Well I don't really understand why people are saying Samsung is reeling from the decision. We all know they will appeal, and even if the ban is granted for the 8 devices, its not that big of a hit. The S3 is still available to buy.
Sure, they have to shell out a billion or so in cash, but they have reserves. If they did indeed intentionally copy Apple....well damn, mission accomplished and Apple got ripped off.
And Motorola Mobile aka Google is suing Apple (2 cases - one of which a court rules Apple did not violate 3 patents but a 4th is under further review; the other is for 7 more patents that Apple and Motorola haven't been able to agree to licensing terms).
in South Korea Samsung has sued Apple for violating 2 patents, Apple has sued Samsung for 1.
And it is happening in the EU.
It is one heck of a mess and I can't see any silver bullet solutions anytime soon.
I think a company's best bet is to be super secretive, launch with as much buzz as you can, make lots of money while the competition tries to catch up, then rinse and repeat (exactly what apple has been doing). The litigation process is a suckers bet, simply trying to create a chilling effect to slow down the competitors.
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As yes hide behind the courts argument. What if you used your brain. Do you think showing icons in a grid is a worthy patent?
What's with the hostility? Christ.
How about you use your brain and grasp the idea that there's far more to it than simply showing icons in a grid. For some reason everyone here wants to pretend that there's no nuance or subtlety involved in a matter that is pretty much based solely around that.
I don't think that I need to tell you that sometimes the courts make the wrong call!
I don't disagree, but people keep arguing about what they think the answer should be when the reality is that that doesn't matter. I don't think jay walking should result in a ticket, but the law says otherwise so there's not much I can do should I get a ticket for it. This may well be something where the ruling is wrong, or less than ideal, but at the end of the day the courts are dictating the landscape, not people on a message board arguing over the merits of a grid design.
How about you use your brain and grasp the idea that there's far more to it than simply showing icons in a grid. For some reason everyone here wants to pretend that there's no nuance or subtlety involved in a matter that is pretty much based solely around that.
I with you Valo. Apple essentially blew open the smartphone market place, designed a mobile device that increased data usage on the cell phone network exponentially.
They did this by innovation, people want to argue that they built it on previous innovation but it is hard to argue that they made a quantum leap and essentially created the space that Android, and its proxy Samsung, is now making huge inroads into. And all the power to them, I love the fact that Apple has competition, and as I said before the SIII looks to be a great phone. But to negate the fact that Android and Samsung did this on the back of Apple is asinine. There was overwhelming opinion before the iPhone came out that the design is poor, that no one was going to use an all touch interface and it was going to be a bust.
Now reductionist history is that this was the "natural" evolution of the design and what Apple did was nothing special, this is nothing but Android fanboy revisionism.
Last edited by oilyfan; 08-28-2012 at 03:19 PM.
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But to negate the fact that Android and Samsung did this on the back of Apple is asinine. There was overwhelming opinion before the iPhone came out that the design is poor, that no one was going to use an all touch interface and it was going to be a bust.
Now reductionist history is that this was the "natural" evolution of the design and what Apple did was nothing special, this is nothing but Android fanboy revisionism.
Steve Ballmer is always amusing - I loved his recent "Megaman" as well.
There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.
That's embarrassing. Ballmer should be forced to step down for that comment alone. Talk about freaking clueless, a cow standing on the tracks with a freight train coming right at him.
What really made the smart phone possible was the reduction in the cost of data.
The whole internet that looks like the internet was just a matter of time when data speed and cost caught up. Apple really should be praised for market timing. Being the first one allowed them to sweep up market share quickly.
If you think about it, $1B to become 2nd biggest smartphone company in the world is nothing.
The S3 won't be challenged, nor will any other future Samsung products. Most of the phones in question aren't that popular, outside of certain variations of the S2, so its really not that bad of a hit. Samsung has shown that they can compete or blow away Apple with the S3 without infringing on any patents, so that is a plus too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
But it shouldn't allow them to stifle competition through litigation because others have caught up or possibly surpassed them.
So is the decision nothing as you say earlier in the thread or stifling competition as you say here? I tend to agree with your earlier statement that it's pretty negligible and the litigation game is one that all the companies are playing. If anything, I'm guessing that it will just make companies look at more and different varied ideas at the end of the day, things/phones will change and evolve more as time goes on.
Or Samsung is showing that unlike Apple, they aren't just a bunch of smug, arrogant pricks, rather, they actually have a pretty good sense of humour.
I've been reading this thread and I wonder when people say things like this. Do Apple employees/representatives truly give you (people) the impression that they and their company is "smug and full of arrogant pricks"? Or is it a function of their success in this particular judgment, the size of their company/profit margins? I'm not necessarily calling people in the thread fanboys, but it seems like so many people pick sides and get crazy emotional about the whole thing. The cell phone space is turning into the console vitriol of XBOX vs. PS3 vs. PC. It is almost like it is a personal offense to people when one company or another does well/poorly. Like a sports team or something.
Any complaint that I've heard about Apple, you can apply to Samsung and vice versa. Samsung has the same overseas working conditions, market success, patent and lawsuit games, sneaking court tactics, heck even government bribery and corruption scandals.
The actions of Apple in this particular litigation seems to make business sense. It is in their interest to do what they did given the business/patent landscape that exists. Samsung would do the exact same as Apple did I would imagine. And if Samsung won this court battle, I would say the same again for both sides.
Now to be fair, if the complaint is that Apple or Android fanboys are smug and arrogant pricks so poop on them and their respective camps - then we've got an amusing self fulfilling/perpetual situation here.
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So is the decision nothing as you say earlier in the thread or stifling competition as you say here? I tend to agree with your earlier statement that it's pretty negligible and the litigation game is one that all the companies are playing. If anything, I'm guessing that it will just make companies look at more and different varied ideas at the end of the day, things/phones will change and evolve more as time goes on.
Well I still don't agree that the patents should be valid in the first place or that this should have gone to trial, but IF the judge rules that Samsung has to pay out $1B to Apple, in the long-run its really not that much to pay to become 2nd biggest smartphone maker.
And yes I think Apple is trying to stifle competition by taking so many companies to trial.
Well I still don't agree that the patents should be valid in the first place or that this should have gone to trial, but IF the judge rules that Samsung has to pay out $1B to Apple, in the long-run its really not that much to pay to become 2nd biggest smartphone maker.
And yes I think Apple is trying to stifle competition by taking so many companies to trial.
Right, so it makes/made business sense for Samsung to have acted the way they did - however you want to call it (copying/being inspired/whatever).
It also makes sense for Apple to act they way they are for business as well. If the roles were reversed, Samsung had better do the same damn thing or I wouldn't be happy with them if I were a shareholder.
Anyways, just me thinking out loud - don't mind me.
I certainly think that Samsung looked at what Apple was doing and wanted to model their 'smartphone' business after them in certain ways. But then again every single smartphone maker did that after the iPhone became so successful.
Everyone looks at their competition, or who is being successful and tries to model their business around some of this qualities.
That being said, while there might be 'some' patents that Samsung is a bit sketchy with, on the big scale I don't agree that it is $1B worth.
But if it is.....I don't think Samsung loses that much. It would be much worse if ANY current phone would be in question, but none really are.
Groklaw updated based on the interview the guy gave to Bloomberg. I'll quote the relevant parts.
Quote:
Update 5: The foreman has now given an interview with Bloomberg News, which seemed to be giving him an opportunity to answer some of the above criticisms, among others. It's a video on YouTube, and in discussing the first patent on the list, they got into a discussion about the prior art that was presented at trial. Here's why they discounted it:
The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there.
That isn't disqualifying for prior art.
My favorite comment on Hacker News about this video and the foreman's claims, from ktizo:
I think he may have a valid point. Perhaps apple have invented some new numbers, like eleventy-four, that don't fit into the old computers properly due to magic and stuff.
He's kidding around, of course. By the way, hacker means something good to programmers. Crackers are the bad guys.
The foreman says that the jury started out in a stalemate, because some on the jury were not clear how prior art can invalidate a patent. At that point, he thought it was going Samsung's way. So he went home and had an aha moment. He felt he could defend it if it was his patent. So he explained it all to the jury. And that turned the tide. But if he told them that interchangeability was a requirement for prior art, he goofed big time.
Here is the jury instruction given on what is prior art, on page 44 of the instructions PDF, which you can find here:
FINAL JURY INSTRUCTION NO. 31
UTILITY PATENTS—ANTICIPATION
A utility patent claim is invalid if the claimed invention is not new. For the claim to be invalid because it is not new, all of its requirements must have existed in a single device or method that predates the claimed invention, or must have been described in a single previous publication or patent that predates the claimed invention. In patent law, these previous devices, methods, publications or patents are called “prior art references.” If a patent claim is not new we say it is “anticipated” by a prior art reference.
The description in the written reference does not have to be in the same words as the claim, but all of the requirements of the claim must be there, either stated or necessarily implied, so that someone of ordinary skill in the field looking at that one reference would be able to make and use the claimed invention.
Here is a list of the ways that either party can show that a patent claim was not new:
– If the claimed invention was already publicly known or publicly used by others in the United States before the date of conception of the claimed invention;
– If the claimed invention was already patented or described in a printed publication anywhere in the world before the date of conception of the claimed invention. A reference is a “printed publication” if it is accessible to those interested in the field, even if it is difficult to find;
– If the claimed invention was already made by someone else in the United States before the date of conception of the claimed invention, if that other person had not abandoned the invention or kept it secret;
If the patent holder and the alleged infringer dispute who is a first inventor, the person who first conceived of the claimed invention and first reduced it to practice is the first inventor. If one person conceived of the claimed invention first, but reduced to practice second, that person is the first inventor only if that person (a) began to reduce the claimed invention to practice before the other party conceived of it, and (b) continued to work diligently to reduce it to practice. A claimed invention is “reduced to practice” when it has been tested sufficiently to show that it will work for its intended purpose or when it is fully described in a patent application filed with the PTO.
– If the claimed invention was already described in another issued U.S. patent or published U.S. patent application that was based on a patent application filed before the patent holder’s application filing date or the date of conception of the claimed invention.
Since certain of them are in dispute, you must determine dates of conception for the claimed inventions and prior inventions. Conception is the mental part of an inventive act and is proven when the invention is shown in its complete form by drawings, disclosure to another, or other forms of evidence presented at trial.
Did you notice that prior art can be a piece of paper describing the invention. It doesn't have to run on any processor.
This was regarding what the foreman in the video calls the '460 patent, but there was no such patent in the case. Here's the Amended Jury Verdict [PDF] form, so you can see for yourself. You'll find the list on page 9. That mistake in speaking makes it impossible to understand what he is referring to, so as to check it. He also says it was the first one on the list, though, and that would be the '381 patent [PDF], "List Scrolling and Document Translation, Scaling and Rotation on a Touch-Screen Display", or the bounce-back patent. The prior art Samsung listed in its trial brief included: the Tablecloth program installed on the DiamondTouch system developed by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory ("MERL"), the LaunchTile and XNav programs developed by Dr. Benjamin Bederson, and International Publication Number WO 03/081458.
I don't know about the rest, but the Tablecloth system was demonstrated at trial by Adam Bogue.
Another witness, Benjamin Bederson, presented as prior art his Launch Tile invention, a system of icon tiles in an interfact allowing users to zoom in and out. It had a snapback feature. They don't count as prior art because you can't run Apple software on them? This is, to me, the biggest goof of them all.
Feel good story of the day goes to Samsung Canada. Here’s the deal: Shane is a loyal Samsung user. He has a Galaxy S, and Samsung laptop, and a Samsung LCDTV. Missing from his collection was the recently released Galaxy S III. To get the attention of Samsung Canada he took to Facebook and requested a free GS3, along with drawing them a cartoon dragon. Of course, Samsung Canada reps said they couldn’t give him a complimentary GS3 as they would “go under as a company” if they did this for everyone. However, in return, they did draw a kangaroo on a tricycle. This thread on Facebook apparently went viral and received some much needed press.
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I've been reading this thread and I wonder when people say things like this. Do Apple employees/representatives truly give you (people) the impression that they and their company is "smug and full of arrogant pricks"? Or is it a function of their success in this particular judgment, the size of their company/profit margins? I'm not necessarily calling people in the thread fanboys, but it seems like so many people pick sides and get crazy emotional about the whole thing. The cell phone space is turning into the console vitriol of XBOX vs. PS3 vs. PC. It is almost like it is a personal offense to people when one company or another does well/poorly. Like a sports team or something.
Any complaint that I've heard about Apple, you can apply to Samsung and vice versa. Samsung has the same overseas working conditions, market success, patent and lawsuit games, sneaking court tactics, heck even government bribery and corruption scandals.
The actions of Apple in this particular litigation seems to make business sense. It is in their interest to do what they did given the business/patent landscape that exists. Samsung would do the exact same as Apple did I would imagine. And if Samsung won this court battle, I would say the same again for both sides.
Now to be fair, if the complaint is that Apple or Android fanboys are smug and arrogant pricks so poop on them and their respective camps - then we've got an amusing self fulfilling/perpetual situation here.
I definitely think there's an arrogance to Apple as a company. And I own a couple iPods so I recognize the quality of the products they make. But these lawsuits are really just Apple trying to hurt the competition not on competitve means, but by using the legal system, which while it is their right, it just comes off as bullying more than anything.
The fanboys make it worse of course, not necessarily because they love their product, because thats fine by me, but how they treat those who don't love Apple. If you don't have an iPhone, its not because you prefer something else, its because you're too cheap, or too stupid, or too out of touch. Android fans don't give me that vibe nearly as much, though they are a bit overzealous in their attacks against Apple. I have no preference, I choose my phone based on whether Telus gives it to me for free.
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This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived at Apple’s headquarters in California. Initially, the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.
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