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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 invented many of the features in smartphones that we take for granted.
Like Cut & Paste. Oh wait, the first iPhone lacked cut & paste which was present on Windows Mobile, PalmOS, and other phones that predate the iPhone.
Ok. Well Apple surly invented having apps on your phone. Because the first iPhone had the App Store. Oh wait, the initial iPhone did not allow native apps to be installed on the phone, only browser-based apps that required the phone to be online were permitted. Yet feature phones from Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Nokia, RIM and others had carrier-oriented app stores for ring tones and in some cases applications. And of course there were several third party PalmOS markets for Treo phones.
Apple's key innovation is branding of the industrial design. This is an old play by Apple, they did this with the both trademark and copyright litigation against other GUI vendors for copying their Macintosh GUI in the 80's. That Apple is using the patent system is hardly a different tack than the use of other legal loopholes to squelch competitors.
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.
That's not what the rule says, though. The AC grandparent is confusing two different things, and even has one of them backwards. Yes, anything that's obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art is invalid. But a patent is invalid if it can't be replicated by someone skilled in the art. Specifically, to be valid under 35 USC 112, a patent must contain a clear description that is "sufficient to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention." In other words, the patented invention has to be able to be replicated to be valid.
And that something can be replicated isn't proof that it's obvious. The actual rules are crafted to avoid hindsight, because everything looks obvious in hindsight. And given that the patent has to describe how to make and use the invention per the above, simply reading the patent opens you up to finding it obvious in hindsight. So instead, to show that the patent is obvious, the patent office has to show that each and every element in the claims can be found in one or more prior art references, and that it wouldn't require undue experimentation to combine them for one of skill in the art. Like, peanut butter exists, jelly exists, they're easy to combine on bread, so therefore peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are obvious.
Now, I haven't looked into this patent or what's in the prior art, so I can't say whether it's obvious or not. It sure seems like a simple idea, but if it was obvious, why wasn't Samsung using it before Apple? And why did they copy it afterwards? It must have been commercially valuable for them to copy it, since they wouldn't have done so otherwise; and if it was commercially valuable and obvious, they would have done it earlier, since hey, free money. So maybe it wasn't obvious until Apple did it.