Apple wins second round of Samsung patent slugfest Apple has won a round of their ongoing battle with Samsung, scoring a complete four-patent victory at the US International Trade Commission. Samsung had filed the case with the trade arbitrators alleging that Apple, with the production of its iPhone and iPad, had infringed upon four of the Korean smartphone and tablet maker's …
@AC 22:54
What's this? The enemy of my friend is my enemy? I'm the first to admit I'm no fan of Apple, but I'm equally no fan of Android either. I was referring to the shitbrained Woz-haters on the MDN article's comments. Either you didn't bother checking that out, or you did, chose to interpret my comment as anti-Apple rhetoric and arrived at the retarded, blinkered fanboy conclusion that I must of course be a "Fandroid". Either way you're a blithering idiot.
Man, the quality of comments here is going further down the tubes every day.
With apologies to everyone here who is not AC 22:54 or his/her ilk.
This post has been deleted by its author
Most comments there are actually quite reasonable, with the a few exceptions. It's a known fact that Woz's business acumen is not that great. He's a genius, but spoiled, engineer who got lucky with whom he partnered in business.
If he had stayed with HP or some other company, or even went solo, he wouldn't be sitting in the pile of cash he has now and probably no one would even ask him for the time of day. Maybe he should appreciate that a bit more instead of going around shouting out opinions about stuff outside of his expertise. That's what I got from the comments anyway, and is true imho.
Agree mostly with that, which is why I made no value judgement on Woz's statement.
> Woz ... got lucky with whom he partnered in business.
Likewise you could say Jobs also got lucky - very lucky - with whom he partnered in business. If not for guys like Woz then guys like Steve go nowhere, and vice versa. For startups, it's the genius/spoiled/lucky engineers' free exchange of ideas that creates the products to be sold in the first place. There has to be a bit of give and take. Apple is busy killing that ethos for corporate gain. It's shitty behaviour, but it's what corporations do and whilst it won't be the end of Apple, they will become Microsoft. All that remains to figure out is whether or not Google will beat them to it.
Woz is okay. But he's also pretty blinkered and overstates Apple's success and involvement in the early days of home computing. In reality it was Commodore and MOS technology who were driving it all, anything using a 6502 CPU owes its success to Chuck Peddle and Commdore/MOS.
Woz wasn't even a proper engineer until he went back to finish off his degree.
Chuck Peddle had to get his Apple 1 working and Apple were only allowed to sell it after removing video output jack as the computer created so much RF interference that it wasn't authorised to be sold complete.
"The lesson is, if you want to get relief against Apple, it's going to have to be in a foreign forum where it doesn't have the clout or the cachet it has at the ITC or the northern district of California."
LMFAO. So justice is NOT blind in the USA? I thought it was just their brain-damaged patent system that was the problem, but if this guy is to be believed (and it's a big IF) it's the entire US Justice system that's SNAFU.
blinkered fanboyism here on the Reg
There is no blinkered fanboyism on elReg, if you want to see blinkered fanboyism, have a look at the documentary "MacHEADS".
I found the film somewhat disturbing, because these 'fanbois' are more than just fans, they are cultists, it is the The Cult of Mac.
The Steve Jobs reality distortion field seems to have affected some people rather badly judging by their contributions[1],
(1) "Steve knows what we want and he gives it to us"
(2) A musician who could not be creative unless she was using a Mac. I can't rmember her name but she was dressed like a member of the Nox
(3) Guy Kawasaki's title at crApple was "chief evangelist". WTF!!!! It's a computer, but this guy has a religious title!!!!!
(4) A Macintosh museum, where after showing row after row of Original Macintosh (colour beige) , Mackintosh II (colour beige), Mackintosh portables (colour beige), Classic Mackintosh (colour beige), Mackintosh 128Ks (colour beige), Apple Lisas' (colour beige) and a pile of other crap (all colour beige) I didn't recognise, calmly states that apple are "fighting against the beige banality of IBM". Worst case of the reality distortion field I've ever seen.
(5) This is the best one of all; a comment from Violet Blue, a Mac blogger and sex columnist, right at the start of the program who states that "I've never knowingly slept with a Windows user".
There are more examples I could give you but give the program a look yourself, it's not a particularly good bit of program making but it does give an insight into the insular world of the real fanboi.
[1] Doing this from memory so may not be exactly what they said, except (5) - Google it.
... just accept that the American market is broken beyond repair. If you aren't a US company things are stacked against you in any legal disputes to such an extent that it really isn't worth the hassle. If your products are geared towards consumers then don't even bother trying to sell to them. It's a big world out there so focus elsewhere, just leave their market alone and wait for it to implode in a haze of mediocrity. And yes, I do own an IT company so I realise the price being paid to make that stand and will do it anyway.
You seem to be misunderstanding the situation as Apple being able to always win in a given location != Apple being unable to lose elsewhere. The point was that when the 'home advantage' is as severe as it is in this case, sometimes it just isn't worth the effort to play there, meaning that for the sake of short term profit a situation is created where the whole notion of a free market is undermined and there is a detrimental effect on innovation because of a lack of genuine competition. The only people who are going to suffer as a result of that are the consumers in countries that encourage this sort of protectionism and quite frankly, as they've collectively voted for the people who are allowing this to continue, I don't have a huge amount of sympathy.
@ AC 22:50:
"Actually the lesson is ... just accept that the American market is broken beyond repair. If you aren't a US company things are stacked against you in any legal disputes to such an extent that it really isn't worth the hassle"
Sadly that has been my approach even with my own small software company; too many possible risks in that market, mostly involving lawyers, which is why the insurance companies ask 'will you be doing business in the United States', and if so, the cost doubles compared to doing business with the rest of the world!
You have got to love the almost angry devotion that the apple cultists here have. Even during the darkest days of the Microsoft era the fanboys weren't this rabid. My guess is that the fanboy cultists know their time is going to be very short before apple's hubris rebounds on them, probably when the rest of the world decides to give apple a much deserved patent enema. I am looking forward to that. Even Microsoft's collapse is not nearly as satisfying as watching the fall of the cult of Jobs.
I would have to concur with the AC, that if you look at the comments or votes on any of the Apple related articles the majority of commenters/voters take an anti-Apple stance. It also seems that most initial comments are in the same vein. Objectively, anyone can review the comments and measure this themselves, but please let me know if my casual observation is incorrect.
Or maybe apple just arent liked by the average reg reader any more. It's a democracy. If anti apple sentiments exist it's because people don't agree with apple... The days of the cool, witty and wily underdog are gone, welcome the new snide and über confident megacorp.
I had a 3GS, own a 4S and will go for the 5. I have a Cube, a PowerBook, a mac mini, a PowerMac and a brace of G4/5/intel iMacs and yet, if someone were to ask my, "would you recommend Apple?" I could no longer say, "yes" with a clear conscience.
Love product, hate company... In the words of Father Ted, a shower of bastards...they honestly make me sick, the direction they have taken... With theor petty and ultimately self defeating patent war... All the kings men springs to mind...
/rant
You're damn right we're angry.
We're angry because we're sick of corrupt, greedy, biased, Apple-share-owning-bought-and-paid-for judges, politicians and lawyers perverting and destroying justice systems the world over to further Apple's holy grail of being the only fucking electronics corp on the planet.
We're sick of the endless perversion and abuse of the patent system by a corporation that makes Niccolo Machiavelli and Gille de Rais look like fucking Mother Theresa and Mohandas Ghandi.
We're sick of their corporate-terrorism-supporting fanboi retards buying their shit and making them this powerful. There used to be such a thing as choice, where you could decide what brand you wanted to buy. But noooo, fanboi idiots would rather one company to rule them all and no choice at all because making such decisions taxes the single neuron possessed by appletards too much.
One day, that anger will spill over. The huge number of people who actually possess more than one brain cell who like the right to choose, will turn on Apple and tear them and their fanboi supporters to pieces. I live in hope and anticipation of that day.
One post on a forum outdoes the endless hype, fanaticism and free advertising from the near entirety of the mainstream media?
One post on a forum where it's on-topic to discuss phones outdoes all the people who'll randomly tell you they have an Iphone, Ipad - when they first buy it, every day when they use it, or when the CEO dies - whether it's to evangelise, or what it's a completely irrelevant comment? If you say so.
And an opposition to fanaticism isn't fanaticism - it's just being fed up of the whole thing.
You are one of those 'hate anyone successful' people - cup half empty as well?
Perhaps stop for a second and consider these courts are not corrupt and perhaps they genuinely have a case and how you would feel if you spend a load of time and money developing something only for Samsung or someone to come along and (blatantly) rip it off.
No-one is saying don't make a phone but you don't need it to look so similar and have such similar functionality and Samsung are just another corporate gorilla - they are trying to sue over their patents (but mostly failing).
Claiming judges are corrupt is just desperate anti-Apple chatter. People have little sympathy for Apple as they are large / rich / successful - but Samsung are not the plucky underdog just trying to scratch a living. They ripped off the design of the device and it's workings and all the time being an Apple supplier - talk about biting the hand that feeds it.
Imagine you were Ford - you got another company to make the engine and some of the other components. Your new car does well and your supplier does well as a result - but that's not enough for them. They decide to design their own car - yet it looks almost the same as yours and they you see almost everything is the same - not just that it has 4 wheels - but it's almost a facsimile. They then think it's 'ok' to sell their own car in direct competition to you AND remain as a major supplier. Ford - what would you do...?
Apple are an all American company (even though they manufacture abroad) and with the xenophobia rampant in the US at the moment and the economy being fubar to go against them would be seen as un-American. In other parts of the world* the exact arguments that Apple are winning with in the US are being thrown out as childish nonsense. Even South Korea has a much more impartial judiciary as seen in the latest court case where the judge said they were both being as bad as each other and awarded them both pennies then told them to go away and grow up. If they had followed the American way of doing things, Samsung would have won and been awarded lots in damages.
If Apples case is so strong then why aren't going after every single mobile manufacturer? They just want Samsung out of the way because they are running scared. Samsung have far superior products and are out-selling them in every market. Apple just can't compete and therefore have to rely on the legal system to keep them out of the market. I just hope Samsungs lawyers have the sense to counter sue Apple over the iphone 5 using Apples own tactics just to see how the US manages to defend them.
4" screen, we did that 1st
16:9 format, we did that 1st
5 rows of icons, we did that 1st
and so on
Now we all know that Samsung did not do these things 1st, but neither did Apple. If the US then sides with Apple and declares Samsungs claims invalid it will just show the world that rampant protectionism is the US way as they granted Apple stupidly high damages for the exact same arguments. This will stop a lot of companies doing business with the US as it clearly isn't a level playing field and will make the economic situation even worse.
*Except Germany, fuck knows what they are thinking. their decisions recently plainly go against European law but nobody seems willing to prosecute them for it.
I have no special sympathy for Samsung, nor own any Samsung kit other than TV, Blue Ray, and monitor. Neither can I find any rational justification for buying a tablet or new phone (2009 Droid still works well). It appears to me, as a somewhat detached observer, that current Samsung phones and tablets (except for latest iPad display) equal or superior to Apple's on a hardware basis, and the OS/software interface is a matter of taste. Anybody actually confused enough to buy a Samsung phone or tablet thinking they were getting an Apple product is not smart enough to be trusted with the amount of money spent. Apple (in Apple v Samsung, recently decided) appeared to benefit significantly from trial court decisions and jury conduct that some might characterize as bias and improper conduct, respectively. Apple's efforts to exclude competitors based on the flimsy patents offered won't hurt Samsung much in the long run, but suggests it has lost confidence in its ability to design outstanding products and lost faith in its customers ability to recognize them.
"Imagine you were Ford"
oh ffs, not anotehr car analogy. its just a twist on godwins law....
ford was a success for one massive reason. His manufacturing process using a moving assembly line churned out so many cars, so quickly that he could sell them cheap. almost all car maufactures have copied this. Imagine the shit we would be in if fords managed to patent this and banned other companies from using the same process or got other cars banned from being imported because they used the same manufacturing techniques.
The car industry has benefited from years of other companies taking the best parts of other cars and incorporating it into their cars. because of this we have had over 100 years of car development and bleeding edge technology propelling some production cars to way over the 200mph mark. If fords played the game like apple then we would all be still driving ford model TS's and the colour option would include white as well as black....
after reading the results that apple have gained in the courts it fails me on how the decisions that the courts came to the decisions they did. In the recent apple vs Samsung case, the fact that there was so many mistakes in the papers from the jury, like awarding damages for things they had decided Samsung did not infringe on. the fact the sums did not add up. the fact that there was no way they spent enough time to digest what was presented to them in court..... all they did was scribble a few bits down and got their asses out of their, and they allowed it to stand.... don’t tell me their was no corruption...
oh and i could put 50 de-badged cars in front of most people and if they could tell the make and model of more than half I would be surprised... but it does not hurt the car industry....
That's what happens every day in the motor industry you moron!
That's kinda the point, cars have a wheel in each corner cos that's the sensible (obvious) way to do things. apple are trying (and succeeding with the help of the massively broken us legal system) to patent 'having a wheel in each corner'
are you really suggesting that the design and _function_ of every carburetor, injection system, braking system, steering system is unique?
screw it - im gonna patent 'doing things with stuff' and sue the fuck out of everyone!
Unfortunately Apple go after others in court over some features that are to be honest so simple as to beg the question; should they even qualify for a patent? Ironically they then fill their iphone 5 with a lot of features from elsewhere. The panorama feature has been on my Sony compact camera for years, they make out like they invented it but its already out there (and no doubt patented). You can't throw stones for patent breach then go ripping off other ideas. Pot meet Kettle. They might have paid for them sure, but I doubt it.
I like and own apple products, I have an Imac and a Macbook pro but my out of contract iphone 4 will probably be my last iphone, at least for a long while. Like the products, not a fan of the company and how it does business at the mo. So I need to vote with my wallet which I will do, any suggestions on my next phone? ;)
"Banging his head really hard in a plane crash probably didn’t help matters, either."
Woz disagrees with your view of things and therefore his opinion is completely wrong and might be due to residual brain damage from his plane crash. Because no one can possibly have opinions different to yours especially if they were one of the founders of the company you are in love with. Classy.
First thing I will say is that I'm NOT a "fan" of either Android or Apple, or of any smart phones for that matter. I own an iPod (classic) because it gave me what i wanted from an MP3 player, equally I own a couple of Samsung products; my mobile isn't even a smartphone. Thought I'd get that out of the way before being accused of being a "fan" of anything and the ranters assume everything I type is based on some perceived bias!
It's not quite the same as your analogy. I like cars, I take notice of them and watch for new models from different manufacturers etc. Now compare the modern cars with each other - even as someone who notices cars & their looks, performance, specifications etc if I see a new model I can't always tell who made it until I see the badge. Sometimes they look so similar to another make I need to check even if it's a reasonably common model. What happened here was one manufacturer decided to change the general look of their car which proved polular, so other manufacturers moved in the same direction (e.g. MPVs or chunky hatchbacks with straight backs & rounded corners). New technology allowed for upgraded spec details like better in-car audio, air-con, even sun roofs. These were "copied" by other manufacturers as they'd proved popular. What you DIDN'T get was one car manufacturer trying to patent the whole idea of having "an aperture in the roof of a car that has a moveable cover". They may have patented the very detailed mechanism of HOW the cover is moved by the operator, but I doubt even that. And this is what Apple seems to be doing in this case, they are patenting the concept & general look & feel of the object rather than very specific details.
The modern smartphone didn't suddenly come into being created from scratch by one company, there's been a gradual evolution over the last few years from a basic mobile phone with small changes being made at different times by different manufacturers, and when these small changes have proved popular with customers then other manufacturers have followed. NO ONE COMPANY is responsible for the current smartphone format, the shape, the touch scrreen, the type of applications & uses that can be made of them.
I'd like to add that I didnt' see any t.v. manufacturer sue the hell out of the next one just because the t.v.'s look about the same. Walk into an electronics store and look at the rows of t.v.s along the back wall. Almost all of them look the same until you get close enough to see subtle differences, aside from the picture quality and viewing angle. This patent row that Apple is sewing will hurt it in the long run. They do not have Job's single-mindedness to guide them and the new corporate mentality has already started to erode their position. While it may not be noticable, there have already been articles on Apple management starting to cut corners to push some extra profit. They don't have the diversity to be a force in the market once American management integrates itself further... no real R&D, the beginning of product fragmentation (cell screen sizes are just the beginning) and not playing well with others.
Actually, they all look different. Each manufacturer has a particular design "style", and to even the untrained eye, the devices from Samsung (great designs btw) differ markedly from those from Sony and LG (just to choose 2). I think if i entered the TV market and copied Samsung's quite unique TV stand shape and other physical features, i would be successfully sued by Samsung, and rightly so.
It's only the tech nerds with blind hatred and who think they have a dog in the fight that are incapable of recognising a copy when presented with it, and who can conversely fail to recognise major differences in products in an attempt to bolster their own feeble arguments. Most adults with children recognise the symptom.
really? You genuinely believe that? Because I think you're talking absolute bollocks. I was in Asda yesterday looking at about 20 or so tvs and the design of them all was exactly the same, a black rectangle with a big picture in the middle and the name of the manufacturer bottom and centre. No wonder you post anonymously...
Personally I think it is how he created this "thing", not the rampant fanboyism, as most popular things have their fanatics.
I think he is a genius as he was able to take something which traditionally has been in the hands of the religious ilk and moved it over to a sector (consumer electronics) that has traditionally been hard to make a huge profit out of selling each item.
Until the Apple Factor, I would have said the majority of us gadgetty consumers have been of the sensible type. Each generation of device we expect more, for less. Only the really rich or hooked would pay out of their noses for grey imports.
Even if some of us ended up as {insert brand of choice} whores, we liked having other companies competing against each other as that drove down prices, forced innovation, but more importantly gave us more choices.
But now it seems that a huge amount of the consumer is willing to pay out of their noses for a gadget, and more importantly wants no choice. What has happened?
I once joked that Jobs would take over the world by converting us all to iBermen, using his iDevices as the mechanism to suck away our free will, and it seems I might have not been too far from reality...
Also if geekism can only be acceptable to general society by spending over the top for shiny rather then gadgetry, loss of choice and herdism, then I want the good old days of living in the parents basement with no friends etc etc etc!
"Also if geekism can only be acceptable to general society by spending over the top for shiny rather then gadgetry, loss of choice and herdism, then I want the good old days of living in the parents basement with no friends etc etc etc!"
it appears the days of hacking together a bunch of old computers (at least 3 generations old), into very useful (well to the geeks) and cool (again to the geeks) kit has sadly gone. why the hell would you want a brand new router when you can spend a couple of weeks making and perfecting a dedicated router from an old P3 system with a 24port 100mbit switch duct taped to the chassis, with your own brew of linux running the show. gone are the days of trawling ebay for 2nd hand kit being stripped from some corp headquarters somewhere...sad days
why make it simple & tidy when wires and flashy lights everywhere looks cool & complex....
We can all see why Apple has been trying to sue Samsung into submission...
The new iPhone5 is like the SGS2's twin brother! Seriously! No Samsung device has ever been created that looks that close to an iPhone, then Apple do what they've been accusing Samsung of!
Talk about slavishly copying design...
And has anybody yet come up with a single example of something that Apple has done that hasn't either
A) been done before (rounded corners, single physical button at bottom of screen, grids of icons, global search)
B) a bloody obvious evolution (pinch zoom, swiping, click to dial)
That's a genuine question... I see nothing that Apple has done that is genuinely revolutionary ( except successfully marketing it and making it sexy) that has not been done before, or was not obvious.
Car analogies don't work unless your talking about two cars that look similar from different manufacturers "and" the insides are the same (seats, position and shape of all the buttons, location of badging...)
I have a 97 saab 9000 aero (best car I ever had... helps it has 4 doors and a trunk so I could squeeze it by the wifes very strict set of rules about our family car)
It is a shared platform car with Fiat... (ala wiki - Saab designed the 9000 as part of the Type Four platform in conjunction with the Italian automaker Fiat Automobiles. Fiat retailed similar derivative versions as the more basic Fiat Croma, the luxury-themed Lancia Thema, and the sports-oriented Alfa Romeo 164)
If I were to hop into a Lancia and the seats were the same... buttons were the same... engine was the same... suspension was the same... feel was the same... location of everything was as identical that they could get... I would assume SAAB would have taken exception to the partnership with Fiat.
Its the reverse of what everyone argues...
How a phone looks matters sure... but its the experiance and workability of android vs ios that is the main issue... not the rectangle with rounded corners crap that people seem to pick as the lowest common denominator...
Car manufacturers share parts and platforms to reduce cost but put alot of effort into making it unique on the inside and under the hood where it matters... where this whole phone thing is more about co*ck blocking each other WITH WHATEVER PATENTS THEY CAN to prevent other companies from aping each other to the point that the experiance is so similar as to eliminate that differentiation.
Sure cars may look the same... but none of them "Feel" the same... if that was the case I'm sure things in the auto industry would be different.
As for android vs iOS - I've had and am on my forth android phone... (G1 - Wouldn't stay connected to the data network - HTC Magic+ -Small and underpowered... even after bothering to root it and put a cut down rom on... but serviceable till it got run over by a car - Acer Liquid MT - great little phone with a nice screen but the only rom I liked with it was MIUI (which incidentally while being one of the most popular mods... is a complete iOS clone and sadly due to the fragmentation of internals.. never did get DATA to work so went back to a stripped acer factory rom) and now on a Samsung Galaxy Note... Nice phone... I'm sick of rooting and rom-ing though... and luckily even though its quirky as hell... it still seems a fairly decent piece of kit if a bit on the too large size) prior to those I had a Samsung Blackjack 2 (nice phone... too bad it was a piece of junk due to audio issues) and a little Win6.1 phone I can't remeber the name of but worked a treat till the battery died)
The battle is about user experiance... (this is why companies force their touchwiz, HTC Sense and crap down peoples throats... without that... it's just an android phone with someone elses' badge on it. *shrug*
I'm sure I'm missing lots of things but eh... I'm working on a sunday... and frankly can't be bothered to think to hard.
But that's the thing...
Android; naked, with TouchWiz, Sense or anything else I've used 'feels' nothing like iOS!!
Some are inferior, some superior, apart from the fact that iOS's 'homescreens' have grids of icons, and so does Android's app drawer, where's the similarity?
iThings have only one button (+power) Androids have 3 or 4. Android had the notification pull down which was unique until Apple copied it. Android has widgets, iOS doesn't (it probably will soon, and google probably won't do anything about Apple copying that either, because there is a ton of prior art.
In fact I really struggle to find /anything/ that Samsung has actually copied from Apple, that wasn't already a feature from somewhere else.
So again, the very genuine question is: What unique feature has Samsung actually copied from Apple?
after 30 years in IT i just want to be a road sweeper with a nokia thats used as a phone and have no technology in my home due to all this fighting about stuff people like me and you other older users invented in the first place.
worst thing that happens in any country is that good IT people suddenly become managers and owners taking away the things we all invented by rewriting code and pulling in a patent.
worst idea of my life was thinking portable computing was the way to go
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