Ban on Galaxy Nexus U.S. Sales Upheld, Software Patch to Circumvent Forthcoming

[KnightWRX]

Something puzzles me.

Again and again on these forums we see the new stories about Apple Banning or trying to ban a product, and when they manage to win their court case.

So how come this story about the UK Judge who has not sided with Apple seems to be ignored and not put up as a current/latest news story?

UK judge rules HTC doesn't violate Apple's patents, invalidates Cupertino's claims

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/04/uk-judge-rules-htc-doesnt-violate-apples-patents-invalidates/

After reading through this, it seems they were defeated on the "slide to unlock" bit by the Neonode patent that was filed 3 years before the Apple patent. This was in the media in February of this year :

http://www.techpowerup.com/160957/N...o-Unlock-quot-Patent-by-3-Years-Analysis.html

Neonode was releasing touch screen phones in 2005 :

http://www.engadget.com/2005/04/07/the-neonode-n1m/

Seems Macrumors also failed to report on the fact that Apple's claim that HTC had not fixed their handsets to remove offending technology that was subject to an injunction was denied by the ITC :

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/02/itc-denies-apple-request-for-emergency-ban-against-htc/

Interesting... So it isn't going so well in Apple v. HTC land.

 

[fpsBeaTt]

i have an iPhone, 2 MacBooks, a cinema display, an iPad, an iPod Nano, and an iMac G4. I'm not in favor of this. This is bad for all consumers. Unless you are a huge shareholder or an executive at Apple, you shouldn't be in favor of this ban.

I'm 'X', and I dislike 'X'; me being 'X' makes my dislike of 'X' legitimute.

 

[Glideslope]

No. In order to get to that point they would have to own the enterprise and home computer market.

One problem.

Microsoft

Enjoy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevefo...-apple-investors-coming-how-big-1000-a-share/

 

[G51989]

Enjoy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevefo...-apple-investors-coming-how-big-1000-a-share/

Already read that. Not convinced.

For Apple to hit that 1 trillion, they would really need to boost their sales, and start getting into the Home computer and Enterprise Market, they won't. They've failed enough times not to try.

 

[KnightWRX]

I'm 'X', and I dislike 'X'; me being 'X' makes my dislike of 'X' legitimute.

Where X = ?

I think you're missing 2 Ys in there.

----------

Already read that. Not convinced.

For Apple to hit that 1 trillion, they would really need to boost their sales, and start getting into the Home computer and Enterprise Market, they won't. They've failed enough times not to try.

Cute you believe Apple still needs the Mac. They can forge away in the new markets (smartphones, tablets and others) and build on their mobile legacy.

 

[G51989]

Where X = ?

I think you're missing 2 Ys in there.

----------



Cute you believe Apple still needs the Mac. They can forge away in the new markets (smartphones, tablets and others) and build on their mobile legacy.

I never said Apple Needs the Mac, I'd perfer if you don't put words in my mouth.

What I DO believe, is that to really hit that ' 1 trillion ' like some people would like to think, they would need to start going somewhere in the home computer market. I personally don't think sub par tablets and a decent phone is enough to hit that 1 trillion.

Thats just my opinion, I could be and ( probably am wrong ).

I do agree with what some people say, the Mac will be gone in 5 years.

 

[PaulChowHK]

Go get them Google and Samsung. They needing a swift kicking in the ass

 

[KnightWRX]

I never said Apple Needs the Mac, I'd perfer if you don't put words in my mouth.

What I DO believe, is that to really hit that ' 1 trillion ' like some people would like to think, they would need to start going somewhere in the home computer market. I personally don't think sub par tablets and a decent phone is enough to hit that 1 trillion.

These 2 statements are contradictory to me. You do seem to believe Apple needs the Mac (not computers in general as both the iPad and iPhone are also computers) to reach 1 trillion market cap.

I'm telling you I'm pretty convinced they don't. Check out their recent financials. The Mac hasn't been their major revenue source in a couple of quarters of now.

Thats just my opinion, I could be and ( probably am wrong ).

I do agree with what some people say, the Mac will be gone in 5 years.

Some guy once said :

If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.

The thing is, the guy did end up running Apple there for a while. He did milk the Macintosh for all it was worth and he did get busy on the next great thing.

 

[MacNewsFix]

Fixed that there for you. No really, let's at least wait until a court rules in Apple's favor on trademark/trade dress issues before we declare a party guilty ?

Let me guess, you don't see anything wrong here, too.

Ok, how about the word of a copyright attorney with no skin in the game?

But as former Engadget editor Nilay Patel points out today, some of the similarities between Samsung's Galaxy line and Apple's iPhone and iPad are so obvious, you'd have to be blind not to see them.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you don't completely rely on the court systems to tell you what is and what is not true.

 

[KnightWRX]

Let me guess, you don't see anything wrong here, too.

Image

Ok, how about the word of a copyright attorney with no skin in the game?

But as former Engadget editor Nilay Patel points out today, some of the similarities between Samsung's Galaxy line and Apple's iPhone and iPad are so obvious, you'd have to be blind not to see them.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you don't completely rely on the court systems to tell you what is and what is not true.

Apple has such simple designs that sometimes, you can't help but find similarities. Every square is a rectangle, not every rectangle is a square. So frankly, I've never really cared for the outward appearance of a device.

Also, you're confusing my opinion of all of this "copying business". I know there's probably plenty of "inspiration" going on and its a game of trying to get away with "as close to but not infringing on" in the industry at large (electronics). The thing is, Apple is as guilty of this.

What I find most shocking though is that only Apple seems to be playing victim. "Do as I say, not as I do", hypocrites if you will. If Apple didn't try to pass off everyone else as "copycats" and what they do as "fresh and innovative", then I wouldn't give a crap.

But frankly, if you ask me, if it were as simple as you think it was and so obvious, Apple would have many court victories and wouldn't have to rely on obscure and obtusely worded patents to get injunctions and court victories. They'd go straight for trademark and trade dress. While they still do, those aren't the victories they're getting. Right now, they're pretty much 2 - 1 on designs (patents and EU design registrations, not even trademarks) and we haven't yet heard anything on the trade dress front.

So maybe it's not as obvious as you think it is uh ?

Not to mention, again, pot meets kettle :

http://www.cultofmac.com/99951/cydia-dev-apple-stole-both-my-idea-and-my-icon-for-wifi-sync/

 

[BobCollins]

Apple has done just fine building great products for the marketplace. Why do they have to be such dickwads with their army of lawyers?

 

[kdarling]

Consumers are also harmed when companies infringe on another company's R&D. It gives companies' less incentive to invest and the reason patents have existed for nearly 2,500 years.

Of course, first they have to infringe, not just look somewhat similar.

For example, that commonly used "Samsung copies the 3G" picture no longer looks like an exact copy when the various defining edges, lenses and buttons are put next to each other and in the same orientation:



As for the icons, if you read their very specific trademark descriptions, Samsung's are not the same. E.g.:

Phone icon: Apple states that "The mark consists of a rectangle with rounded corners depicting a stylized white telephone receiver against a striped green and dark green background. A shade of light green covers the upper half of the rectangle design."

Gallery icon: "The mark consists of a gray, white, and blue rectangle with rounded corners depicting a stylized flower in the colors green, yellow, brown, black, white and gray."

Settings icon: "The mark consists of partial images of three gears shown in gray, white and silver, on a background of gray with black dots, all contained within a rectangular grey and white frame with rounded corners."



The phone icon is a special favorite of mine, as it was clearly chosen to evoke the green phone image that cell phones had used since the beginning to indicate Send. It was also left leaning like HTC had used for years, and looked like the phone in an older WinMo skin. Heck, Apple apparently couldn't even get a trademark on the plain icon they showed with the first iPhone demo... instead they had to throw in a striped back to qualify:

 

[Gata]

I'm all for intellectual property. If someone steals your idea, then by all means, sue.

That being said:
Apple.

Take those millions of dollars you're using on these lawsuits.

Go make something with it.

Then blow the world away again.

 

[Poisednoise]

Something puzzles me.

Again and again on these forums we see the new stories about Apple Banning or trying to ban a product, and when they manage to win their court case.

So how come this story about the UK Judge who has not sided with Apple seems to be ignored and not put up as a current/latest news story?

UK judge rules HTC doesn't violate Apple's patents, invalidates Cupertino's claims

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/04/uk-judge-rules-htc-doesnt-violate-apples-patents-invalidates/

Macrumors is a US-centric site, and therefore is liable to give more space to home judgements. In any case, if you read the analysis of the judgement as reported by the BBC, UK laywers seem to reckon the overall ramifications of the judgement are not far-reaching:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18709232

 

[Swift]

So I wonder how it works when you win an injunction pending a full court battle but in the interim, your competitor patches their software to avoid infringement. I imagine the infringer has to petition the court to relax the injunction and if so, I would imagine that Apple gets their bond money back and then drops the case. It seems this would be resolved way before the actual case is fully decided.

If so, that is great for Apple. They get to protect their IP and not have to risk $96M bond to enforce the injunction. I know that when Samsung and Apple battled it out in Germany that Samsung had to propose multiple alternate designs for Galaxy Tab before the courts lifted the ban.

For those who think this copyright/patent business is some kind of crime against nature, look at the Windows phone. No lawsuits. It's not ripping off Apple.

This is a victory in the roundhouse: the Nexus phone, with no carrier crap in between. Samsung is the other guy who makes money. Google has contributed jelly bean with a knock-off of Siri. Google does this all the time. It's in their crazy, Gyro Gearloose (look up old Donald Duck comics) DNA. What? Apple is doing something that people like? Well, we'll do it too! Never any thought that maybe Apple would fight back. They didn't with Windows, after all.

The Google TV still stinks, because it lacks the things we really want: the copyrighted movies, you know? The things that Sergey and pals would have to negotiate with studios, record companies and so forth. Their morality is, "what's yours is mine." Don't be a real pain, man. I'm crazy Sergey, diving out of a zeppelin, for some reason I don't really understand. We're google, bringing out an expensive piece of junk like the Q-ball thingy.

We're assured by these people that this means "open" and "free." Their vision of that contains some kind of psychopathy.

 

[Seiga]

I'm just waiting for Google to sue Apple for drop down notifications... oh wait! Google is the better company and won't sue.

 

[Swift]

I'm all for intellectual property. If someone steals your idea, then by all means, sue.

That being said:
Apple.

Take those millions of dollars you're using on these lawsuits.

Go make something with it.

Then blow the world away again.

You're not understanding. They can't continue with the iPods and iPhones and iPads if their intellectual property, which they earn by developing the things in private for YEARS, keeps getting ripped off. Why should they have wasted all that effort on the Mac when Microsoft just walked away with the crown jewels?

I think that the real Apple business strategy, if copied by a few others, would be great for the consumer. A new iPad with some amazing new feature, then the next month, Google brings something their very good engineers have been working on for years. Ready for market. Cheap, but very high quality.

They don't. They're using a scattershot approach for a huge variety of products. Why are they working on a car? Will they bring it out with a decent chance of success, or will the boys bring out some half-baked thing that looks a lot like something that Mercedes brought out?

In the smartphone business, they decided to be Microsoft. Microsoft needed an Apple that wouldn't protect their innovations to get their market share. Google has found they didn't have a compliant, loser Apple. They got lawyer sharks.

I know nothing about this area of the law, but they convinced a federal judge to give them a preliminary injunction before the trial began. So there probably is a good case to be made, no?

----------

In other news: UK high court invalidates slide-to-unlock patent - saying that it was there long before Apple got its hands on it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...h-Court-defeat-over-prize-iPhone-patents.html

This just shows, once more, how ridiculous most of Apple's claims are.

"Slide-to-unlock" happens to be one of the two patents that caused the Galaxy Nexus to be banned in the US. The other one being integrated search - which is even more ridiculous. Seriously - do some of the authors here who think Apple is right really believe what they're writing or are they employed by Apple to post here?

“We remain disappointed that Apple continues to favour competition in the courtroom over competition in the marketplace.”

that says it all.

Who's that "remain disappointed" quote from? Why, Google, I'd bet.

This is British law. Not American. And it's not what the judge objected to: it was the Siri ripoff.

 

[blackhand1001]

For those who think this copyright/patent business is some kind of crime against nature, look at the Windows phone. No lawsuits. It's not ripping off Apple.

This is a victory in the roundhouse: the Nexus phone, with no carrier crap in between. Samsung is the other guy who makes money. Google has contributed jelly bean with a knock-off of Siri. Google does this all the time. It's in their crazy, Gyro Gearloose (look up old Donald Duck comics) DNA. What? Apple is doing something that people like? Well, we'll do it too! Never any thought that maybe Apple would fight back. They didn't with Windows, after all.

The Google TV still stinks, because it lacks the things we really want: the copyrighted movies, you know? The things that Sergey and pals would have to negotiate with studios, record companies and so forth. Their morality is, "what's yours is mine." Don't be a real pain, man. I'm crazy Sergey, diving out of a zeppelin, for some reason I don't really understand. We're google, bringing out an expensive piece of junk like the Q-ball thingy.

We're assured by these people that this means "open" and "free." Their vision of that contains some kind of psychopathy.

Google now is not a siri ripoff. Its an update to google voice search (which has been around longer than siri) and doesn't only do voice search. It also learns you behavior and gives you notifications on traffic before you leave for work and notifications about your favorite sports teams if you look them up a few times. Its very cool and not a siri copy and apple is hardly the first company to have natural speech recognition.

 

[Swift]

Enjoy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevefo...-apple-investors-coming-how-big-1000-a-share/

I don't think Apple wants a monopoly. They are getting into the business market, particularly through the Apple users who pressure to use their Macs, iPhones and iPads into businesses. Do they want to control the business market? I don't think so. Business is staid and boring. They cling to Microsoft because they know it, and Microsoft caters to business. That's one of the reasons why sales of Windows machines to consumers is falling. Yeah, it really is. Almost all of the profit is out of it. The iPhone makes more money than everything Microsoft makes.

 

[Oletros]

UK laywers seem to reckon the overall ramifications of the judgement are not far-reaching:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18709232

However, Andrew Alton, a lawyer at UK firm Urquhart-Dykes and Lord who used to do work for Apple, said the impact of the London ruling might be limited.


Ups

----------

Google has contributed jelly bean with a knock-off of Siri.

Why is a knock off?

 

[Swift]

Google now is not a siri ripoff. Its an update to google voice search (which has been around longer than siri) and doesn't only do voice search. It also learns you behavior and gives you notifications on traffic before you leave for work and notifications about your favorite sports teams if you look them up a few times. Its very cool and not a siri copy and apple is hardly the first company to have natural speech recognition.

Funny how Google thinks it's a Siri ripoff. Didn't they show a side-by-side comparison with Siri at the I/O conference, bragging about it being faster? (It wasn't in any important way. Siri always repeats what it heard you say, then speaks the result that pops up on screen. Like a sports score.

 

[Oletros]

This is British law. Not American. And it's not what the judge objected to: it was the Siri ripoff.

What siri knock off and what has to do with the UK trial?

----------

Funny how Google thinks it's a Siri ripoff. Didn't they show a side-by-side comparison with Siri at the I/O conference,

Please, stop embarrassing yourself. At least, you can try to inform you a little to not show that you don't know a sh.. what you're writing about

 

[ChazUK]

Who's that "remain disappointed" quote from? Why, Google, I'd bet.

This is British law. Not American. And it's not what the judge objected to: it was the Siri ripoff.

HTC. It's all there in the article.

----------

Funny how Google thinks it's a Siri ripoff. Didn't they show a side-by-side comparison with Siri at the I/O conference, bragging about it being faster? (It wasn't in any important way. Siri always repeats what it heard you say, then speaks the result that pops up on screen. Like a sports score.

Google didn't demo Siri alongside Google Now at I/O. All of the comparison videos have been by third parties.

You sure do seem to assume a lot don't you?

 

[LosAltosHills]

Looks like they pulled it from the Google Play Store. I hope the bickering ends soon.

(1st post)

 

[Sangdushi]

This is bad and apple should feel bad. I have an iPad, macbook air, apple tv, and multiple iPods. I want a nexus for my phone dammit, wanted to order one tonight but I can't. why must you hurt me apple?