Apple Sues Samsung in Japan over iPad and iPhone Patents

[*LTD*]

Apple has historically been quite aggressive with IP litigation, going back even to the 80s. This is nothing new. Nor is there anything wrong with it.

Some companies pursue their IP rights and their enforcement through the courts on a regular basis, some don't. Apple happens to take it very seriously, though, and they always have, especially when it comes to "look and feel" and trade dress suits.

Consider:

Apple v. eMachines
In 1999, Apple successfully sued eMachines, whose eOne too closely resembled the then-new iMac's trade dress. The eOne was taken off the market, resulting in eMachines' losing the ability to sell the eOne as intended. In eMachines' EDGAR statement for May 1, 2001, eMachines stated that its "net loss for the first quarter of 2001 was $31.1 million, or $0.21 per share, compared to a loss of $11.9 million, or $0.13 per share, in the first quarter of 2000", but that these results "reflect the substantial discounts and incentives that we gave to retailers to enable liquidation of product inventories."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Apple_Inc._litigation

 

[gnasher729]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A5313e)

Is the Galaxy that much of a threat?

Or is this a warning shot for every tablet maker out there?

It doesn't have to be _much_ of a threat. If 100,000 people buy a Samsung tablet instead of an iPad, that is maybe $60 million in revenue and $20 million in profit lost for Apple. I wouldn't call it a threat to Apple, but worth suing over.

And there are plenty of tablets for sale that do _not_ look anything like iPads. And if you go to a store selling TVs from multiple manufacturers, you can easily spot which ones are made by Samsung - they can make quite nice stuff when they don't think they have to copy the market leader, and their TVs _do_ look quite different from others.

Apple v. eMachines

eMachines lost because their computer looked very much like the design patents that Apple had for the iMac. eMachines had design patents themselves for all-on-one computers. They got these design patents before Apple showed the iMac. Accordingly they looked very much different from the iMac. And eMachines own product also looked nothing like their own design patents (which was just as well, because the computer in their design patents always reminded me of a teddy bear with big ears).

 

[vrDrew]

They could also take the route Microsoft is taking using licensing. Microsoft just inked two new Android related licensing agreements; this time with Acer and Viewsonic.

And Acer and Viewsonic agreed to pony up the cash to Microsoft out of a sense of corporate decency? No: They figured it would be better to agree to a licensing deal rather than get sued like HTC did.

Anybody who has studied the history of technology knows full well that patents, and legal battles over ownership and infringement, are nothing new. It happened with the invention of steam engines; telehpones; radio; the telegraph. The patent fights over airplanes got so bad that the US Government had to order a settlement during World War One. And sometimes patent disputes result in some very strange outcomes: After WWI ended, German arms maker Krupp sued British firm Vickers for using a special artillery fuse they had patented. Basically the British ended up paying a German firm a "fee" for every shell they'd fired at them - and the British had, theoretically at least, won the war.

The patent system exists for a reason: to give inventors and innovators an incentive. Complaining about it is like complaining about elections - if you think they are "boring" or a "waste of time" - try living without them.

 

[adildacoolset]

the only thing in MacRumors now is iPhone 5 rumours and apple vs. sangsung rumours

 

[*LTD*]

The ban in Germany is permanent.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?p=1938660&posted=1#post1938660