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Samsung Ordered to Pay Apple $539 Million in iPhone Design Patent Retrial

Theft is a strong word when the devices are so extremely different.

Theft would be recreating a device, like for like. Pretty much how Samsung did in this case. Please do show me an iPhone and any of these pocket PCs running side by side and show me how they have copied it. From what I can see, they created their own software, original hardware (unlike any PPC I’ve seen, except that it has a screen and runs programs... like any other computer). Where does the ridiculousness of “Apple stole everything” end?
Shaun said:
One mans inspiration is another mans theft. Apple have always stolen ideas from other companies.
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CerebralX said:
At last the dust settles...for half a billion less....but settled none the least.
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I hope that it is settled, $500 million is lot of money, this is going to drag on for ever.

Update: Samsung also gave a statement on the verdict: "Today's decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages. We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity."
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seatton said:
Samsung likes to copy Apple... however, they are still smart enough not to copy Siri... :D
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Brixby is worst than Siri no nothing to brag about it.
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bladerunner2000 said:
Pay it and end this circus. Can't believe Apple got away with owning rounded corners.
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It is not rounded corners though, just the whole design, for a while Samsung phones were a carbon copy of iPhones.
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grkm3 said:
Apple argued that the payment should be of the whole value of the device?

They are such hypocrites as they are trying to do exactly what samsung did with Qualcomm.
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I Don't think you understand the issue here.
Apple vs Samsung is for copying design.

Apple vs Qualcomm: Qualcomm is demanding to pay X% of the device cost for using their chips in the phones.
Generally ARM and other companies expect royalty based on the count, like if Apple use X number of ARM processors in their iPhones then ARM expects y% of X (number) from Apple as royalty. but Qualcomm is expecting y% of (X * Z$).
Actually Samsung is supporting Apple in this case Apple vs Qualcomm.
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mi7chy said:
Sad thing is most people on here are too young to have ever touched or heard of one. I had a Compaq iPaq with a 3G data/voice compact flash card so it was the forefather to smartphones/phablets.
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Compaq iPaq and Original iPhone are not even close in looks.
 
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citysnaps said:
That's all well and good, but again, as I care a lot about color (a photographer), I much prefer the LCD display in my 6+ over the OLED display in my iPhone X.

Curious...do you happen to have an iPhone X?
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nope. No headphone jack :p

Have had hands on at least. brilliant display.
 
I can just see Tim's face now "No one can use my round corners."

Apple should get into the beer industry, they'd make a fortune in court cases.
 
AppleRus said:
Am I the only one who thinks these both look remarkably similar?
(photo of power cables)
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Yes, but nobody cares, because nobody buys a tablet based on the way its power cable looks :rolleyes:

Besides, that's not even a unique design. Now, if someone copied the way Apple's MagSafe looked, then you'd have something.

raghu8912 said:
I hope that it is settled, $500 million is lot of money, this is going to drag on for ever.
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It's not the money, or even the infringement, it's the principle of the award amount calculation.

A jury deciding that one or two design patents, out of all the thousands of designs found in a smartphone, is worth the ENTIRE PROFITS from a phone, makes a mockery of justice.

This could come back to bite Apple one day as well. Imagine if the Swiss Railroad had had a US design patent (instead of a trademark) on their clockface design that Apple used. Using the same award concepts would mean that Apple could in theory be liable for their entire iPhone profits over that one image.

Such awards lack common sense when applied to modern devices made up of tens of thousands of patented ideas.

It is not rounded corners though, just the whole design, for a while Samsung phones were a carbon copy of iPhones.
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This is like the way kids these days constantly misuse "literally". As in, "It literally looked the same!"

Hardly. They were not "carbon copies", which are clones designed to look exactly like an iPhone. Instead, they designed as close to the same look as they thought they could _without_ being a carbon copy, which is a lot more work. And they certainly didn't work the same. For example, I never saw an iPhone with a homescreen widget, or a Back button:

iphone-4-vs-samsung-galaxy-s.png

Anyone who thinks those two devices are clones, needs their eyes examined.

As for the idea that the patents were of the "whole design", again no. Two of the patents were about rounded rectangles. The third was about colorful icons in a grid.

As it turns out, the jury agreed with Samsung's lawyers that the rounded rectangle patents only applied to the display, and apportioned awards thusly. However, the jury agreed with Apple's lawyers that the icon grid applied to the whole device, and thus awarded full profits. See above for why this is still not appropriate.
 
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LordVic said:
nope. No headphone jack :p

Have had hands on at least. brilliant display.
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Next time you have one to look at, tilt the display left/right or up/down back and forth a few degrees off-axis. You'll see a color shift towards cyan/blue.

I came close to returning it, but was super-stoked with everything else about the phone and decided to keep it.

Looking forward to Apple's entry in to MicroLED display, hopefully in the near future.
 
kdarling said:
Hardly. They were not "carbon copies", which are clones designed to look exactly like an iPhone. Instead, they designed as close to the same look as they thought they could _without_ being a carbon copy, which is a lot more work. And they certainly didn't work the same. For example, I never saw an iPhone with a homescreen widget, or a Back button:

View attachment 763053

Anyone who thinks those two devices are clones, needs their eyes examined.

As for the idea that this trial was about the "whole design", again, no it was not. Two of the patents were about rounded rectangles. The third was about colorful icons in a grid.

As it turns out, the jury agreed with Samsung that the rounded rectangle patents only applied to the display, and apportioned awards thusly. However, the jury agreed with Apple that the icon grid applied to the whole device, and thus awarded full profits. See above for why this is still not appropriate.
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Completely agree. That one picture they keep showing with grid of apps is completely misleading as well because unlike apple, that was not what the user was presented with on Samsung devices when they turned on their phone.
 
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kdarling said:
Here are the three design patents in question:

View attachment 762987

As you can see, the first one was for a rounded rectangle with a rectangular screen and rounded speaker hole. You can see why it was later invalidated by the USPTO, but until that decision is made final, the jury isn't clued in, and Apple gets money for it anyway.

The second one was for a flat rounded rectangle with bezel and round home button. (The lack of a round home button on the Samsungs should've been enough to dismiss this one, but apparently not with California juries.)

Now let's look at some Korean smartphone prior art that Apple made sure the jury never saw:

View attachment 762988

In case you forgot, the iPhone came out in 2007. Hmm. Flat, rounded rectangle with bezel and rounded speaker hole. Even round home buttons and an icon grid. Yet, Apple claims it invented these shapes?

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But that's just one problem with this whole mess. The more important one with this retrial was the idea of whether or not such Design Patents should be worth the ENTIRE profits... which gives design patents (which are visual only) awards power waaaay above regular utility patents (which implement something and usually award per their contribution to the whole).

Naturally, liberal arts designers think their work should be worth everything; far more than engineering patents. The problem with that is, it means even the designer of a single icon could sue Apple for ALL its iPhone profits. Worse, it means in theory that EACH AND EVERY icon owner could sue Apple for all its iPhone profits. Yep, multiple awards of the entire profits.

How on earth does that make any sense? Answer: it doesn't. Congress needs to rethink this hundred year old law, which was created back when products used a single design patent.
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The pideon lol.
Have you seen it turned on?
Looks nothing like an iPhone.

1a4abbe7de4a656ebcd38293e7705bc2.jpg


4664c43a034330cc4e1dc131bdbaa8a7.jpg


af1b891643add7ad05d2d8bc9fbe112e.jpg



Wow its pretty thick for having a 2.8 inch screen
8ae104800e97269372580472eb8fd7e2.jpg
 
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FFR said:
The pideon lol.
Have you seen it turned on?
Looks nothing like an iPhone.
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Apparently you don't understand some of the design patents in question.

Apple did not patent the 3D iPhone shape and use that in the trials. The Galaxy differed enough that it would not have infringed.

Instead, Apple patented vague design elements like rounded rectangles with rounded rectangular speaker slots and bezels.

If similarly shaped prior art as the Pidion and Samsung's internal R&D had been allowed, even a California jury would've found it hard to think Apple invented such shapes.

For instance, can you imagine how differently the California trial might've turned out if the jury had seen Samsung's 2006 "Ireen" concept UI?

samsung_ui_concept-png.643508

Or knowing that Samsung had actually sold an all-touch phone a year before the iPhone was sold?

2006_samsung_sgh-z610-png.643516


If Apple was so sure its designs were unique, their lawyers would not have been worried about the jury seeing such prior art.
 
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kdarling said:
Apparently you don't understand some of the design patents in question.

Apple did not patent the 3D iPhone shape and use that in the trials. The Galaxy differed enough that it would not have infringed.

Instead, Apple patented vague design elements like rounded rectangles with rounded rectangular speaker slots and bezels.

If similarly shaped prior art as the Pidion and Samsung's internal R&D had been allowed, even a California jury would've found it hard to think Apple invented such shapes.

For instance, can you imagine how differently the California trial might've turned out if the jury had seen Samsung's 2006 "Ireen" concept UI?

samsung_ui_concept-png.643508

Or knowing that Samsung had actually sold an all-touch phone a year before the iPhone was sold?

2006_samsung_sgh-z610-png.643516


If Apple was so sure its designs were unique, their lawyers would not have been worried about the jury seeing such prior art.
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The court system operates in strange and mysterious ways...doesn’t it?
 
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FFR said:
That cost Samsung about $818 million dollars.
So no.
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so you speak for the person I quoted? Since you didn't make the post I was referring to...i'll take that as a no.....
I don't think you even understand what the trial was about based on your posts.
 
jamezr said:
so you speak for the person I quoted? Since you didn't make the post I was referring to...i'll take that as a no.....
I don't think you even understand what the trial was about based on your posts.
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I don’t know
Who you quoted or which side of the argument you are on, but regardless. Fact is, Apple won. I think we can stop clutching at straws and take the courts order (for now, at least).
 
samsung should pay more. today, they wouldn't have half the market they hold if they weren't so incredibly pathetic and unscrupulous.
 
AnthonyHarris said:
I don’t know
Who you quoted or which side of the argument you are on, but regardless. Fact is, Apple won. I think we can stop clutching at straws and take the courts order (for now, at least).
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i not sure what you mean by clutching at straws. Can you show me my posts when i clutched at straws?
 
rafark said:
Sam-sung should halt the production of their screens to Apple.
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It looks like Apple is trying to get away from Samsung displays as fast as possible. They want to produce their own in-house. Hence the article on Friday about scoping out display engineers en masse. The competition is heating up between Apple and Samsung!
 
jamezr said:
so you speak for the person I quoted? Since you didn't make the post I was referring to...i'll take that as a no.....
I don't think you even understand what the trial was about based on your posts.
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Guess you didn’t like the answer.

It’s not about $818 million dollars?
What is it about then?
 
AnthonyHarris said:
I don’t know
Who you quoted or which side of the argument you are on, but regardless. Fact is, Apple won. I think we can stop clutching at straws and take the courts order (for now, at least).
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Pretty much on point.
I don’t think he will ever stop clutching at straws.
 
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