smartphones that we take for granted. Just think back to the piles of shit the carriers foisted upon us prior to the release of the first iPhone. Jesus. Thankfully those days are behind us. If if means we have to credit Apple and Steve Jobs with those features, so be it. Just because they are obvious in our enlightened post-iPhone days doesn't mean they were obvious (nor trivial) back in the pre-iPhone days.
Apple's cash reserve is $250 billion or so.
And it probably cost both companies the same amount as the award to litigate this.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
What language is this??
Anything that is obvious and can be replicated by someone skilled in the art is not valid. The rules say this, but they are ignored the by morons who run the system and gain prestige/profit while hurting actual innovation.
It is a system of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers; and it is working as designed.
now I have to replace all my door slider locks.
The lack of cut & paste is a specific example of a lack of innovation on a past Apple device. It's the 2007 equivalent of not having a headphone jack.
Simple. Apple = USA, Samsung = South Korea. Even though Apple uses every trick in the book (and probably beyond that) to avoid paying astronomic amounts of taxes in the USA (and elsewhere).
The whole patent process is stupid when things like slide to unlock get such a high validation. Easy to think of easy to duplicate the functionality of. Innovation value near zero, despite the practical use.
For the dumb fucks defending Apple and their glorious victory, please realise that this is just yet another win for the corpocracy.
$120 million dollars for slide to unlock???
$120 MILLION dollars? For one shitty shitty little miscellaneous "feature" that provides ZERO innovation?
If you contain even a snifter of intelligence you'll realise that this outcome just cements the absolute power these big, shitty corporations have over us small time developers.
Just try to develop an app that doesn't fall foul of the hundreds of thousands of bullshit software and design patents that these corporations pump out. It's absolutely impossible.
Fucking depressing.
From the 2 Billion that apple originally wanted for their bullshit "thermonuclear war" to "winning" 120 Million.
Pocket change for Samsung.
I hope the thief jobs is having a particularly bad day in hell when he hears this news.
Apple won on that case against Samsung in one (albeit rich and populous) country out of almost 200. Does it mean Samsung is right in the others? Why isn't Apple suing everywhere?
The real question is why is the USA patent system so broken that a case like this can be won by Apple.
Seriously, Apple took another company to court because it put a SLIDE TO UNLOCK feature on a phone.
Intellectual property is a farce. Patents destroy innovation and consumers suffer the most by all the lost competition.
What a laughable excuse for a country...
How can can something so ridiculous be real? Do they have separate patents for right-to-left sliding? Or top-to-bottom? Bottom-to-top? Maybe we can patent diagonal sliding - 4 separate patents! 30-degree sliding? Even Douglas Adams could not have thought of sillier people. Patents used to be about real things - like toasters, and light bulbs.
On the single most fucking obvious way possible to unlock with a touch screen. How the fuck else are you supposed to do it?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
And in other important news, the sun rose this morning.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
it wasnt Samsung that innovated this SLIDE UNLOCK feature but every bit of design was a payed-to-order model from whomever was received to the purchase.
Similarly, do customers of Apple pay for features, can they share the penalty when Apple is sued for violating a copyright or patent?
If Chuck Norris enters BURGER KING and orders a Big Mac, does MCDONALDS sue Chuck Norris for counterfeiting?
oh where is Mr. Vote-With-Your-Dollars (Richard Stallman) to answer these revolutionary communist questions?
Apple re-invented regular expressions also? Patents are supposed to be "non-obvious" to practitioners in the field. A judge and/or patent reviewer somewhere is incompetent or bribed. Fire their ass!
Table-ized A.I.