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Decision in Apple v. Samsung Appeal Lowers Apple's Damages Award
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Then you will be glad to know that there is not theft involved in this case
Will not be long before the lawyers make more money out of this case than apple gets out of Samsung.
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Wonder how many people on here being righteous, also download via torrent. Just a thought, given you brought up theft
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Wonder how many people on here being righteous, also download via torrent. Just a thought, given you brought up theft
What did they steal? Did they start putting Galaxy Tabs I'm iPad boxes? Did they load iPads with Android? No? They made similar products and packed them in similar boxes? It'd be like if you said Marvel should be thrown in jail for "stealing Deathstroke" when they made Deadpool. >_>;
It was more then just the color white. When you have a white box with a picture of the product AND similar.... USB charger...earbuds...same orientation of headphone jack/speaker grill/USB...glass front/back/aluminum...similar white external antenna wires...finger print sensor setup screen ( List goes on forever ) Any one by themselves might not be, but put them all together its blatantly obvious.
Size is not indicative to any one company. A design change by Apple is a well thought out process. A big size phone that can still be used by one hand is much harder to do. A software solution fixed that problem before it was implemented.
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Apple loses patent lawsuits fairly often. Are you saying that they should also be fined according to their wealth?
That's a good question. The answer is, the claimed trade dress was neither patented nor trademarked. Apple claimed the following unregistered trade dress as being theirs alone:
- a rectangular product with four evenly rounded corners;
- a flat, clear surface covering the front of the product;
- a display screen under the clear surface;
- substantial black borders above and below the display screen and narrower black borders on either side of the screen;
- when the device is on, a row of small dots on the display screen, a matrix of colorful square icons with evenly rounded corners within the display screen, and an unchanging bottom dock of colorful square icons with evenly rounded corners set off from the display’s other icons.
Right away, anyone can figure out that most of that is also functional, and thus not protectable. Rounded corners for easier handling, a flat surface for easy touch, and borders for holding the device and internal components.
As for the rows of icons and a dock, Apple did not invent those. And the dots served a functional purpose.
It also didn't help that Apple never promoted these elements in advertisements, which I pointed out during the trial as usually being a requirement for claiming trade dress.
(Prestone lost a case when a small company started selling anti-freeze in similar shaped yellow bottles. Turns out that Prestone ads had never said anything like "Look for our yellow jug." Instead, they only promoted their brandname. Likewise, Apple promoted their apps and brandname, not the shape of the iPhone nor its icons.)
That's likely one reason why Cook decided to drop most of the lawsuits.
Apple's stashing away billions of dollars no matter what others do. All that the lawsuits did was make Samsung the underdog, and devalue or even invalidate some Apple patents.
So much for Jobs' declaration of thermonuclear war. "Sometimes the only winning move, is not to play."
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What's silly is that things like shapes and such are actually something that can be patented. And, sillier is that Apple and probably other companies try to patent things that make zero sense and simply hurt consumers by shutting out other players for all the wrong reasons.
Ultimately, the consumers suffer so don't go playing the poor old Apple card. Their eleventy trillion dollars in cash hidden in some offshore account makes it all better.
What's ironic is iPhones look more like Samsung Galaxies these days. iPhones have long been tiny screen with squared off sides like sardine cans. More ironic will be the day a future iPhone comes with OLED display, split screen multitasking, precision pen, etc. like the 2011 Galaxy Note.
There's no crime involved (except perhaps in your mind). There's no fine. This is a civil suit. The penalty is for remediation, not punishment. That's why it's called "damages."
No but the white box with an image of the device covering the entirety of the top of the box seemed to be enough of a violation of the trade dress for Samsung to be found in infringement.
Has Samsung been found to be infringing due to the packaging of the Galaxy tab box?
I know in the TV world, many different TV brands are sold in a white or brown box with a big picture of the TV on the box. The same goes with many other products, and in some case the packaging is in a clear so you can see the actually product.
If Samsung sold a device with a picture of an actual apple product, I would agree that be an infringement.
Thanks for posting this. I distinctly remember Samsung showing those images right after the iPhone came out as they actually were working on very similar devices previously and concurrently.
Not that I know of.
Packaging is pretty much the most meaningless argument around, especially for expensive smartphones, which are NOT commonly sold from shelves full of boxes that anybody can pick from.
In other words, people are not deceived by similar smartphone packaging. On the contrary, you pick out the phone model by name first, then a salesperson goes and gets a new box from hidden storage.
Ditto times infinity for how the box interior is laid out, or what a charger or cable looks like. None of these things are usually seen by consumers ahead of time, nor are used to decide what device to buy.
Exactly. When I walk into Best Buy or Walmart or Microcenter to buy a big screen TV, I'm looking for brand, specs, price, not which box it's in.
More importantly, trade dress laws are meant to protect people from outright deliberate deception (like a fake Gucci bag), not from being lazy. One big example was when the makers of Excedrin PM sued Tylenol PM for using a similar name, shape and colors:
Looks like an open-and-shut case, but Excedrin lost, because 1) they never advertised the packaging, just the merits of their brand... and 2) the brand names themselves are famous enough (like Apple and Samsung) that the judges decided a diligent consumer who was specifically looking for Excedrin PM would look specifically for that name, not the packaging.
(I believe this is why Samsung usually puts their name fairly prominently on their devices. Courts around the world have ruled that this is more than enough to alert the consumer as to the maker. Nobody can claim they bought a smartphone with "Samsung" on the front but thought it was made by Apple. The law does not protect outright stupidity.)
The cost of an item is a factor as well. Someone spending hundreds of dollars on an item like a smartphone is legally expected to take much more care than someone spending a few dollars on pills. And no court will help you if your wife sends you out to buy a Mercedes, but you come home with a Hyundai because "they looked similar"
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Ahuh, Android is fragmenting itself into oblivion alright:
Show me that chart again in 12m.
What's silly is that things like shapes and such are actually something that can be patented. And, sillier is that Apple and probably other companies try to patent things that make zero sense and simply hurt consumers by shutting out other players for all the wrong reasons.
Ultimately, the consumers suffer so don't go playing the poor old Apple card. Their eleventy trillion dollars in cash hidden in some offshore account makes it all better.
Well I wasn't referring to just Apple. Companies do this all the time and pay such small damages ALL THE TIME. That's why they keep doing it. Just makes no sense to me. Raise the damages amounts and maybe they'd start taking themselves seriously.
For reference, it's similar to a law enforcement officer writing us $10 speeding tickets, over and over. Would you stop? Isn't it worth the $10 to get to where you were going faster? It's worth the millions to Samsung as well.
If the situation is no so different, will you stop repeating this nonsense?Show me that chart again in 12m.
This gave me a headache.
I guess its important to note that Samsung is Korean.
Who built and designed the components inside the iPhone?
Oh yeah, Samsung.