German Court Issues Injunction Against iPhone & iPad 349
angry tapir writes "A German court has ruled that Apple's iPhone and iPad devices infringe a Motorola patent and issued an injunction against sales of the products in Germany, in the latest move in a long series of legal battles between the companies. It's the latest stage in the international patent conflict that's been raging over mobile devices, which has included the recent Samsung victory over Apple in an Australian court and a defeat for Samsung in a Dutch court."
Slammed ... (Score:5, Informative)
Even better considering that apple was caught flogging off their patents to a patent troll, hoping to hurt as many "competitors" as possible.
Every article written will hopefully include all the stories together to paint the apple darling in a new light.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/09/apple-made-a-deal-with-the-devil-no-worse-a-patent-troll/
Re:Samsung tablet designs pre-iPad? (Score:2, Informative)
Have you seen the Samsung tablet designs before the first iPad come out and the designs after the iPad came out
Do you find it odd that Samsung's photo frame design [androidauthority.com] circa 2006, is almost identical to their Tablet design [droidmatters.com] that followed it? Right down to the Samsung logo on the front and the lack of any visible buttons on the front? That's just Samsung's product design.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Informative)
Patents are supposed to work the same all over the world.
Why?
But to come back to your statement about war: mind that there are no winners in war. There are only losers. In WWII the allied forces were considered the winners, but the rest of Europe was as much in tatters as loser Germany was.
WWII destroyed the British Empire, handed about half the human race over to communists where they couldn't compete with Western manufacturers and destroyed most of Europe's industrial production capacity. America benefited massively from the war because it was left with no real competition and the only large-scale manufacturing capacity in the West.
Re:P0WN3D! (Score:5, Informative)
the article is idiocy and so is your comment.
We have the fact that apple already tried to sue Motorola over the xoom [dailyfinance.com]. This is just the response [slashdot.org], which was done well before google acquired motorola.
The "Google" Action will be if/what we see from google as a result of this reflecting on them going forward, which could be entirely nothing.
Re:Payback is a bit (1/8th of a byte) :p (Score:4, Informative)
Be careful what you wish for. These are FRAND patents that are in question. Motorola successfully argued that they did not have to license a FRAND patent to Apple unless Apple paid damages above and beyond the cost of the standard FRAND license rate issued to everyone else for 'past' infringement, and the additional damages are left vague under German law, meaning any ridiculous amount could pop out of the courts.
Given that Google is the new 'OS' kid in town, you should probably read up on FRAND patents and why they are supposed to be offered at a standard rate to everyone.
Patent wars are business as usual but when they start mucking around with FRAND patents in this way, it should make anyone in the tech business pay attention.
Re:Slammed ... (Score:4, Informative)
No,... so they could defend themselves.
Re:Serves Apple right. (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty great passion and moral outrage there. Don't let the facts -- like the way "rectangular shape" was one of 7 design attributes that Samsung cloned -- get in the way of a good rant.
Re:What exactly costitutes an expert? (Score:4, Informative)
Florian Mueller is not an expert.
He is a troll, plain and simple.
Burn that name into memory and as soon as you hit that name in any article stop reading it.
That is all I can suggest to avoid permanent brain damage from reading his blathering.
Re:P0WN3D! (Score:5, Informative)
It's obvious to anyone with common sense viewing Samsung's designs that Samsung is deliberately aping Apple's designs.
oh yes because this design [androidauthority.com] of Samsung's from 2006, before the ipad, looks nothing like this [droidmatters.com], you'd have to be an idiot to think those look the same wouldn't you :P
Re:P0WN3D! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:P0WN3D! (Score:5, Informative)
"Patent troll" usually means "non-practicing entity", not "anyone who sues on patent grounds".
Like, you know, that Digitude Innovation who recently got some patents from Apple to sue everyone with.
Unlike Motorola, who got sued for Xoom, and now sues Apple in retaliation.
Re:GRPS and LTE (Score:5, Informative)
> the AND part means that Apple, if they were to licence it, should pay exactly the same amount as HTC, Nokia, etc.
Basically, what happened is this: Motorola found out Apple has not licensed this patent. As this is a FRAND patent, Apple could avoid the suit if they tried to negotiate a fair deal to license the patent.
Apple said "OK, but you can't sue us for damages from past infringement, we're gonna pay same rate for past".
Motorola said "Na-ah" and went to court.
Judge said "You've got caught infringing, so it's fair to demand extra for the time when you was breaking the law" and decided that was not a fair deal, so FRAND defense didn't work.
Re:Tech Culture (Score:4, Informative)
I never understood why this patent was granted - back in 2006 the same gestures were demonstrated (and publicly) by Jeff Han with his FTIR multi-touch display.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html [ted.com] - take a look from about 2:29 onwards, pinch zoom, scoll etc.
It really doesn't appear that Apple should have been able to patent it, especially if their file date was in 2007 and it looks like the grant date was 2011 (seriously? wtf?).
Still, who knows why it was granted, and if I can find that prior art surely the other big companies who were sued because of it could too so I assume I'm missing something.