Japanese Court Rules Apple Does Not Infringe on Samsung Patents

"Ceeeelebrate good times come on" *pops champagne*, in your face Samsung.

No surprise at all. Apple isn't Samsung afterall.

Darn American companies and their biased American courts!

I can imagine $40 per device would be a big winner for Apple and a very large annoyance for Samsung

How much are we talking in total?

samh004 said:

I can imagine $40 per device would be a big winner for Apple and a very large annoyance for Samsung

How much are we talking in total?

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This I'd also like to know but... a hell of a lot!

keterboy said:

"Ceeeelebrate good times come on" *pops champagne*, in your face Samsung.

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I didn't realize this was like a sports match.

It seems Samsung is losing much more than it's winning in the patent litigation process. Maybe they need to change course and try to settle. Face saving is important and losing in court and blaming the system is not the way to do it, IMO.

Cuban Missles said:

It seems Samsung is losing much more than it's winning in the patent litigation process. Maybe they need to change course and try to settle. Face saving is important and losing in court and blaming the system is not the way to do it, IMO.

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Blaming the system is Verdict 101 Every company releases similar statements - Apple included - when the courts aren't in their favor.

At last no corners were rounded this time.

samcraig said:

Blaming the system is Verdict 101 Every company releases similar statements - Apple included - when the courts aren't in their favor.

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Yes, but my point is that this is not really face saving. Maybe once, but how many losses can be blamed on a system. That is why I was suggesting that it is time to go away from 101 and graduate to 301 -- the art mediation, negotiation and compromise. If the two wanted, they could make a deal an solve all the silliness. The bigger problem is that with each loss, Samsung loses leverage for negotiation, so the long they wait, the worse off their terms will be in any eventual deal.

winston1236 said:

I didn't realize this was like a sports match.

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If only both companies exhibited that level of maturity and sophistication. It's much more like a kindergarden sandpit squabble.

Cuban Missles said:

Yes, but my point is that this is not really face saving. Maybe once, but how many losses can be blamed on a system. That is why I was suggesting that it is time to go away from 101 and graduate to 301 -- the art mediation, negotiation and compromise. If the two wanted, they could make a deal an solve all the silliness. The bigger problem is that with each loss, Samsung loses leverage for negotiation, so the long they wait, the worse off their terms will be in any eventual deal.

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They aren't going to settle. At this point both they (and Apple) are too heavily invested to "cut their losses."

samh004 said:

I can imagine $40 per device would be a big winner for Apple and a very large annoyance for Samsung

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Even Mueller at Foss Patents... who is usually pro-Apple... has said himself, and quoted other experts, that the $40 claim just makes Apple look ridiculous. As he put it not long ago:

"$40 per unit. For five software patents. Give me a break. Reality distortion would be a total understatement for this."

A request like that can backfire, too, if a judge decides that what's good for the goose, is good for the gander... and that Apple should pay more for others' patents.

Recently a similar thing happened when Apple claimed that they could've easily programmed around a patent used in Facetime for just a few million dollars, and therefore should not have to pay a lot to use it.

After they lost the case, they flip-flopped and claimed that not using it would be incredibly disruptive and cost much more. The judge was not amused and increased the royalty rate he had already decided on, because it was clear that Apple suddenly considered the patents to be worth more.

Sometimes Apple's lawyers are their own worst enemy.

kdarling said:

Even Mueller at Foss Patents... who is usually pro-Apple... has said himself, and quoted other experts, that the $40 claim just makes Apple look ridiculous. As he put it not long ago:

"$40 per unit. For five software patents. Give me a break. Reality distortion would be a total understatement for this."

A request like that can backfire, too, if a judge decides that what's good for the goose, is good for the gander... and that Apple should pay more for others' patents.

Recently a similar thing happened when Apple claimed that they could've easily programmed around a patent used in Facetime for just a few million dollars, and therefore should not have to pay a lot to use it.

After they lost the case, they flip-flopped and claimed that not using it would be incredibly disruptive and cost much more. The judge was not amused and increased the royalty rate he had already decided on, because it was clear that Apple suddenly considered the patents to be worth more.

Sometimes Apple's lawyers are their own worst enemy.

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Apple only needs to bring up the RIAA awards against people who deliberately broke copyright laws as an example and the $40 per device sounds incredibly reasonable.

sir1963nz said:

Apple only needs to bring up the RIAA awards against people who deliberately broke copyright laws as an example and the $40 per device sounds incredibly reasonable.

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Yeah, copyright awards can be very high.

However, patent awards are usually calculated differently (*).

They're based on what a reasonable royalty would be, and then enhanced depending on whether infringement continues and/or was intentional.

(*) Both can go for lost profits, but those are almost impossible to get with a smartphone, since it's notoriously difficult to prove that any particular patent is the sole or major reason why people buy a particular model. Because a smartphone uses thousands of patents, it's difficult to prove that a handful contributed that much to sales. If a patent wasn't a main reason, then there was no lost sale due to it.)

winston1236 said:

I didn't realize this was like a sports match.

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You must be new here.

kdarling said:

(*) Both can go for lost profits, but those are almost impossible to get with a smartphone, since it's notoriously difficult to prove that any particular patent is the sole or major reason why people buy a particular model. Because a smartphone uses thousands of patents, it's difficult to prove that a handful contributed that much to sales. If a patent wasn't a main reason, then there was no lost sale due to it.)

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Agreed. And even harder when those patents refer to items not used heavily in marketing as differentiators.

samcraig said:

Agreed. And even harder when those patents refer to items not used heavily in marketing as differentiators.

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Exactly. Both Judge Koh and the appellate court judges noted the lack of advertising.

-- Neither company thought the features were primary

They also noted that neither company had ever even included any of the features in their buyer surveys, at least not until they needed evidence for the trial.

In other words, the features weren't even on Apple's own top list of reasons why people buy their devices.

-- Apple's expert's patent value survey had ridiculous results

Something I haven't seen reported on much, was the survey that an Apple-hired expert came up with, which was supposed to be Apple's evidence as to the extreme value of their patents.

It was criticized by the judges for lacking balance in its questions, and for not including alternative feature methods.

His survey came to the conclusion that people would pay up to $422 EXTRA for the features used on a $199 smartphone.

No, I'm not kidding. You can't make this stuff up. But it gets better.

The appellate court judges pointed out that his survey had used visual manipulation methods which he himself had written a paper on back in 2004 as being misleading. Oops!

--

In the end, Apple could not prove any loss of profits due to those features.

kdarling said:

In the end, Apple could not prove any loss of profits due to those features.

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Would be very hard to prove without access to an alternate universe where Samsung doesn't exist.

subsonix said:

Would be very hard to prove without access to an alternate universe where Samsung doesn't exist.

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It doesn't help Apple's case when they are constantly speaking about breaking records in sales for iPhones.

I am not saying they couldn't sell "more" - but it's just a tough pill for a judge to swallow to award that same company damages.

samcraig said:

It doesn't help Apple's case when they are constantly speaking about breaking records in sales for iPhones.

I am not saying they couldn't sell "more" - but it's just a tough pill for a judge to swallow to award that same company damages.

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I think a judge should be qualified to keep those two issues apart.

subsonix said:

I think a judge should be qualified to keep those two issues apart.

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The point I was making is anyone would have trouble quantifying loss of sales as being significant enough to award damages when that same company is speaking to record sales numbers.

samcraig said:

The point I was making is anyone would have trouble quantifying loss of sales as being significant enough to award damages when that same company is speaking to record sales numbers.

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I know, but it's a weak point because it's two separate issues.

The trouble of quantifying loss of sales is there regardless of current sales, it's similar to the problem of showing how violence in media affect society for example, you need an alternate universe with no violence in media to compare with.

subsonix said:

Would be very hard to prove without access to an alternate universe where Samsung doesn't exist.

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No need. The iPod market share is a good example of what happens when competitors didn't copy.

samcraig said:

It doesn't help Apple's case when they are constantly speaking about breaking records in sales for iPhones.

I am not saying they couldn't sell "more" - but it's just a tough pill for a judge to swallow to award that same company damages.

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Apple breaking its own records has nothing to do with Samsung stealing market share. As I said, iPod business of last decade is a good example of Apple's potential.