Apple demands $707m more from Samsung Apple has rubbed US$707m worth of salt into the wound it inflicted on Samsung when it beat the Korean company in California's courts over the design of the companies' respective telephones. In a filing lodged with the courts late on Friday, Pacific Time, Apple asked for another $400m for design infringements, $121m in damages …
I'm sick to death of the media's use of hyperbolae. It's beginning to have the opposite effect on me, ie. a sensational head/byline - to me - is a mask for a crap story. And this is just that - a crap story. There is no "wound" - the damages are less that 1.5% of Samsung's global revenue and relate to phones which Samsung is no longer marketing and are at least a generation old.
Furthermore, Samsung is appealing the jury verdict and the overwhelming majority in the educated press (not the mainstream media) have been heavily critical of the jury decision even suggesting it will be reversed.
Samsung have been so successful in growing their 'global revenue' because they copied Apple. Now they have been caught and have to pay but in reality if it's only 1.5% of global revenue it's cheap for the revenue / profit growth they have enjoyed that almost certainly would not have had without copying Apple.
Scroll back a few years - who in their right mind really bought Samsung phones - very few - now (post copying Apple) they are seen as much more attractive. But - that can change - Android is not theirs and it's a massive risk - Google start pushing their investment in Motorola or someone else comes out with a better Android phone and Samsung sales drop.
"Scroll back a few years - who in their right mind really bought Samsung phones - very few - now (post copying Apple) they are seen as much more attractive."
A few years ago, who in their right mind really bought Apple phones. Yep that's right, a few years ago (pre-2010), Apple's sales were far less. And I suspect that Samsung still outsold them back them too.
"But - that can change"
Things can change for Apple too. And you've got it backwards - unlike Apple, Samsung *don't* have all their phones investment on one platform - whilst they're having phenomenal success with Android, they also offer low end phones (so called "feature" phones, which are still really low end smartphones), as well their alternative smartphone platform Bada, and will be bringing out WP8 phones. And they're working on Tizen, a new Linux based open source OS.
Or do you think Samsung's Foxconn workers are better paid?
What a snivelling pathetic off topic post you made.
After all everyone knows Apple will put the money in the bank to build the bank account with the most zeroes ever and Samsung would have spent it bribing government officials and selling products with such high dealer margins and little profit until they reach number one position in each industry when they can start to profit and take over the world. Mwhaaaa...
Anonymous posters can't get their coats unfortunately.
After being outed publicly as someone being paid by Oracle, which he admited and then writing favorable articles for them, how does this guy have any credibility left??? He certainly has none with the FOSS community which his Nym implies he speaks for, but he clearly does not!
When i see an article quoting this guy my opinion of the article and the author if it has to be diminished, as screams "I could not be bothered to find a credible source so i used this guy".
Totally agree, does FOSSpatents discuss the jury member (foreman) that broke his Voir Dire his oath!
The foreman promised to follow the law and not use what he knew from his own cases(where he was sued over software IPR) , but just follow the judge's instructions - clearly from statements made by foreman he broke his oath. This is the smoking gun that should get a re-trail.
"how does this guy have any credibility left"
How does that detract from what Florian has said in this particular instance? Yes, he is/was paid to write things. We do know this.
Whenever we quote the guy, all I seem to see in response is "I HATE FLORIAN RAGE RAGE RAGE", and (personally speaking) that makes me less inclined to pay attention to the comments, because such outbursts seem far more biased than the very pundit being attacked.
Ironic, isn't it?
C.
Aawww! It really warms my heart to see there is another person loving Florian Mueller apart from his own mother. Actually we don't hate your Hero at all, more than that, we like that chap a lot. Somebody has the be wrong in making analysis and predictions and Florian decided to do just that.
And specifically, if Samsung's claim ".... while Samsung's witnesses were barred from explaining how Samsung's products differ from Apple's" bears any relation to reality, then I'd have thought the overturning of the verdict at the the Appeal Court was a slam-dunk.
I have what seems like a never ending number of Apple products. Various macbooks, imac, some iphones, a few different ipods, the ipad and who knows what else. But this patent nonsense has really pushed me away from Apple.
They're just being bullies and they're going to limit the choices of us consumers. So I bought the Galaxy S3 and I'm really happy with my decision.
Hopefully more people like me will see the sense and speak up with their money and then Apple might stop being such bullies.
Shouldn't they be concentrating on fixing their maps?
Amusingly, there were rebuttalS to those who previously said "they should spend their money on innovation, not sueing the competition" by people saying that Apple could afford to both innovate and litigate...
... The iPhone 5 suggests otherwise.
This mapping issue is just a joke - perhaps it does affect some people but I've checked maps for where I live and actually they are better - the imagery is newer - probably is you only hear the problems and certain Apple will fix it. In the long term may actually be better and in the short term - you want Google Maps it's a 10 second fix - load Google Maps in your browser and it prompts you to make it a desktop icon - done.
revisions or 'upgrades'. and they won't be able to sustain their drip-drip annual upgrades and money-raking operations.
They have to fight the competition as Android & WinMob cell handsets will offer so much more variety, tailored more closely to peoples needs.
The Far East, for example. needs waterproof units and only Android has them (if you don't believe visit Singapore or the Indochina region in the rainy season) and dragging a Zip-lock bagged iFone out to use is so degrading.
Some people love to spend all their waking hours on social networks, and they have their socially enhanced handsets, others need more business oriented units.
What needs revamping is the US patent system so all these artificial blocks to progress are eliminated. They are considering rolling back auto patent lives so maybe this will spread to other areas of technology.
The Apple/Samsung trial was an aberration, the judge bent so many rules that another trial is warranted.
I'm just going to be laughing next year as the iPhone5 becomes so woefully behind the times (it already is behind [some] at launch this year), that even sales people have a hard time justifying selling it over an Android/WinPhone8 (yes, a WinPhone will be in the running by then, and may even be a better option than Apple BION). Frankly, I'm not surprised that even the people I know that rushed out to upgrade their 4S to the 5 lost that cold, mindless look in their eyes when they beheld the utter lack of change/function/feature in their new expensive gadget.
Looks to me like a case of Apple thinking if they won in Cailfornia with the first set of claims against the odds, clearly California will take any shit they try on there so why not go for another set.
Oh Shagbag - "only" 1.5% of their global annual revenue? Apart from all the other products that are nothing to do with phones, revenue /= profits.
"any other product with a feature or features not more than colorably different from any of the infringing feature or features in any of the Infringing Products.”
I try to keep up, but this derivative of the word 'colour' has me stumped. Can anyone explain what it means?
I think I know what the entire sentence is trying to say.
And to add to that - I think they also mean they can't use any icons which look like any icons on an Apple product but in a different colour, hell, it's vague enough that they could even say "Your smiley looks like our smiley but you've done it in green and not yellow.... OMGBANHAMMERTIME!"
Why do I get this sinking feeling that this will successfully go through the wonders of the US Patent system, and you end up where Samsung can only sell a phone in america if it is a tartan circle with all the icons replaced with heiroglyphs otherwise Apple get it banned?
Again, this is visual appearance. It is what companies spent a lot of time and effort on, good design isn't cheap. Which is why premium brands like Mercedes, BMW etc need good visual design and it doesn't help when Hyundai (another South Korean company like Samsung, no surprise there) basically copy the look of the BMW 1 series.
It's a registered design, it's not simply one or so attributes it is a number of specific attributes in combination that form the design.
When you are designing a product it is very important that you are allowed to protect the visual aspects of the design. Otherwise people can simply copy it like Samsung did.
Look at how Dyson's vacuum cleaner design has been copied by all the competitors, and Dyson does have a registered design against his products. So without one it would have been much worse.
Dyson invented an entirely New process to seperate dirt from air. How has ANYTHING Apple done remotely compare to this?
easy to hold form factor- check
touchscreen- check
electrical gubbins to run software-check
All this was done before by Numerous companies before Apple.
All they did was sell a bigger screen device to a pre-installed iphone/itunes base, oh and patent every siily little thing they could through a dubious patent court circuit.
A lot of dislike for Apple recently, and even (especially?) as a user of their products, I can see why.
But I don't see why somebody who admittedly didn't read the article, but instead jumped straight to the comments section to spam it with his personal thoughts & no meaningful insight would get any thumbs up from El Reg readers?
"But I don't see why somebody who admittedly didn't read the article, but instead jumped straight to the comments section to spam it with his personal thoughts & no meaningful insight would get any thumbs up from El Reg readers?"
Because s/he slagged off Apple. As I've said before you will get upvoted for slagging off Apple, slagging off Microsoft, or even better, slagging them off in a single post. It doesn't matter if the comments are unsubstantiated . Add in heaps of praise for Android and just watch those upvotes come flooding in.
indeed..
There's a rather large obsessive-compulsory voting squad active on any side of a discussion. It seems like any voting system brings out the inner retard in otherwise (presumably) intelligent people.
Something similar is going on with quite a lot of the [insert inflammatory topic] comments being made anonymously, with a probability approaching certainty in case of the more vehement and...fanboi-ish.. replies.
Call me silly and old-fashioned, but I generally trawl the replies for the few comments that make sense and are at least relatively informed, and ignore the rest of the broohah. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
in the court room was this... take 2 laptops from different vendors,( same colour), place them at other end of room and see if Apple reps could identify which was which. Guess what jury? it's a frakking form factor, of course they look the same! It's the same with pc towers, refridgerators, stoves and cars, IT'S A FORM FACTOR, now get a grip and start playing nice with each other.
Hey genius it's because Samsung so closely copied they could not tell the difference. Take a Macbook - find another laptop that looks the same and yes they copied the Macbook. Apple has fairly obvious / distinctive design - well until Samsung / others copy it.
Guess Samsung could put an apple on the back but with a smaller bite out of it and that would be ok too...
First off, thank you for recognizing my superior intellect, as an AC, you prove you could not follow one iota of my post.
A form factor standardises how a device will look, Apple copied the ipad design off numerous previous efforts from other companies, that in their design infancy saw fit not to patent such silly things as rounded corner rectangles.
Once a form factor is standardized by high uptake from consumers, the industry will naturally be very close to the same form, otherwise every laptop would have different shapes, negating the ability to use off the shelf components.
Now back under your bridge, troll.
"...find another laptop that looks the same and yes they copied the Macbook".
Oh deary me AC of 10:49am - are you really suggesting that Apple were the very first company to make a laptop style computer, and that it looked like they all currently do? Try Osbourne, NEC, Compaq.....
If Apple invented the current form factor for laptop computers, how come the patent is was filed by a different company many years before Apple first brought out a portable computer?
No, even if one of them was an Apple laptop, in many cases it would be hard to tell the difference without seeing the logo. And no, not because anyone else copied Apple. The areas in which they are similar are not things that were done by Apple first. The form factor of a laptop was not invented by them. There are certain cues that one could use - e.g., Apple laptops tend not to have page up/down keys, and I assume they have their own keys instead of the Windows keys for obvious reasons. But you couldn't tell that from a distance, and a random person wouldn't necessarily know that - plus there are just as many differences on could pick out between Samsung and Apple phones.
Copying the logo would be fair game for a lawsuit (though that's trademarks, not patents). But they *didn't* do that. Please catch up to what the story is actually about.
Indeed, that shows that people *aren't* copying Apple. If companies really copied Apple, then every laptop would have a tacky light-up logo on the back. Thankfully for those of us who care about having something that looks tasteful, they don't.
This is exactly the kind of thing that has prompted me to resolve never to buy an Apple product. Apple became what they are through stealing a great idea from Xerox way back when, and passing it off as their own. And that's what they've done with the iPhone. The same design elements can be observed in other products by other manufacturers before the iPhone was launched, but Apple patented them, and now wants to hold the entire smartphone and tablet industry to ransom over it.
The Register ran quite a funny April Fools Day story, reporting that Apple was trying to patent the rectangle. The fact that I wondered for a few minutes whether it really was true is a measure of how ridiculous Apple's hyper-litigious activities are. The Register also reported elsewhere (not in jest) that a market analyst was warning that Apple's legal "thermonuclear war" would prompt other tech firms and manufacturers to innovate and engineer away and around Apples patents and IP, in effect DEVALUING them. Apple really is begging for this to happen with this ridiculous legal overkill.
And I think the rest of the smartphone and tablet industry should do just that: engineer, innovate and do the same patent land-grab that Apple has until they have nowhere to go with their design except the same old thing, until it hits the eyes of consumers like the shape of a bar of soap. And when they complain and ask why, we can just remind them that that's what they asked for.
"over the design of the companies' respective telephones"
So did Apple win on the "rounded rectangles" patents? Or was it all just software patents? I've seen conflicting reports on this. (Not that the software patents in question aren't also all utterly trivial issues.)
As for applying the patents to other kinds of products, one has to wonder - if you can get a trivial patent simply by doing it "on a phone", i.e., where prior art is discounted because it wasn't on a phone, how can that patent then be applied to other kinds of products? Seems a case of having your (rounded) cake and eating it...
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