Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit in the US

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Red

So you have a personal vendetta against Jobs and Apple....figures.

BTW, here is how that quote is interpreted by some.

“Picasso hardly meant that great artists steal popular designs whose original source is known to everyone. What Picasso did mean was that great artists rummage through the great junk heap of lost, bypassed, and forgotten ideas to find the rare jewels, and then incorporate such languishing gems into their own personal artistic legacy.”

Going by your past posting history its not surprising that you would be anything but a blatant fanboy.

Apple has a long history of 'stealing' designs from other companies and improving on them. Half the stuff they patent wasn't even their original idea in the first place so they can take their 'originality' and shove it up their ass.

[Tinordi]

That assumes that hardware costs and market size remain fixed - with hardware costs always decreasing, and the market expanding (at at an enormous pace right now), you can realize sustained, or even increased profits despite a margins decrease. Declining margins are pretty much the norm for the IT hardware business.

The other thing is that the patent licensing is a two way street - the cross-licensing involved by all parties helps to level the field. The parties with more patents obviously come out a bit ahead, since its not a perfect zero-sum game, but this stands to reason since more patents means more spent on R&D (or on acquisitions), so the costs are incurred elsewhere. I suppose we could argue that the cross-licensing model isn't working, and that's why companies are going to court, but with billion dollar settlements being handed out I'm not convinced that is a trend that will continue for long.

Irrelevant.

Hardware costs are just one input cost to the phone. By your logic licensing costs will end up increasing in share for the total cost of the phone. Licensing costs. That means higher costs to consumers regardless of whether hardware costs drop.

Whoops, I saw that Flameon addressed this comment, bang on.

Anyway, what is the social good of licensing costs and do they lead in all to tighter margins which is what we as consumers should all want. I would argue that they entrench big firms further who then have significant influence over the price of phones. So long as this market dynamic happens it's bad for consumers.

Sometimes I think people in this thread speak from the position of Apple shareholders of whom those interests are opposed to the interests of consumers.

[Azure]

Another gem of a quote from the jury foreman.

“When I got in this case and I started looking at these patents I considered: ‘If this was my patent and I was accused, could I defend it?’” Hogan explained. On the night of Aug. 22, after closing arguments, “a light bulb went on in my head,” he said. “I thought, I need to do this for all of them.”

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?s...25390&repost=1

So he made a decision based on his own personal viewpoint and not on the evidence before him. He also talked about skipping evidence, and had a huge influence on the rest of the jury.

Geez.

[Azure]

Article from CNET talking about the Groklaw article and how the verdict could be struck down.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57...y-not-be-safe/

In a searingly chilly analysis, Groklaw points to apparently simple facts that suggest anything from boredom to power intoxication.

The jury, for example, found that one Samsung device didn't infringe Apple's patent and yet they awarded Apple $2 million for inducement. This was a slightly odd award, given that it's quite hard to induce someone to do something illegal when it isn't, in fact, illegal.

Then there was the deeply confident statements of the jury foreman, retired engineer and patent holder Velvin Hogan. He reportedly told the court that the jurors had filled out all of the 700-question form without needing to read the jury instructions.

There's nothing wiser than a clever engineer, but might this not smack of an excess of confidence?

Indeed, the blog sounded so disturbed that its authors would have traded their Bentleys in for bicycles: "Here's the thing, ladies and gentlemen of the Apple v. Samsung jury: It would take me more than three days to understand all the terms in the verdict! Much less come to a legally binding decision on all of these separate issues. Did you guys just flip a coin?"

Then there's this rather hulkily intellectual idea that foreman Hogan expressed to Reuters: "We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist. We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."

But, as Groklaw pointed out, the award of damages isn't apparently in the law to represent three slaps of the headmaster's cane on the infringer's buttocks. It's there to compensate for losses.

[QuadCityImages]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Apple isn't getting rid of the competition through these lawsuits though - look at the Note and Note 10.1 - interesting and differentiated products. Same with the Nexus 7, Microsoft's offerings

The Note and Note 10.1 are rectangular with rounded corners. So is the Nexus 7, and most of the Windows Phones not made by Nokia. I'm sure all of these things are next on the Apple target list.

[Red]

Originally Posted by Azure

Going by your past posting history its not surprising that you would be anything but a blatant fanboy.

Apple has a long history of 'stealing' designs from other companies and improving on them. Half the stuff they patent wasn't even their original idea in the first place so they can take their 'originality' and shove it up their ass.

Wow, relax. Don't worry. I am sure you will still be able to buy the cheap POS copies somehow.

And good thing we have your objectivity in place.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

The Note and Note 10.1 are rectangular with rounded corners. So is the Nexus 7, and most of the Windows Phones not made by Nokia. I'm sure all of these things are next on the Apple target list.

And they have pinch to zoom and multi-touch too.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Red

Wow, relax. Don't worry. I am sure you will still be able to buy the cheap POS copies somehow.

And good thing we have your objectivity in place.

Seriously? I really wouldn't be calling something a POS while attacking someone else's objectivity. You aren't making a strong case for your own credibility.

[FanIn80]

EXHIBIT A:

(taken from Samsung's internal design-team documentation)





Link to full Samsung internal document


EXHIBIT B:




EXHIBIT C:




EXHIBIT D:

“Certain actors at the highest level at Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) gave orders to the sub-entities to actually copy,” Hogan said. “So the whole thing hinges on whether you think Samsung was actually copying. The thing that did it for us was when we saw the memo from Google telling Samsung to back away from the Apple design.”

“The entity that had to do that actually didn’t back away,” said the 67-year-old San Jose resident.

The Samsung e-mails presented as evidence during the trial included a Feb. 16, 2010, internal message describing minutes from a design meeting that was sent to “pass along only a few comments from Senior Designer Cho who went into the Google meeting yesterday,” according to the message.

“Since it is too similar to Apple, make it noticeably different starting with the front side,” according to the message, referring to one of Samsung’s tablets.

A second e-mail, dated Feb. 22, 2010, was sent to more than 30 Samsung employees.

“I am notifying you of the team leader’s directives from the executives’ meeting yesterday,” the message begins. The sixth item on the list addresses a need to “respond to the issue of design similarity for the S series,” which Samsung designer Kim Jin Soo testified was a reference to the company’s S series of smartphones.

“Google is demanding distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad,” according to the e-mail. “Consider design distinguishability for the items demanded by Google while maintaining the current design, and in regards to each carrier’s demands.”

EXHIBIT E:

This thread. When all that's left is an attempt to dissect and discredit the deliberation process, it can only be taken as a sign that the evidence itself is too insurmountable to argue against.

[Kerplunk]

Wait, they burned through all of those questions in 3 days? Seriously? I quickly glanced at the instructions and the question sheet and I think it would take 3 days just to understand them, never mind render a decision. Some of the Samsung patents claims probably could have been upheld too, from my extremely quick look at it. Would probably take a week+ to hack away at all of this.

The thing that concerns me is that many of the design principles that seem to be at issue here (tap to zoom, scrolling, layouts, etc.) are considered design standards, and are being taught as such. The user is so used to them that giving different methods of interaction usually makes the product worse. Are they expecting designers/developers to come up with different, often inferior, interaction modes for every single product we create, for fear of patent infringement? Hard to say if this will encourage innovation, or kill it.

[Thor]

We have two mac fanboys at work, our office of about 12 IT people were chatting about the ramifications of this trial and how absurd it all is.

These 2 mac fanboys acted like children around grown ups, saying stuff like haha you PC guys all mad?? Yeah must suck using crappy samsung, get the real thing instead...

There was a great documentary show on apple fanboy syndrome which tied its followers to a religious group mentality, the savior being Steve Jobs of whom legends are made from, whom can do no wrong, whom is put on a pedestal.. Even the evil corporate empire of Microsoft cast as the villain.

Just so tired of talking to people like this and seeing their posts on FB, a great number of my family and friends own ipads, ipods, iphones, and many own other non apple stuff. What none of them have in common with mac fanboys is simple they are not children or cult followers but normal people who don't obsess over a brand like its something worth worshiping.

[Azure]

The hell of it is I own Apple products too. Had the iPod Touch for the longest time, and now use a 80GB iPod. There simply is nothing better. The iPhone is also a great product, and I can see why people like it. I even admit that Android had a long way to go before they could get to being on par with the iPhone and iOS. I think 4.0.4 does that, and the S2 and S3 are great phones.

Competition brought us here. Sadly I think Apple is realizing just how dominating Samsung has become so they're trying to slow them down through litigation and not actually coming up with a phone better than the S3.

[bomber317]

Originally Posted by Thor

These 2 mac fanboys acted like children around grown ups, saying stuff like haha you PC guys all mad?? Yeah must suck using crappy samsung, get the real thing instead...

This goes both ways as well. The amount of subjective posts by a Samsung fanboy here is a bit much.

[Red]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Seriously? I really wouldn't be calling something a POS while attacking someone else's objectivity. You aren't making a strong case for your own credibility.

I don't try to hide my preference of Apple over Samsung so I am ok with that statement. I own both and Samsung's design and materials are nothing to write home about. They are cheaply made plastic devices (not just phones). We used to pay a premium for Sony products because they were built better. We did the same with cars, houses, watches, pants etc. I understand the concept behind you get what you pay for. Samsung is on the lower end of the scale of product quality IMO.

I will pay for quality. But not everyone has to do the same. Not really relevant in this thread.

Point is that Samsung copied the iphone and got fined for it. I don't see how anyone can dispute that.
But I get why they do. To get their toys for less. I can respect that, just like I respect someones preference to buy furniture at WalMart over Bondar's. Your choice.

[Thor]

Well in all industries you copy what works and make it your own, cars, electronics, etc.. Very few industries can copy broad things like "rounded corners" and such nonsense as "tap to zoom in" ..

Allowing patents in such broad terms will destroy future innovation, and is already having an effect on small design firms in software development because the little guys are scared sh*tless about selling anything that might fall under the many many patents huge companies like apple, samsung, sony, ibm, microsoft and everyone with money is doing.

The documentary I posted (which is very short, give it a go) shows how the judges and jury's are way out of touch with the complexities of patent cases, and patent judges that approve patents are dealing with highly complex mathematical patents which only a few handful of people could truly understand.

[QuadCityImages]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

EXHIBIT B:

I think this is pretty good evidence that the iPhone was the obvious next step in the ever-growing-screen trend. Digital cameras went through the same process. I'd like to see a year-by-year breakdown of smartphones, and I would imagine you'd see lcd screens getting bigger every year. Previous phones even had touch screens, as seen above, they just insisted on resistive screens and the stupid stylus. The idea that if Apple hadn't come along we'd still all be using Blackberries is just silly. Someone else would have slapped a capacitive touchscreen over the entire front of a phone and things would be on their way.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by bomber317

This goes both ways as well. The amount of subjective posts by a Samsung fanboy here is a bit much.

There certainly is some, but your not seriously comparing apple fanboyism to samsung or android fanboys?

The intensity of apple fans proclamations about the superiority of the product and fanatical devotion to the brand is intense compared to other brands. In fact I think we can all agree its very much something apple can patent

[Thor]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

I think this is pretty good evidence that the iPhone was the obvious next step in the ever-growing-screen trend. Digital cameras went through the same process. I'd like to see a year-by-year breakdown of smartphones, and I would imagine you'd see lcd screens getting bigger every year. Previous phones even had touch screens, as seen above, they just insisted on resistive screens and the stupid stylus. The idea that if Apple hadn't come along we'd still all be using Blackberries is just silly. Someone else would have slapped a capacitive touchscreen over the entire front of a phone and things would be on their way.

Not to mention does anyone really think rounded corners was invented by apple? How about tap to zoom?

Nope but they sure were aggressive enough to hire lots of software patent lawyers and try to patent all they could.

Not to say apple is the only one, lots of companies are doing this nonsense.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Red

But I get why they do. To get their toys for less. I can respect that, just like I respect someones preference to buy furniture at WalMart over Bondar's. Your choice.

Its too bad furniture companies couldn't patent rounded corners, square pillows, spring mattresses, plastic removable legs for couches....

So much copying going on that these people are getting away with

[Red]

Originally Posted by Thor

Not to mention does anyone really think rounded corners was invented by apple? How about tap to zoom?

Nope but they sure were aggressive enough to hire lots of software patent lawyers and try to patent all they could.

Not to say apple is the only one, lots of companies are doing this nonsense.

How hard is it to build a phone without the patented corners, slide to unlock or tap to zoom etc?
Can't be that hard. Isn't it about having distinctive designs? Why do all these phones look so alike?
It's either that there is no other way to build a phone or they wanted them to resemble the iphone.