Jury: Samsung must cough $290m of $379m Apple wanted - NOT in 5 cent pieces After three days of deliberation, the jury in Apple's patent fight with Samsung has determined that the South Korean chaebol will have to pay Cupertino $290m in damages and lost profits after pinching its designs. "For Apple, this case has always been about more than patents and money. It has been about innovation and the hard …
I think you better do some research before posting! Judge Koh hasn't been too nice towards Apple in the past! And the patent is legit....you just have Google and Samsung in the background anonymously having a fit to the government asking them to review the patents again so they don't get sued because of their copying!
Samsung tried multiple times to have the case thrown out because they knew they were in the wrong, heck they even admitted to it to the court. The fight was over how much money Apple lost because of the copying!!
>I think you better do some research before posting! Judge Koh hasn't been too nice towards Apple in the past! And the patent is legit...
I suggest you do too, before committing yourself.
December 20th, Samsung Emergency Motion tells the judge that the U.S. P.T.O. has issued an Advisory Action (the last step in a re-examination) finding all claims of patent No. 7,844,915 (the pinch-to-zoom patent) invalid. The Advisory Action is the Examiner’s final word on the invalidity of the ’915 patent.
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7844915
The P.T.O. issued the Final Office Action and a shortened 2-month deadline on July 26th, which was subsequently extended to the maximum 6 months allowed. The clock started ticking on July 26th.
This Advisory confirms the P.T.O. view that all 21 claims of the '915 patent are invalid. Although the clock doesn't stop until January 26th for further responses from Apple to try to persuade the P.T.O to change their view, or else file an appeal with the commissioners, any responses from Apple will not stop that clock.
The re-examination control number is: "90/012,332".
Anyone can view the status and document files via the Public PAIR web-site at: http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair
Look at the Image File Wrapper tab to view the document trail.
The Advisory says, in page 8 of the PDF, paragraph 5: "The patent owner's other arguments are not persuasive for the same reasons as set forth above and in the final Office action mailed on July 26, 2013. See the patent owner's remarks at pages 9-15, repeating and/or incorporating by reference the arguments presented in the response filed on March 19, 2013."
Thanks, TJ1, for linking the patent office page.
The "Reexam final rejection" document does raise the hope that the software patent nonsense can be stopped within the existing system. The lengthy document contains much legalese, but the bottom line is: You can't patent obvious things. Of course identifying the previous art that makes something legally obvious must be a devilish amount of work. Good to know that those poor lawyers doing the nasty legwork are well payed and are therefore properly compensated for their pointless suffering :).
I find it interesting that only a handful of references (mostly patents) are sufficient to blow away all of apples multi-touch and scrolling claims. And the document shows some annoyance with the Apple lawyers. E.g., when they claim that a previous patent did not claim a touch sensitive display and they point out the words "touch-sensitive display" in the abstract.
So down from a cool billion to a few hundred millions ... enough to keep the circus running for a few more years.
Actually it remains a shade off a billion Samsung have to pay. This was the decision over the portion of the damages award where the previous set of jurors got their sums mixed up. Samsung have already had to pay out the majority of the damages. This takes it up to c.900 million.
It's down from $1.05bn to $929m, meaning Samsung still has to pay more than 88% of the original judgement. I would say this is still a resounding result for Apple.
FWIW having looked at the images of the various Samsung devices that were found to be infringing, my layman's eye says that Samsung got everything they deserved on this. Whether the respective patents should have been awarded to Apple in the first place is a matter for discussion, but the fact remains they were issued, and Samsung well and truly infringed.
Read the post above this one where ALL of these disputed patents are under review by the USPTO for rejection because YOU CAN'T PATENT THE BLEEDING OBVIOUS!
When those patents are overturned, this will all be moot anyway.
As I have said before, "ROUNDED CORNERS" on ANY object is far more than just obvious. "Pinch to zoom" has been done on other devices before. Simply adding the phrase "on a smartphone" to a previous idea DOES NOT MAKE IT NEW! Scroll bounce back is not new either.
"'For Apple, this case has always been about patents and more money"
Joking aside, this case isa perfect example of a broken I P system. We need patents, copyright and trademarks, we also need standards. We need to create a system that allows people / companies who invest in research to have a fair chance of earning income from their research appropriate to the importance of the invention. That doesn't mean we should award patents for unoriginal ideas, we shouldn't allow companies to hold others to ransom over patents needed for a standard (standards need mandatory patent pools), we need a single arbiter of what is valid (who needs to be unbiased and qualified) and parasites who game the system need to be drowned in a vat of boiling snot.
Then if we ever manage to overcome all the vested interests (I.e. scum making money from a broken system) and make that happen world peace should be a doddle.
I remember when Jobs died, that quote going around something like "Jobs cared about making products, unlike other companies that just cared about money". Yeah right. And the next day, these same people were back to saying how wonderful Apple were for being the richest company in the world. (The quote was also misleading to conflate a person with other companies - there are people behind other companies, and many of them care about making products too.)
My thoughts exactly.
A leopard can't change its spots and there's been no change in Apple's approach to PR.
The only reason why Apple have issued a statement to El Reg is because Apple are trying to get a message out any way they can when it is obvious - even to Apple - that this is a major blow to Apple's patent jihad.
Bit of a step down from $1.05bn verdict, though
Iain, another masterly subheading. It would seem that so far Koh has awarded 0.89bn of the original 1.05bn. I know that to many of us $160,000,000 would be real money, but Samsung or Apple might be able to find it down the back of the sofa...
Exactly, didn't samsung say that it was spending something like 13Bn on marketing next year? I truly sad fact in itself.
For fines to be effective they have to be proportional to both the level of offense (in this case personally I don't think it was too big an issue) and the ability of the person to pay (like how some countries speeding fines are proportional to your income). A certain foreign owned petrochem plant in the UK flares off spec product because the fines are cheaper than paying for proper disposal, how is that fine effective? Sure it suits the people who created the fine as a revenue generating measure, but the stated purpose of reducing pollution? not fit for purpose.
Sure part of the purpose of a fine is restitution which should be strictly linked to the impact of the transgression, but the punitive deterrent part should be scaled on the means of the perp. I'm not sure there was any huge offense in the first place in the appsung case so the above is meant to be a more general comment.
As then there's the company who put their logo onto almost every US TV show and film in the last 10 years, along with product placement in other people's adverts, and getting their logo and brandnames appear at every opportunity - and still almost everyone buys Android...
Thing is, this isn't criminal law, this is a civil issue. Surely it should be about damages. With criminal law, it's an issue if a rich person can get away with breaking the law. With a civil issue - well, damages are damages. (Never mind that the whole thing is ludicrous to start with.) If it's decided that someone should be "punished", I don't see why a mega-rich 3rd party should be the recipient.
I can't find the source, but I'm sure I read somewhere that Samsung has already attached the damages it needs to pay to Apple to it's last set of financials, hence it took a very minor dip in share price (I think it bounced back relatively quickly) because they adjusted their earnings call to take it into account.
So in theory Samsung will next year be able to quote a healthier earnings (compared to the last one) which will probably make their share price jump a little.
This sort of damages award isn't going to stop the juggernaut from rolling, as they are investing billions in another 1 or 2 factories somewhere.
Samsung can still appeal this ruling, so it may be quite some time before this saga is over. And there are other lawsuits going around in multiple directions and multiple countries, which will keep fanboys on both sides flaming each other and whining when things don't go their way for years to come.
Yeah, because, you know, that little bounce at the end of a scroll took meeelions of man-hours to code, and has never been done before, ever.
Honest.
How shall I bounce thee?
Let me count the ways!
Seriously, it's only a bloody bounce, the effect for which can be created in two simple lines of code.
How in Goat's name can anyone be awarded a patent on something so trivial, then argue with a straight face about Hard Work® and the minutia of exactly how and why some silly UI element "bounces"?
"For [name of winner], this case has always been about more than [something] and money"
seems to be the stock phrase of every spokesman after a court judgement whether they get bugger all (significantly less than they asked for), or a huge settlement (such that the public goggle in disbelief)
Is it in some handbook somewhere?
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You know what? I hate apple but I do wish they win this, since they are really the ones who started all this toy smartphone trend, killing real smartphones and I hate that. I hate apple's arrogance and I know they didn't invent most stuff, they sue others for, but did put all the "good" ideas they stole together and since sheep bought it (mostly just because its apple) others kind of leeched their successful idea, so I hope apple sues shit out of competitors, so they once again make operating systems that doesn't look and feel like kids toys, because phones and pdas with windows mobile were much better and more professional anyway and smartphones were actually only for smart people before apple touched them and dumbed them down!
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