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The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday rejected Samsung's request to appeal a $119.6 million verdict awarded to Apple in an over six year old "Slide to Unlock" patent infringement lawsuit, according to Reuters.

slide-to-unlock.jpg

In October 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reinstated Apple's award after a lower court found Samsung to have infringed upon several popular iPhone features, including slide-to-unlock and autocorrect.

The lawsuit, from 2011, is so old that slide-to-unlock isn't even used on iPhones anymore. Unlocking an iPhone on iOS 10 or later requires using Face ID on iPhone X, and Touch ID or pressing the Home button on older iPhone models.

This case is not to be confused with another 2011 lawsuit in which Apple accused Samsung of copying the iPhone's design with its Galaxy-branded smartphones. A damages retrial in that lawsuit is scheduled for next May.

Article Link: U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Samsung's Appeal in Years-Old 'Slide to Unlock' Lawsuit With Apple
 

Kabeyun

macrumors 68040
Mar 27, 2004
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Color me unsurprised that Samsung couldn’t convince the SCOTUS that there’s a compelling constitutional issue at play here.
 
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usarioclave

macrumors 65816
Sep 26, 2003
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I was unaware that there was even a constitutional question here. :rolleyes:
Funnily enough, the SCOTUS did rule in favor of Samsung in that other 2011 case mentioned in the article.

Actually, they didn't really rule in Samsung's favor. They ruled that the amount of damages is not automatic. That isn't necessarily a good thing for Samsung, and it's not a bad thing for Samsung. It may be that the damage award is determined to be all the profits, or not.
 

M.PaulCezanne

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Mar 5, 2014
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The arrogance of silicon valley attorneys never ceases to amaze. How much did they charge to convince Samsung it was worth a shot at the supreme court level where it probably had a less than 1% chance of being heard?

Good grief.
 
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69Mustang

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Actually, they didn't really rule in Samsung's favor. They ruled that the amount of damages is not automatic. That isn't necessarily a good thing for Samsung, and it's not a bad thing for Samsung. It may be that the damage award is determined to be all the profits, or not.
Not sure how you can say the court didn't rule in Sammy's favor. That ruling (unanimous btw) essentially said damages don't have to be calculated on the entire device. That was Samsung's argument all along. That's exactly what Samsung and most of the tech industry wanted. The only thing that didn't go Sammy's way in that ruling was the SCOTUS declining to determine the damages.

True, the damages retrial could go Apple's way. The fact that you know that probably also means that you know it's highly unlikely to happen given the judge has already said the onus will be on Apple to prove they deserve full device damages. If Apple gets to keep half of that $400 million, they'll probably consider that a win.
 

69Mustang

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The arrogance of silicon valley attorneys never ceases to amaze. How much did they charge to convince Samsung it was worth a shot at the supreme court level where it probably had a less than 1% chance of being heard?

Good grief.
This makes no sense at all. They just had the other case heard by the Supreme Court.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/26/apple-vs-samsung-retrial-may-2018/
[doublepost=1509986272][/doublepost]
I wonder if the SCOTUS decision will have any bearing on the decision that will be made for the design retrial.
The SCOTUS is the reason for the new damages trial. They already ruled full device damages are not necessary on multi-component products. They sent the case back to the lower court to have damages calculated based on their ruling.
 
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Carnegie

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May 24, 2012
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The arrogance of silicon valley attorneys never ceases to amaze. How much did they charge to convince Samsung it was worth a shot at the supreme court level where it probably had a less than 1% chance of being heard?

Good grief.

The Supreme Court only grants around 1% of cert petitions. But that rate goes up dramatically when it issues a CVSG (Call for the Views of the Solicitor General), which it did in this case. So it seems this case might have been a closer call.
 

swm

macrumors 6502a
May 29, 2013
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i do miss slide to unlock. do i have to wait until all my face-id attempts fail on iphone x before i get to the pinpad?
 

CEmajr

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Dec 18, 2012
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Samsung already made tons of money from copying Apple, way more than any legal costs so at this point just let it go. It’s done.
 

cmaier

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The arrogance of silicon valley attorneys never ceases to amaze. How much did they charge to convince Samsung it was worth a shot at the supreme court level where it probably had a less than 1% chance of being heard?

Good grief.

Believe it or not, more often than not the attorneys say "you're probably not going to win this" and the client demands the attempt anyway.
 

groovyd

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Jun 24, 2013
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a testament to how bad our system of law is that the feature is no longer even used they are still fighting over.
 

convergent

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May 6, 2008
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120 million USD seems weak for damages. Look at the empire that Samsung has created.

You think Samsung built an empire off of "slide to unlock"? I don't think so. I question how that is even a patent-able thing.

I do sports photography and there is a company that has a patent for organizing photos of sports participants based on a tag number (like runners, bikers, etc..). They go after any photographer that creates a gallery of sports photos organized by tag number.

When patents are awarded for very simplistic common sense things, it really creates the environment for these ongoing patent cases that benefit no one but the lawyers.
 
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kdarling

macrumors P6
a testament to how bad our system of law is that the feature is no longer even used they are still fighting over.

What's even dumber is that a court had thrown out this award, declaring that the patent was invalid.

An appeals court later reinstated the award, saying that the other court used information that wasn't available to the jury in the original trial. (Prior art etc.) Therefore the ignorant jury's decision should stand.

So instead of justice based on more knowledge, you get a decision based solely on blindly following rules.

It might be legally correct, but it fails the common sense test.
 
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