Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit in the US

[QuadCityImages]

I doubt LCD tvs looked like modern ones in the '70s. So what if whoever (Pioneer?) made the first "modern flatscreen" in the 90's had patented the whole black, fairly thin bezel, single-arm stand with a wide base look of a current TV. Would that make sense, or would that just be an obvious direction the TV industry was going?

I just have a problem with some of these "look and feel" patents that aren't actually on a technology itself. The idea of a rectangular touchscreen phone with rounded corners being proprietary... I just can't understand how anyone would think that's ok.

[HOOT]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

I just have a problem with some of these "look and feel" patents that aren't actually on a technology itself. The idea of a rectangular touchscreen phone with rounded corners being proprietary... I just can't understand how anyone would think that's ok.

The look and feel are about trademark protection as well. Even the most simplest designs (look and feel) of BIC lighters are protected because when you see that design you think BIC. It's obvious that Samsung copied the iPhone look knowing it would be to their advantage. Offer a iPhone look at a Samsung price and steal the customers who want the iPhone but don't want to spend the money. Maybe if they didn't copy the look their marketshare isn't what it is today giving Apple the right to protect that, else what is the point of R&D?

[QuadCityImages]

I'm with you when it comes to the software stuff they did, because I really think TouchWiz was trying to look as iOS-y as possible, but I just don't see some of the hardware stuff Apple is being granted. I mean, there is literally language making claims to black bezeled rectangles with rounded corners. What else would a touchscreen phone look like? Sharp corners to tear your pockets and stab your leg? Pyramid power? Sandpaper-textured screen?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

I'm with you when it comes to the software stuff they did, because I really think TouchWiz was trying to look as iOS-y as possible, but I just don't see some of the hardware stuff Apple is being granted. I mean, there is literally language making claims to black bezeled rectangles with rounded corners. What else would a touchscreen phone look like? Sharp corners to tear your pockets and stab your leg? Pyramid power? Sandpaper-textured screen?

The counterpoint to the argument would be Fender guitars, who did not enforce trade dress on the Stratocaster design - by the time they decided to litigate, there were hundreds if not thousands of copies of the iconic stratocaster design, and the judge literally dismissed the case because a strat silhouette was being used in dictionaries to illustrate the entry for "electric guitar" - rightly or wrongly, it became synonymous with electric guitars, and not the Fender name or brand.

I'm not weighing in one way or the other on the appearance aspect of the lawsuit other than to say its more subtle than is being made out in a lot of posts here - that there are Samsung phones that are very, very close looking to the iPhone should not be up for debate because there clearly are. There are others that don't look like an iPhone at all, and I don't think they were involved in those aspects of the lawsuit.

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame Apple for taking this course. I'm commenting on the fact that this is a very socially unoptimal outcome and that anyone who doesn't think so must be an Apple shareholder.

Sure there needs to be some protection of IP but this is ridiculous. Should we all be paying licensing fees for brake pedals, steering wheels, rear view mirrors to henry ford or whomever could have patented them?

The allegory is actually spot on. Mobile computing is another wave of incredible innovation much like the personal vehicle was a hundred years ago.

I think you might be overstating the degree of impact here, but I agree that the law is struggling to keep up with the way technology has developed and the practicalities of its use.

My comment was largely directed to the idea that somehow Apple is the bad guy here, when the reality is that Apple is acting the exact same way that any entity in its position would have.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

I doubt LCD tvs looked like modern ones in the '70s. So what if whoever (Pioneer?) made the first "modern flatscreen" in the 90's had patented the whole black, fairly thin bezel, single-arm stand with a wide base look of a current TV. Would that make sense, or would that just be an obvious direction the TV industry was going?

I just have a problem with some of these "look and feel" patents that aren't actually on a technology itself. The idea of a rectangular touchscreen phone with rounded corners being proprietary... I just can't understand how anyone would think that's ok.

Look and feel only goes part of the way in Apple's argument, I believe Apple would have had a much harder time proving damage if the the entire package that Samsung put out was not almost exactly the same.



How anyone can look at this picture and say that Samsung did not wilfully go and copy all of the key design elements (software and hardware) of the iPhone is beyond me.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by valo403

I think you might be overstating the degree of impact here, but I agree that the law is struggling to keep up with the way technology has developed and the practicalities of its use.

My comment was largely directed to the idea that somehow Apple is the bad guy here, when the reality is that Apple is acting the exact same way that any entity in its position would have.

While I agree that that perhaps the position may have in played a part in how a company behaves, there certainly are companies that do not act this way given a similar market position in their respective markets. With the exception of Microsoft, Apple is the most litigious company in tech history at the moment. They've sued every competitor at this point except ZTE, Huawei and Sony. ZTE and Huawei are both state-owned so the potential for problems with their operations in China would be great. I'm not sure about Sony though.

Apple is using the courts as a anti-competitive market exclusion tool by seeking injunctions in their cases while Microsoft at times could be view as greedy (afterall they extracted over $9billion in 26 different offensive lawsuits), they didn't seek consistent outright bans on competing products. Other companies can't even negotiate either as the terms offered are neither fair nor reasonable. It's either accept our terms or face injunctive lawsuit. A lot of patents being used for are also look and feel non-essential "design" patents which until now were considered low-value.

What Apple is doing with their behaviour is pretending they have an exclusive right on innovation. While I do agree yes they did create the first user-friendly, attractive and accessible smartphone, they are far from the first. They taken the position that, "It's okay for us to copy others but when others copy us we will destroy them any way we can". It's can be viewed as a very hypocritical attitude which completely discounts the work of others before as well as preventing the work of others going forward. All this coupled with Apple's self-righteous and smug behaviour/statements tend to rub a whole lot of people the wrong way.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

How anyone can look at this picture and say that Samsung did not wilfully go and copy all of the key design elements (software and hardware) of the iPhone is beyond me.

A lot of us aren't denying that. Contention is though while Samsung might have copied Apple, Apple probably shouldn't have been able to patent something like this.

Use industrial design protections vs. patent?

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

A lot of us aren't denying that. Contention is though while Samsung might have copied Apple, Apple probably shouldn't have been able to patent something like this.

Use industrial design protections vs. patent?

So the contention is that Samsung knew this was protected design, but went ahead and breached it in any case? Then they knew that this was going to be litigated in the end if they didn't pay the license fees.

There is an open period when anyone can contest the patent before it is granted, how come Samsung didn't raise hell then?

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

Look and feel only goes part of the way in Apple's argument, I believe Apple would have had a much harder time proving damage if the the entire package that Samsung put out was not almost exactly the same.



How anyone can look at this picture and say that Samsung did not wilfully go and copy all of the key design elements (software and hardware) of the iPhone is beyond me.

the middle picture has the Galaxy S app drawer open, not the homescreen. it's crap like that that makes me mad, Apple is deliberately misleading the courts

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

There is an open period when anyone can contest the patent before it is granted, how come Samsung didn't raise hell then?

While the patent application is being reviewed it can be contested but, correct me if I wrong (from what I remember from one legal course I took 8 years ago), I believe you can't really see the full patent until the entire application is published after it has been approved (otherwise giving away everything before protection is there). Prior art will have to be submitted during this period to try to render the patent obvious. You have to specify their patent specific enough to render it invalid. A little hard to contest for design patents without full view of the application.

You can contest it by filing prior art ahead of time, but at the moment there is a presumption of correctness. As I posted before, USPTO granted patents are only correctly granted 20% of the time by USPTO numbers.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

the middle picture has the Galaxy S app drawer open, not the homescreen. it's crap like that that makes me mad, Apple is deliberately misleading the courts

The Apple patent is not for the home screen it is for: "D627,790 (the “’D790 patent") Graphical User Interface For a Display Screen or Portion Thereof"

The Apple design patents cover the many famous ornamental features of Apple’s devices, such as the flat black face, metallic bezel, and the distinctive matrix of application icons.

http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/11041...gcomplaint.pdf

[valo403]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

While I agree that that perhaps the position may have in played a part in how a company behaves, there certainly are companies that do not act this way given a similar market position in their respective markets. With the exception of Microsoft, Apple is the most litigious company in tech history at the moment. They've sued every competitor at this point except ZTE, Huawei and Sony. ZTE and Huawei are both state-owned so the potential for problems with their operations in China would be great. I'm not sure about Sony though.

Apple is using the courts as a anti-competitive market exclusion tool by seeking injunctions in their cases while Microsoft at times could be view as greedy (afterall they extracted over $9billion in 26 different offensive lawsuits), they didn't seek consistent outright bans on competing products. Other companies can't even negotiate either as the terms offered are neither fair nor reasonable. It's either accept our terms or face injunctive lawsuit. A lot of patents being used for are also look and feel non-essential "design" patents which until now were considered low-value.

What Apple is doing with their behaviour is pretending they have an exclusive right on innovation. While I do agree yes they did create the first user-friendly, attractive and accessible smartphone, they are far from the first. They taken the position that, "It's okay for us to copy others but when others copy us we will destroy them any way we can". It's can be viewed as a very hypocritical attitude which completely discounts the work of others before as well as preventing the work of others going forward. All this coupled with Apple's self-righteous and smug behaviour/statements tend to rub a whole lot of people the wrong way.

Other companies simply don't have the same market positioning as Apple does. They're doing exactly what they should be doing.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

While the patent application is being reviewed it can be contested but, correct me if I wrong (from what I remember from one legal course I took 8 years ago), I believe you can't really see the full patent until the entire application is published after it has been approved (otherwise giving away everything before protection is there). Prior art will have to be submitted during this period to try to render the patent obvious. You have to specify their patent specific enough to render it invalid. A little hard to contest for design patents without full view of the application.

You can contest it by filing prior art ahead of time, but at the moment there is a presumption of correctness. As I posted before, USPTO granted patents are only correctly granted 20% of the time by USPTO numbers.

1. You can also contest it after by filing prior art that was not considered during the patent process or

2. You can just build the patented device and hope a) you can contest the patent when suit is filed for infringement b) just hope that the patent holder doesn't sue

Samsung obviously took path 2

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_Pate...sting_a_patent

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

The Apple patent is not for the home screen it is for: "D627,790 (the “’D790 patent") Graphical User Interface For a Display Screen or Portion Thereof"



http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/11041...gcomplaint.pdf

wow the patent is even stupider than i thought then. Windows has had a "distinctive matrix of application icons" (aka your desktop) for decades now

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

The Apple patent is not for the home screen it is for: "D627,790 (the “’D790 patent") Graphical User Interface For a Display Screen or Portion Thereof"

http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/11041...gcomplaint.pdf

Yes, problem is they've managed to slip in a lot of elements of basic UI design that have existed for years into that patent along with the other stuff. This type of behaviour will only get worse with the proposed patent reform "first to file" vs. "first to invent"

Originally Posted by oilyfan

1. You can also contest it after by filing prior art that was not considered during the patent process or

2. You can just build the patented device and hope a) you can contest the patent when suit is filed for infringement b) just hope that the patent holder doesn't sue

Samsung obviously took path 2

Yep. Really what they should have done is invalidated the things first. Samsung has been punished for it with this lawsuit. Though excessively so given that these were mostly design patents not essential patents and also the questionable validity of some of the patents themselves.

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

wow the patent is even stupider than i thought then. Windows has had a "distinctive matrix of application icons" (aka your desktop) for decades now

Not on a mobile phone

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

wow the patent is even stupider than i thought then. Windows has had a "distinctive matrix of application icons" (aka your desktop) for decades now

Originally Posted by oilyfan

Not on a mobile phone

This is ridiculous though. Of course the icons are in a grid...how can you even patent that? Every phone has had that for at least a decade now, and even on the blackberry the icons were laid out in a grid. How that could be viewed as infringing on anything proprietary is just flabbergasting.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Slava

This is ridiculous though. Of course the icons are in a grid...how can you even patent that? Every phone has had that for at least a decade now, and even on the blackberry the icons were laid out in a grid. How that could be viewed as infringing on anything proprietary is just flabbergasting.

That is exactly why the patent system is broken at the moment, it allows for companies to recombine previous ideas, tack on a new stipulation and then sue for the the previous idea. It allows for people to take a mathematical formula, assign the columns a name and patent said item. If no one is actually looking to contest it since there are 4000 patents granted a day, this gets granted and someone now owns that formula.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

Not on a mobile phone

Actually yes, WinMo did first. MS didn't contest as they didn't want to jeopardize their cross licensing agreement.