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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
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.
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.