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finally.

That took a while.

Glad samsung might actually learn to make their own innovations now.

It's not about being a copycat these days, there is plenty ways to make products better than apple. I'm sorry but even I could make better products than samsung does when they copy.

It's like samsung said lets just copy this, it's better than what we already made. Now they are claiming the consumer will loose out? how exactly they just gave us a not as good iOS copy not innovation that might make us actually want one.

I still maintain the only reason Samsung is successful as a tech copy is the end user price that they smash down to the ground so low no one would be making good tech if they were the only people in the market place.

Apple forced samsung to make better products not the other way round!!!!
 
The positive that comes out of this is Samsung is now forced to create products that are not copies of the iPhone. So while everyone is saying the consumer loses, they do not. Samsung will now come out with some products that are different AND great.
 
There is always the opportunity to make things differently, better. Whether things were patented or not doesn't necessarily come down to a company or creator of a product deciding they want to "give" the idea to the world as something that can be copied. There are and have been very few people and companies that are so giving of their creations.

Take a very simple product, like aspirin, a Bayer company trademarked brand that is today a general product name, much like Kleenex is. I can guarantee you that Bayer wanted to control the brand and their invention of how to make aspirin more efficiently, but they were not able to. So you have a product that became ubiquitous in the market - a commodity if you will. It took another company searching for a way to produce a better pain medicine, to do things differently, that resulted in the creation of acetaminophen and after that another company looking for yet another alternative to acetaminophen to develop ibuprofen.

I think, that as much as the iPhone created the current form factor for smart cell phones, some company will change that at some point in the future. It could be Apple or someone else, but I can guarantee that we won't be using the same form factor in 10 years, maybe less.

Couldn't have said better.
 
Usain Bolt is going to win anyway, so let us allow other sprinters doping. Anyway, the game would look more thrilling and entertaining

That is a great metaphor

Cheating would tarnish the athletic achievement of a race where everyone finished below 9.9 sec for example, as amazing as it would be to see

But with consumer products, I'm not enjoying a free race on TV for 10 seconds or hour long games (if we used another sport as example)

As a greedy consumer, I enjoy the benefits of their cheating to make my phone better

As a sports spectator, the benefits of cheaters' glory is less directly related to me
 
This doesn't make sense to me. Because companies like Samsung and Google cannot use these patents, will it not lead to more innovation, and more choices?

Will this not force these companies to find different ways of implementing the general concepts that Apple's specific patents cover?

Exactly.

This goes to show that Samsung et al. have no idea what innovation is. Instead they use it as a mere buzzword to come across as the innocent victim. Pathetic!
 
Although you are correct in some regards, the idea that no idea comes out of a vacuum is incorrect. People don't live in a vacuum, that much is true, but invention does happen, even now, without prior ideas.

Example? One brand new product that doesn't owe anything to a prior idea?
 
I think, that as much as the iPhone created the current form factor for smart cell phones, some company will change that at some point in the future. It could be Apple or someone else, but I can guarantee that we won't be using the same form factor in 10 years, maybe less.

By what I read here daily, the entire world thinks the iPhone is perfect and the form factor should never change.
 
Team Samsung for the sake of consumers. I could care less who copied who. I don't want these lawsuits to go out of control!

Apple Wins - Apple's Lawyers Win, More Lawsuits, Consumers will eventually lose with less smartphone choices in the market.
Samsung Wins - Apple's Lawyers Lose, Consumers can continue to have the status quo, Apple still is wining regardless.

Everyone copies each other. There patents for some things are unwarranted. This case should have been dismissed entirely.

Another possibility:

Samsung Loses: Samsung invests in innovative designs (including spending real money to hire world class product designers from global pool), leading to a proliferation of distinctive competing UI's and cell phone designs (as opposed to Apple clones) . . . . and consumers benefit.
 
Regardless of how much money the lawyers made - an observation many are making but which is completely irrelevant - the jury clearly felt that Samsung willfully infringed on Apple's patents. Samsung didn't just coincidentally violate Apple's patents, or come to the same design through an independent process. The willful act of patent infringement is the reason why the monetary judgment was so high. Samsung acted purposefully and in a calculated way to copy the iPhone hardware and software.

Apple is protecting patents that it lawfully obtained. Apple is acting within the law of the United States. The jury has now determined that Samsung violated that law and it will have to pay. Those of you who are saying Apple is a "bully" have no respect for the law. How can you be a bully when the law is on your side and you've clearly established that your competitor stole from you?

Some people will never be happy and I'm prepared to read a lot of FUD from fandroids about how Apple is stifling innovation, etc. But you know what? Flooding the market with copies of the iPhone and iOS is not innovation - it's copying. Maybe people are upset that they may no longer have a cheap Android alternative, but that's not Apple's fault - it's Google's fault for copying Apple's operating system.

Isn't it funny how Microsoft was able to design a great mobile OS - Windows 7 Mobile and forthcoming Windows 8 - yet did not steal anything from Apple? That is how you innovate, not by copying the market leader. Google, Samsung, HTC and anyone else who is found to be infringing (aka steeling) someone else's design should pay dearly.

----------

Another possibility:

Samsung Loses: Samsung invests in innovative designs (including spending real money to hire world class product designers from global pool), leading to a proliferation of distinctive competing UI's and cell phone designs (as opposed to Apple clones) . . . . and consumers benefit.

Except that Samsung has no idea how to do this.
 
On the contrary, we will see more real choices

Team Samsung for the sake of consumers. I could care less who copied who. I don't want these lawsuits to go out of control!

Apple Wins - Apple's Lawyers Win, More Lawsuits, Consumers will eventually lose with less smartphone choices in the market.
Samsung Wins - Apple's Lawyers Lose, Consumers can continue to have the status quo, Apple still is wining regardless.

Everyone copies each other. There patents for some things are unwarranted. This case should have been dismissed entirely.

Now, Samsung and other companies will come up with something different, I believe we will have more choices,not fewer...
 
All this talk about how this hurts competition are either trolls or lack the necessary capacity for processing information and coming to logical conclusions about it.

Look at what Microsoft is doing. Now that's competition. Competition is coming up with your own ideas and running with it on the fair, open market. We'll see how well Metro does in the mobile space. I don't particularly like it, personally, but I respect Microsoft for the choices they made, and for doing their own thing. Apple won't be suing them. Apple has no grounds for suing them, under the law or under common sense.

What Samsung has been doing is not even close to competition. The copying was blatant. The copying was willful. We know this from Samsung's own internal documents. It was Samsung's goal to create cheap clones of Apple's products, rush them to market, and take advantage of Apple's efforts in R&D and marketing to coast along.

Competition is fair, the winner chosen strictly on the merits. Microsoft spent their own money on R&D, and they're spending their own money on advertising their products. That's fair, and if Windows 8 does well in the mobile space, they will have earned it. Samsung spent no money on R&D, copied Apple's hard work, and coasted along into the market on the wake of Apple's advertising. That's not fair at all, Samsung clearly has an advantage in cost-to-market. If Samsung does well, it's because they made their product cheaper through stealing designs from their competitor, resulting in lower carrier subsidies and greater push from those carriers in the stores accordingly.

Apple is a pretty confident company, I would wager. I believe them when they say they don't mind competition, because they believe that on a level playing field they can win. They just want everyone else to make their own stuff.

Consumers should want everyone else to make their own stuff too. That's how we get interesting new ideas like Microsoft has been working on (and, wow, who'd have thought anyone would be able to say that with a straight face?). If every product looks like an iPhone running iOS, what, exactly, is the advantage to the consumer? I can't think of any. This verdict isn't going to hurt the consumer one bit, it's just going to result in more companies doing their own thing and coming up with actual new ideas.
 
Anyone following the trial and paying attention to important things like FACTS and TESTIMONY and the INTERNAL EMAILS WITHIN SAMSUNG should have clearly been expecting the outcome Apple was awarded. No reasonably intelligent person, looking at the situation objectively, taking, you know, THE LAW into consideration, and leaving EMOTION out of it, could have possibly come to any other conclusion than Samsung WILLFULLY and with specific intent copied Apple's patented features and trade-dress.

Samsung has proven it has nary an iota of corporate honor. Hell, even in their own post-verdict remarks, Samsung doesn't deny that they copied. Samsung basically argues that they should have been allowed to continue to copy.

And, contrary to Samsung's post-verdict claims, this verdict is the best possible outcome for consumers. Now Samsung and others will be FORCED to actually innovate. Copying another company's patented features is NOT innovation. It's the exact opposite of innovation.

It's when companies come up with completely new and better ways of designing a UI that we, the consumers, get true innovation. And that is exactly why the iPhone became such a sensation! It was something the world had never seen before and Apple knew full well that dishonorable companies like Samsung would want to copy it, so Apple patented the hell out of it. Just as every single one of YOU would do if you ever created/innovated something new and wonderful. Particularly if it cost you MILLIONS of dollars to get there!

And speaking of honor, every single person that celebrates and condones Samsung's dishonorable practices is a person without personal honor themselves. The whines and complaints are not any surprise to me, however. Personal honor has been going in the toilet since the '70s in this country. These days, far too many individuals simply want to mimic the sickening typical corporate greed credo of "screw the other guy before he screws me".

I applaud Tim Cook and the entire team at Apple for fighting for what is right and just. I applaud them for NOT settling for anything less than a clear and decisive victory over the illicit activities of a dishonorable company!

Mark
 
After being caught red handed, then proved in court to have ben intentionally, illegally, copying their competitor and customer's IP, they uttered without compunction or ethics:

Samsung official statement said:
Samsung issued this statement:

Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices.
Should not be viewed as a win for Apple? They won the lawsuit in an ENTIRELY one sided judgment. $0 for Samsung, $1.05B for Apple. That can ONLY be viewed as a win.

Fewer choices and less innovation? Samsung has more than a dozen top level styles of phones, and Apple has about a dozen (different colors, frequencies, shapes). There is plenty of innovation. By Apple. Samsung is notorious for being a product design follower and a component part leader. Apple mostly has the same pool of parts as Samsung largely because they have Samsung manufacturing them! But as for product design the lawsuit proved conclusively that as far as product design and software design Apple is distinct and vastly in the lead. It was also proven Samsung not only follows but overtly copies Apple in PARTICULAR.

Pricing id a tug-o-war between supply and demand. So long as a product has crave and buzz it also has pricing power. Once it becomes "old and boring" it loses pricing power. As a result it is Samsung who is now on the hardware wars release cycle Wintel used to suffer from. A new product has about a 6 month buzz term. Period. hardware is frequently proven not quite the newest and bestest.

Apple on the other hand has bypassed the hardware wars by making the device value largely about the software and services. This factor is so strong, shockingly so, that the iPhone 3GS is STILL in production and delivery MORE THAN 3 YEARS LATER.

6 months and done vs 3 years and running. Think about that for a moment.

Rocketman
 
You should try to actually read everything here and not be selective just to prove your point.
Well Told!

Don't you just hate the Cherry Picking Trolls that think they have their finger on the pulse of every other member ..and yet they're nearly always wide of the mark through their basic lack of understanding the fundamentals. ;)
 
Fair win

This is a fair win for Apple, but the $1B in damages is pathetic, it should be closer to $300B to deter the Asian CopyBoys from continuing to rape western innovations.

At least the judge can triple the $1B to $3B, but that won't even dent the largest copymachine on the planet.

I call for a $300B compensation and global ban on all Samsung consumer products for at least 60 years.
 
Maybe now Samsung will actually invest some real money in R&D. The last few years their budget apparently consisted of purchasing Apple products and trying to mimic them.
 
Maybe now Samsung will actually invest some real money in R&D. The last few years their budget apparently consisted of purchasing Apple products and trying to mimic them.

Personally I think that's what will happen in the long run despite the doom mongers declaring the market dead for anyone but Apple. You can knock them and as usual it's a mixed bag but at the moment Microsoft are a company trying to innovate. Who would have thought that a couple of years ago?

It's all about choice in the end. I don't want a single market player attempting to innovate with everyone else simply copying.
 
Example? One brand new product that doesn't owe anything to a prior idea?

Many products in the pharmaceutical industry - in fact anything that is a small molecule. Another more specific example is what my company has created - the world's first and only wide web, paper-thin, unsanded, continuous roll wood veneer. Nothing like it existed previously and it's nothing like traditional veneer, other than it being wood. In fact, it's so unique, so different, that people in the wood industry don't believe it's possible and don't know how to work with it (which is fine because that is not the market we're going after).

Have you visited a site like kickstarter.com? Plenty of examples of products made as a first-time creation. I didn't say that inventions wouldn't address existing needs - but there are countless new products created with no prior product to guide the creator.
 
It was never about competition or innovation for me. My issue is with the broad scope of Apple's design patents. I am pursuing what should and should not be patentable.
 
By what I read here daily, the entire world thinks the iPhone is perfect and the form factor should never change.

Yep. If Samsung, Moto, HTC, etc are not working towards what might be next, taking chances, risks, working on what COULD be, for new product, then it will be their own fault for not innovating. Same is true for Apple. But we already know that many companies are not willing to invest in what seems like foolish behavior today - because when you can't prove ROI for development of things that may never see the light of day, most companies stop working towards future ideas.

That's what has set Apple, and very few other companies, apart from the broader market. Steve Jobs was a visionary. He understood thinking ahead, dreaming of what the next thing could be and that vision was translated into how Apple operates - at least on the product creation side. Who at Samsung is driving that kind of thinking, or at MOTO or HTC? If the culture of the company doesn't allow free thinking and the ability to try things that will fail, then that company will never, or very rarely, create game changing products.
 
"loss for American consumer":eek: It was already a loss once they put Touchwiz skin on top of android and never/slow to update their software.
 
Well the try was in Apples home down and the fact that the judge had to toss out multiple juries that were Apple fan boys/girls speaks volumes as well. More than likely will just be among the long list to get the cased appealed and retried somewhere else.

I have to concede that location was probably not an influential factor. Please, let's be realistic here.
 
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