Jury Rules Samsung Must Pay Apple $290 Million in Damages Retrial

[symphara]

I can't tell the difference between innovation and invention really.

I certainly can form an opinion as to what is an invention and what's an innovation.

For example, the iPad was essentially just a bigger iPhone, with the voice software stack removed. It's an innovation in the sense that's a new thing, but it's not an invention.

I'm typing this on a Macbook Air which is a lovely product; when it came out there was no other laptop of this size to have such a large touchpad and backlit keys. So it's an innovation, but nothing about it is an invention really, except maybe for the power connector, which is a fairly trivial invention.

Looking carefully at Apple products I don't see invention. I see great consistency, care for the user experience, innovation in putting together technologies which may be too expensive for other companies to try to attempt (like the iPhone fingerprint reader), but inventions?

Again, this is purely my opinion. I think it's absurd to grant a company a patent on an animation like the "rubber banding". It's an abuse of the patent system and makes a mockery of it. What next, using the colour red in icons?

And this is really where Apple plays. Since they are so thin on actual inventions, they apply for every pure bs patent they can think of, usually in the idea of something completely trivial used in some vaguely new way. It's not surprising that most of the world doesn't allow this kind of patents at all.

All inventions, be it scientific or technological, use previously known scientific results and technological advancements. So nothing new comes totally out of the blue.

That's not the point really. There being a foggy area between what's really new and what's merely derived doesn't mean it's all the same.

About Samsung, the rubber band effect was not something essential, and nobody had to copy that to make a working phone. So why did they steal it?

I disagree with the use of the word "steal" and "stealing", which you use a lot in this context. There was nothing to "steal" there, since it wasn't a secret. Mere ideas, which the "rubber band effect" is, cannot be stolen once out in the open.

They can merely be copied, reproduced, derived, which is incidentally what Apple did as well - they took this idea from real life and implemented software to mimic the effect. It looked nice and others did the same. There's nothing to convince me there's any "theft" here whatsoever.

If you said that Apple secretly implemented this in-house, they were going to use it to gain an edge for an upcoming release of a product, and Samsung - through some unethical means such as espionage - got wind of this and either copied Apple's source code or implemented their own, based on the same idea - then I'd agree there's some theft involved.

But that didn't happen. Apple merely wants to hold the world to ransom over the use of ideas it freely discloses but labels as its own. And I don't think that holds water.

Patents were intended to protect actual inventions, so that the patent holder got a temporary monopoly in the distribution of its protected good in the idea that they'll recoup the costs and make some profit.

Unethical corporations managed to push the US patent law to the point where trivial things like "1-click shopping" and "rubberbanding" is patentable. This is merely anti-competitive, rent-seeking behaviour which elicits no sympathy from me whatsoever, since all it does is to make extremely profitable products even more profitable, at our general expense, and to add insult to injury we pay for the privilege of enforcing these patent laws that work against us.

 

[kdarling]

The problem with your argument regarding Apple running to court instead of negotiating first is that in the cases of Nokia and Motorola they sued first.

No sir. Nokia sued because Apple wouldn't come to terms.

"By refusing to agree to appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation," said Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia's vice president for legal and intellectual property at Nokia. - WSJ

Motorola sued because they got wind that Apple was about to file a lawsuit against them, and Moto wanted to pick a better jurisdiction that the California one Apple loves so much.

The first trial also showed Apple tried to negotiate with Samsung and was willing to pay a licensing fee for SEPs even though it thought it had an exhaustion defense. Samsung just wanted a cross licensing deal to use Apple's non SEP patents, which Apple again was willing to offer Samsung / just for more than it wanted to pay.

And that's the way that ETSI FRAND negotiations had worked for almost two decades. Apple was the first major company to try to change that.

Mind you, the change is probably for the better. But it cannot be said that Apple was being treated differently than anyone else. On the contrary, it was Apple who wanted to be treated special and get away with no cross-licensing.

You are right the ITC ignored the jury's finding, but one member of the ITC objected and thought Apple's patent exhaustion defense should be heard, which was ignored by the ITC.

Not patent exhaustion. The one member thought that Samsung's offer of a cross-licensing deal should not count in the overall list of negotiations. Not a big deal, and he was overruled by the majority anyway.

The US Trade Representative essentially adopted the dissenting member of the ITC 's position in overturning the ITC's injunction awarded Samsung. Samsung cannot go back into Court now asking for money for the at issue SEP other than to appeal the jury's decision.

Of course Samsung can still sue for what Apple owes them. They just can't ask for an injunction right away.

That whole deal was a power struggle between the ITC and DOJ. The ITC totally exists to give out injunctions. The DOJ wants to bring things through the regular courts instead, and put time limits on negotiations.

The time limits are the best part. No longer can a company like Apple engage in reverse holdup and refuse to negotiate. The DOJ's new rules say that both sides must negotiate, and that if a deal can't be reached in six months, then they both have to seek arbitration. If the licensee refuses, THEN the patent holder can request an injunction.

 

[scribblez]

Samsung and Google need to team up and sue apple for the stuff they've stole.

Yeh they do need to team up, they don't have enough creativity alone to take on Apple

----------

i'd be so PO'ed if someone took one of my illustrations, changed the aspect ratio and started selling prints of it.

But of course it is okay to do that in the tech industry right?

"My PHONE'S SCRreeren is ssofs much biggers tahna iPhone apAPle sucks samsabfrung roxk lol appfle sheep ipsheep fanboy idiot" - kingofyoutubereview33

 

[davidespinosa]

R&D budgets

Samsung needs patent protection a lot more than Apple -- they spend a lot more on speculative research that isn't guaranteed to yield financial return.

 

[iBug2]

I certainly can form an opinion as to what is an invention and what's an innovation.

For example, the iPad was essentially just a bigger iPhone, with the voice software stack removed. It's an innovation in the sense that's a new thing, but it's not an invention.

But do you know that it took no inventions of any kind to make a product like the iPad a reality? I'm not talking about inventions done by Apple. Maybe some material engineers somewhere in the world had to invent some process to make the enclosures of the iPad. Just because it's a bigger iPhone doesn't mean it was a trivial thing to do.

I'm typing this on a Macbook Air which is a lovely product; when it came out there was no other laptop of this size to have such a large touchpad and backlit keys. So it's an innovation, but nothing about it is an invention really, except maybe for the power connector, which is a fairly trivial invention.

And the processor inside was a custom made processor by Intel, so they had to invent or innovate a process to make a smaller than usual processor to make the Air a reality.

Looking carefully at Apple products I don't see invention. I see great consistency, care for the user experience, innovation in putting together technologies which may be too expensive for other companies to try to attempt (like the iPhone fingerprint reader), but inventions?

Looking at google search I don't see any invention either. You can't tell that there's a patented algorithm inside the search looking from outside. So whether you can see invention or not is irrelevant. Need to check every single patent Apple files for each of their products to see if there are indeed inventions involved or not.

Again, this is purely my opinion. I think it's absurd to grant a company a patent on an animation like the "rubber banding". It's an abuse of the patent system and makes a mockery of it. What next, using the colour red in icons?

I actually think it makes even more sense to be able to patent something like the rubber band simply because it's not essential. It distinguishes a product from another one. These are not just technological gadgets, these are industrial and GUI designs as well and designs should be trademarked/patented just like any scientific or technological invention because they are just as hard to do.

And this is really where Apple plays. Since they are so thin on actual inventions, they apply for every pure bs patent they can think of, usually in the idea of something completely trivial used in some vaguely new way. It's not surprising that most of the world doesn't allow this kind of patents at all.

To be able to say that I'd have to read all of their patents, and then read the patents of other tech giants and compare the content of the patents. I have no clue if Apple is different than the rest in a major way.

That's not the point really. There being a foggy area between what's really new and what's merely derived doesn't mean it's all the same.

I didn't say they are the same. I said I can't really distinguish them just looking from outside. Need to be in the process to be able to decide what was new and what was obvious knowing the previous work.

I disagree with the use of the word "steal" and "stealing", which you use a lot in this context. There was nothing to "steal" there, since it wasn't a secret. Mere ideas, which the "rubber band effect" is, cannot be stolen once out in the open.

When you patent something, then it's out in the open, so by that logic you cannot steal any patented idea either, this includes Pagerank.

They can merely be copied, reproduced, derived, which is incidentally what Apple did as well - they took this idea from real life and implemented software to mimic the effect. It looked nice and others did the same. There's nothing to convince me there's any "theft" here whatsoever.

Ok if you don't like the word theft, use copying. It's the same to me. And "it looked nice" is pretty much the same as "it searched better" or "it worked faster". Looking nice is a feature of these devices as much as searching the internet is or how fast they compute. To me the only thing that matters is how much of work/time/effort it took to get that idea. Whether it's a thing of aesthetics, or some algorithm, or something else, if it took time to figure it out, then it needs protecting.

Patents were intended to protect actual inventions, so that the patent holder got a temporary monopoly in the distribution of its protected good in the idea that they'll recoup the costs and make some profit.

Unethical corporations managed to push the US patent law to the point where trivial things like "1-click shopping" and "rubberbanding" is patentable. This is merely anti-competitive, rent-seeking behaviour which elicits no sympathy from me whatsoever, since all it does is to make extremely profitable products even more profitable, at our general expense, and to add insult to injury we pay for the privilege of enforcing these patent laws that work against us.

To patent only inventions is impossible because there's no way to decide whether something passes for an invention or not. Be it USA or some other country, the patent laws may be different, but you cannot say that any country out there has magically devised some method to be able to claim only actual inventions as patents.

I already told you that one of the biggest scientific inventions of the 20th century, the relativity theory, was kind of obvious considering all the work that's been done before that and many other physicists would have come to the same conclusion if Einstein didn't. So was that an invention or an innovation then? Because if that was an innovation then I'm at loss as to what is an invention.

 

[gnasher729]

Samsung needs patent protection a lot more than Apple -- they spend a lot more on speculative research that isn't guaranteed to yield financial return.

And what Apple does is guaranteed to yield financial return?

 

[Tech198]

yay, go Samsung... beat that Apple..

 

[Arndroid]

That's the funny thing about all this. Samsung can continue to crib design elements and features from Apple--but Apple needs Samsung.

If I were Samsung, I would just raise component prices charged to Apple to recoup the settlement payout.

Yeah great. Their biggest customer who has 150 billion plus in cash. That would work out well. The people who sell to apple are not fans of their coworkers in consumer devices.

 

[thehustleman]

Yeh they do need to team up, they don't have enough creativity alone to take on Apple

You MUST BE kidding here.

They keep creating new stuff, apple keeps taking it AFTER Samsung or Google has done it. That isn't creativity

 

[rtomyj]

But then your original reply:



made no sense either.

Marketing a product close to another is not in itself a patent breach, but that has all been dealt with, has it not? Sure "the Apple guy" can be upset about it, but cannot expect it to influence a ruling in the way he wanted. And it arguably did not...

I again, stand by my original and main point that it is a nonsense for Apple to claim that customers thought they were buying Apple, when they were buying Samsung. Your new argument where you claim your customers say: makes my original point exactly, as you admit that there is NO confusion amongst your customers, only an awareness of a cheaper budget option in those cases.

So what is your point exactly? And you say I have missed the point LOL!

I am also sorry to read that you feel that your phone shop customers are all "idiots", but they at least appear to know the difference between Apple and Samsung. Perhaps there is something in the water where you live and work?

Maybe you should give consideration to the fact, that you drink the same water? Hope you feel better soon.

The whole case was Samsung using designs from Apple. Apple said they breached patents. Apple then made a case that samsungs designs look similar to Apples. (Spelled it out for you)

In other words; Apple is using patents as a way to sue Samsung because Samsung is using Apples design language (round corners? Really)

I think your misattributing quotes buddy guy. I mean, either way you win.

The normal consumer are idiots. Not their fault. I guess a better way of saying it is tech illiterate. I'm sure I'm an idiot to some mechanic. I don't know anything about cars.
Most of the time they buy the cheapest phone (not "what's best for them" as you put it) and that is 80% of the time Samsung over Apple.

Either way I agree. Some (most) knew they weren't buying Apple products. But they look VERY similar at a cheaper cost. (Following me?). So you have this cheaper product that looks like a more expensive product. The cheaper products manufacture is then bashing people who buy the more expensive product. (Still with me?) wouldn't the consumer question the validity of Apple then?

"Question our designs" is what I believe the guy from Apple said. By the way, this is the third time I've explained this. You don't even awknowledge it and talk about something else. Red herring alert.

Since Samsung did little to no R&D to find the designs that matter it stands to reason Apple is pissed.

Buuuuut like I said, you win. I've said my beliefs and explanation 3 times. 3 times you've missed it and gone on a tangent of LOLS and what not. So cya! #

 

[Konrad]

Games

Rich geeks are playing their billion dollar games, while the Americans are wide spreading street K.O. and skid rows are experiencing rapid growth. Civilization.


http://thebladebrownshow.wordpress....llion-sending-30-trucks-full-of-5-cent-coins/

 

[Arfdog]

Any reasonable person can see that Samsung blatantly copied Apple on the iPhone. Samsung is a good company too, they don't need to. But they did.

 

[CrazyNurse]

Any reasonable person can see that Samsung blatantly copied Apple on the iPhone. Samsung is a good company too, they don't need to. But they did.

And they'll pay the price for it.

But we need Samsung and Android…they have made smart phones and tablets accessible to everyone, a much wider market than Apple.

Choice and competition is good. It keeps everyone on their toes.

 

[thehustleman]

Any reasonable person can see that Samsung blatantly copied Apple on the iPhone. Samsung is a good company too, they don't need to. But they did.

They copied Samsung as well with a lot of features.

They should just cross license

 

[Renzatic]

They should just cross license

Shaddup with your mature, sense making alternatives.

 

[BvizioN]

Not sure how much Samsung is ripping off since my Note 3 has a TON more gimmicks than the iPhone will ever have.

Fixed that for you.

 

[AppleMark]

The whole case was Samsung using designs from Apple. Apple said they breached patents. Apple then made a case that samsungs designs look similar to Apples. (Spelled it out for you)

In other words; Apple is using patents as a way to sue Samsung because Samsung is using Apples design language (round corners? Really)

I think your misattributing quotes buddy guy. I mean, either way you win.

The normal consumer are idiots. Not their fault. I guess a better way of saying it is tech illiterate. I'm sure I'm an idiot to some mechanic. I don't know anything about cars.
Most of the time they buy the cheapest phone (not "what's best for them" as you put it) and that is 80% of the time Samsung over Apple.

Either way I agree. Some (most) knew they weren't buying Apple products. But they look VERY similar at a cheaper cost. (Following me?). So you have this cheaper product that looks like a more expensive product. The cheaper products manufacture is then bashing people who buy the more expensive product. (Still with me?) wouldn't the consumer question the validity of Apple then?

"Question our designs" is what I believe the guy from Apple said. By the way, this is the third time I've explained this. You don't even awknowledge it and talk about something else. Red herring alert.

Since Samsung did little to no R&D to find the designs that matter it stands to reason Apple is pissed.

Buuuuut like I said, you win. I've said my beliefs and explanation 3 times. 3 times you've missed it and gone on a tangent of LOLS and what not. So cya! #

We all know the story about patent infringement, this is well covered and understood and not what we are discussing here.

Still, I am bemused as to how any of this relates to the question of how the the consumer has "question[ed] our design skills in a way they never used to.".

But they look VERY similar at a cheaper cost. (Following me?). So you have this cheaper product that looks like a more expensive product. The cheaper products manufacture is then bashing people who buy the more expensive product. (Still with me?) wouldn't the consumer question the validity of Apple then?

What on earth are you on about?

Why would any of what you put up in your argument support to "question the validity of Apple"?

I can understand this argument if it was in relation to counterfeit goods, but you provide no grounds as to why you feel your statement holds up. Because it cannot hold up and neither did Phil Schiller's argument at the time (you know him as the "Apple Guy") and why it did nothing to sustain or increase the compensation claim. In fact it reduced.

Surely you could only make those claims if your competitor was able to completely duplicate your product using the same production quality and then sell at a cheaper price? Then I can understand your argument. But as you have admitted constantly..., customers generally know the difference. That being so, there can be no doubts, or questions regarding what Apple have managed to produce at a higher cost and arguably using a better production process. How can there be, it is not comparable?

Following me?

I still cannot believe that you are really trying (this hard) to qualify the above statements. I know you say what you say is your belief's, however some children believe on the tooth fairy, but that is not a tangible position for debate on matters of fact. Is this a joke?

All you have taught me is how little respect you have for your customers and that you still cannot qualify your posts in regards to consumer brand confusion which you are confusing with something else.

You continue mistaking choice for confusion and will continue to do so, because of your belief and not in recognition of the facts or due process.

Auf wiedersehen...