I seriously can't believe how much money Apple has been able to troll out of those rounded corners and that end-of-list overscroll effect.
And now, to top it off, iOS 7 is built on the holo-principles of Android. It's almost like Apple is doing it merely to taunt its foreign competitors, saying very, very clearly: "Sorry guys. I'm untouchable".
Utterly disgusting.
At least their attempts to outright ban products have been less successful as of late. There's some hope for a civilized world.
This is the stuff that gets missed in these debates. It's not like Apple's attorneys got up in front of the jury, drew a rectangle with rounded corners, wrote PATENTED across it, then sat down.
Rather, stuff like what you linked to is what causes juries to award $1 billion. E-mails along the lines of "let's make this look more like the iPhone." Presentations along the lines of "why isn't this more like the iPhone?" Surveys along the lines of "75% of people thought this looked like an iPhone." Market data on customer confusion, etc.
This particular presentation is pure gold. Slide after slide that basically convinces the jury that Samsung didn't "play fair" and copied someone else's work instead of doing their own.
You know what else gets tossed out of these debates by Apple patent defenders? The fact that Samsung is continuing to have success in invaliding the patents they are being sued for:
>The Patent Office has been re-examining the claims of the '915 patent, and Apple recently responded to the agency's questions. However, in the document filed by the Patent Office on Wednesday, the group said that it "respectfully disagrees" with Apple's claims about the technology and that Apple's arguments "are not persuasive."
>The Patent Office comments don't invalidate the '915 patent but mean that Apple will have to provide more information and argue for the validity of the patent.
Except not really. This isn't actually "final" in any way shape or form. USPTO reexaminations have to pass preponderance (aka, better than 50%) which is a terribly low bar and the Federal Circuit has a higher standard required. Apple can still amend and clarify claims to reinstate the patent.
It was not a pardon but a dismissal of an injunction, Samsung can still get paid appropriate royalties by a Federal Court (the FTC's only sanction is an import ban so it would need to be a separate action)
Samsung promised to license those on FRAND terms, Apple will pay what a court sets as FRAND rate. An injunction in such circumstances would probably be a illegal anti-competitive action (at least that is the EU view and that of many US organisations too).
Also there is currently no injunction in this case against Samsung at this point.
Note that in the absence of rules including FRAND licensing commitments standards setting bodies would be illegal trusts which is why this is especially relevant.
It's actually interesting to me to look at those slides and see just how far Android has come along in the past few years.
There are some really awful mistakes in those slides, like buttons being cut off when the keyboard pops up, or things breaking when you rotate the phone.
I seriously can't believe that there is an entire sub-culture of people that are still trollololing about 'rounded corners' without understanding the context.
Design Patents are Different than Technology Patents.
I'm not arguing for or against patents (personally, I think they're an abomination), only against 'group think' from people choosing a 'team' and then using propaganda to reinforce their positions.
At this point, for most people watching this from outside of the US, it looks like protectionism racket disguised as a legal verdict. Samsung is eating Apple's lunch and the US is trying to stop that. The US gov keeps pushing for more free market worldwide (which is great), except that when one of its industries or great companies is in danger because of international competition, protectionism is the way. How can they be taken seriously?
It's not protectionism, but rather an attempt to enforce particular rules of the game in the face of changing economic profiles.
In a nutshell, American IP policy is predicated on the understanding that the production of IP is America's competitive advantage. The U.S. can't compete with asian countries for low-cost manufacturing, but still dominates when it comes to software, design, etc. There is a reason phones designed and built in China run software written in California.
Thus, the U.S. wants to enforce rules that treat design as a protectable asset. The reasoning is this: if Apple spends a bunch of money coming up with a really effective design, Samsung shouldn't just be able to get the benefit of that work for free. It's the mirror of the physical property rules which ensure that if Samsung invests a bunch of money in some new manufacturing facility, Apple can't just get the benefit of that work for free.
I think such suits will become more common as developed economies keep transitioning away from manufacturing. The law quite easily protects the output of China's industrial production (physical things). It's not as effective in protecting the output of America's industries (content, designs).
There's no IP for fashion. And I think the world is a better place if everyone copies GUI design and makes things consistent. Remember that the point of IP is to serve the public at large.
As another non-US citizen I have to agree with Patrick. The US legal system looks like it has gone out of its way to punish the foreign competitor. Or more to the point, the jury in this case. Did anyone expect a bunch of US citizens to support a Korean company competing with a US icon like Apple?
As a New Zealander, this whole affair seems like a load of US-centric BS to me.
Doesn't have to be the judge. Did you read interviews from members of the jury? They were like "yeah, apple is awesome and even though there were prior art, it was on different device so yeah, apple is awesome and all their claims are valid, let's make samsung pay a billion dollar".
> for most people watching this from outside of the US, it looks like protectionism racket disguised as a legal verdict.
If that is so, how would you explain that Apple has gotten several injunctions (Australia, Germany, Netherlands) and won lawsuits against Samsung outside of the US? Even in South Korea a court ruled that Samsung had infringed on Apple’s patents. Also, let’s not forget, Apple is far from the only company suing Samsung over mobile patents.
So we're going to ignore the German and EU patent battles that Apple has won against Samsung? Way to provide not only biased but willfully wrong information in order to support your argument
I think if you "can't believe" it might be beneficial to read the case and the patents in depth. It's a little more nuanced than is presented in most articles I've seen.
It might help move you to "I disagree, but I can see how..."
It isn't 'trolling' if you are actually using the patents in your products. You don't have to agree with the lawsuit, but please quit diluting the term.
While I can see cases where a sharp divide mightn't make sense (token feature or token product) this is prominent look & feel in a flagship product. Which is to say "I agree" - I have mostly negative sentiments about patents in general and this one in particular, it's not really fair to call this "trolling".
If illegally copying those things and being more iPhone like than other Android devices had any bearing on Samsung getting their current market position then it was a bargain even at a billion dollars. Apple and Samsung are both raking in billions every quarter; you have to consider the market size when considering the appropriate penalty.
Also note that both sides had many more patents that they thought applied but had to be selective and discard many early in the case. They got to choose the most promising ones but it is hit and miss. There may be many more patents that would actually have applied.
I can't tell if this was an out of line assessment of the jury selection, or an actual description of what happened during deliberation...
The six-woman, two-man jury deliberated for part of three days before returning its verdict. During that time, the jury requested additional paper and pens and better lunch, as well as a copy of the sketches of them done by a courtroom artist.
As for the lawyers in the class; if a jury starts showing signs that they're overall uninterested in the trial (i.e.: asking for their courtroom portraits), what can litigators do to combat this? Is the only course to appeal for the case to be dismissed? Does it get retried if the jury is found to be negligent?
I don't feel ashamed at all. The iPhone is literally a better and more pleasant phone to use/develop for in my opinion. That's why I buy it, and probably will continue to buy it.
A lot of companies sue over dumb shit - Samsung included. That's the nature of the corporate battleground. I really don't care as long as they aren't suing end users for things that I do with a phone (which includes pretty much every thing you can do with a phone).
I just don't see what's wrong with it. Evaluating a competitor's product and improving on/comparing with your own is what any company should be doing... Especially since a lot of the comparisons are pretty much statements of the obvious, too.
I'd bet Samsung didn't really have a well developed UX design group behind their software/UI initially. Then they were brought to their senses by a competitor and did a thorough analysis and comparison to improve their products and compete. I just can't see what's wrong with that.
You have to be careful when evaluating your product vs a competitor, when you're talking about HCI - especially when you know that your competitor (Apple) has sued over look and feel before.
I'd bet that had Samsung done an analysis of the iPhone that was evaluating the first-principles and then had a separate team work from those first-principles to design a clean UI they would have been much better off. Really though, having emails and presentations that say "we need to make our phone more like the iPhone" is pretty damning. It seems like they've done a better job recently when they just go and do their own thing.
I'm glad that the laws reward those who invest time and money to be first to market with new ideas. These laws also force the competition to not merely copy, but to actually compete with new ideas.
You feel "sorry" for a multi-billion dollar family owned conglomerate that's existed since 1938?
Though I don't believe anything "intellectual" should be property, I buy products because they are good, period. As long as Apple continues to make better products, I'll continue to buy them without any sense of shame whatsoever.
I miss Groklaw. The site owner used to recruit volunteers from the readers to go to the courtroom and write up accounts of the proceedings every day. It was more up to date and informative than the supposedly professional media outlets.
It was never as good with the patent issues especially when Google were involved it never felt balanced (with SCO there really wasn't any need for balance or bias as SCO were so far out there you could report it straight and still have clear bad guys).
It was fine for Oracle v. Google as reporting that one straight provided an obvious bad guy, too.
And Samsung v. Apple I also provides many obvious bad guys if you follow the case and understand the industry and read the patents. Apple's claims are garbage but Samsung had so much contempt for the process that they let their lawyers utterly fail to make the case. The judge lost control of the case and ended up with vague and useless jury instructions and a self-contradictory verdict (parts had to be retried recently). The jury foreman admitted to bias and misconduct in public interviews. The PTO keeps gyrating back and forth in 'final' decisions about the validity and meaning of claims to patents at issue. I never saw coverage anywhere else but Groklaw about most of the pathetic failures in the case.
Let's hope the Apple ][ and Apple /// cases are handled better.
The Motorola v. Microsoft case, on the other hand, revealed bizarre bias on the part of Groklaw. Even when Microsoft was obviously right, Groklaw manufactured sympathy for Googlerola on every issue.
But that's not really the question. The essential thing about Groklaw was that they would recruit volunteer reporters to go to court and make extensive and informative reports about what really happened they very same day. Nobody else's reporting ever came close.
I'm not even sure about that one. Oracle are a bad guy (always) but I'm not sure Google weren't one too in that particular case. If you replay the situation in your head imagining MS in the Google role and Sun in the Oracle role would you have felt the same way?
I think the conclusion that API's are not copyrightable is pretty much preposterous from my understanding of copyright law. A decision that there was a 'fair use' right to copy API's for compatibility purposes would have been an interesting and probably valuable development although I'm not sure Dalvik would have applied here.
Groklaw's example API to explain what API's (adding numbers I think) was also applied when considering whether there was creativity in expression and correctly the conclusion was that there isn't in the case of adding but then Groklaw inappropriately extrapolated this view to all API's.
The court reporting could be useful though you are right. Florian Mueller (http://www.fosspatents.com/) attends some of the German ones and I find his reporting on the patent cases very good. Groklaw seemed to have taken the view that you couldn't believe a word he said but I never quite understood why (although it might have been the Oracle v. Google case as he didn't see it the Groklaw way and had at some point consulted for Oracle).
I think the original amount was cut to $600 million so the total would be $890 million. I don't think Apple is too concerned about the size of the judgement either way.
Q: How much money is this retrial about?
A: It's about a replacement amount for a $410 million portion of the August 2012 $1.049 billion verdict. The replacement amount could be more or less than the original one. Apple will be awarded (subject to an appeal) $639 million plus the replacement amount.
FOSSpatents is not a legitimate source of news on patent cases. The writer was revealed to be a paid shill available to the highest bidder during the Google v. Oracle trial when the judge forced Oracle to admit supporting his site as a false front.
FOSS is a a good if not great source for mobile patent litigation. Yes, he accepted money from Oracle because he's a goddamn consultant and does the blog to promote both his work and general knowledge. Florian's opinions have turned out to be correct most of the times; he has his finger firmly on the pulse of mobile patent litigation and covers it better than any other person.
But let's be honest, the value of bouncy scroll - as in the cost for an independent invention to come up with something equally good would have been hundreds of millions, so at least it's reasonable, even if it's unethical.
And now, to top it off, iOS 7 is built on the holo-principles of Android. It's almost like Apple is doing it merely to taunt its foreign competitors, saying very, very clearly: "Sorry guys. I'm untouchable".
Utterly disgusting.
At least their attempts to outright ban products have been less successful as of late. There's some hope for a civilized world.