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Cellphones Patents Apple

Apple Sues Samsung In Germany Again 172

Posted by Soulskill from the round-3-fight dept.
New submitter tguyton writes "Apple is going after Samsung again in Germany, this time over 10 phones including the Galaxy S II. It should come before the courts in August, a month before their tablet case in September."
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Apple Sues Samsung In Germany Again More

Apple Sues Samsung In Germany Again

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  • How do we... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sez Zero ( 586611 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @01:29PM (#38727474) Journal

    ... get rid of the legal structure in place that makes this type of lawsuit have a good enough chance of prohibiting or delaying a competitors product that it makes good financial sense to proceed?

    I wish that money spent on lawyers was spend on engineering, or alternatively, entertaining commercials.

    • Re:How do we... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @01:33PM (#38727530)
      Unfortunately, it is the lawyers themselves who have a disproportionate influence over the legal structure itself. They are also the only ones who would know how to fix it and every reason not to. Hence, our current problems.

      • Unfortunately, it is the lawyers themselves who have a disproportionate influence over the legal structure itself. They are also the only ones who would know how to fix it and every reason not to. Hence, our current problems.

        No, your current problems stem from you permitting corporations with a vested interest in controlling IP to comandeer your representative government, leading to bad laws.

        Contrary to what you apparently believe, practising lawyers don't get to make up the law as they go along. They can only apply it creatively. It's interesting that out of (a) the people who wrote these laws (b) the people who agitated for these laws and now routinely abuse them for commercial gain and (c) the people who have the job of di

    • But then that would mean they'd actually have to try to cater to customers for a change.

    • Re:How do we... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @01:36PM (#38727568)

      we 'buy' justice from the legal store (system).

      is there any wonder that the store owners don't want to give the secret to 'stocking the shelves' away? or let people produce their own goods?

      a bit far for an analogy but the point is that they line their pockets due to how bad the system is. they have NO REASON to make the wheels turn faster and more efficient. they would argue themselves out of jobs.

      it really is that simple. if tax laws were simple, we would not need accountants and such.

      people keep complexity because their job 'depends' on it. nothing much more than that.

      therefore, don't EVER expect it to change. its a constant, like gravity.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PIBM ( 588930 )

        At least gravity does not increase...

      • Re:How do we... (Score:4)

        by forkfail ( 228161 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:03PM (#38727914)

        How else in our mechanized age could we keep folks working, when we don't need them tilling fields or making goods anymore?

      • Re:How do we... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by WOOFYGOOFY ( 1334993 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @05:45PM (#38731112)
        Exactly. Lawyers have been able to inject themselves into the business of software and design to the degree they have because it represents a new source of revenue for them. Executives are all agreed on it because as bad as being sued is, it's better than facing an openly competitive field with no barriers to entry.

        Artificial barriers to entry like these patents increase the cost of goods, reduce the competitive field and drive monopoly rents.

        Without these rents, you would not have obscene profits and obscene salaries arrived at in this manner.

        You'd still have obscene profits but it would be in exchange for extreme value.

        But that would mean real work instead of lawyering, and the lawyers can't have that.

        It would also democratize opportunity, and the CEOs and politicians that are funded by them can't have THAT!

        We all know this is exactly true. We all know it's a game that is genuinely rigged to self reinforce the societal position of whoever has power and money currently.

        This is a deeply poison pill the effects of which no nation or civilization ever escapes no matter how draconic a regime they try to enforce.

        It's not substantially different than the corruption that drove the Arab Spring to topple its dictators.

        Software patents turn each and every programmer on this board a criminal on a daily, no, an hourly basis. That's not even an exaggeration, or hyperbole, or overstating the case; that's a material fact . It drive developers out of business and stops them from starting businesses every day

        How is this different from the events that set off the Arab Spring?

        from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12120228 [bbc.co.uk]

        Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, sold fruit and vegetables illegally in Sidi Bouzid because he could not find a job. Last month he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight when police confiscated his produce because he did not have the necessary permit.

        Call them what you like. The 1%. The Royal Family. The Coke Snorting Class. The Lawyers. The Politicians. The Executives. The Parasites. Whatever you want to call them, the fact is they never see it coming because they're so out of touch with the rage hey engender in everyone else. They think they can keep all "those" people under control because "those people" don't matter, have no power and are so fucked they'll never get unfucked.

        That's what they think.

        • But that would mean real work instead of lawyering, and the lawyers can't have that.

          Really? This gets moderated insightful?

          Do you know what lawyers are? A dispute resolution tool. They are nothing more or less than a more civilized way of resolving disputes than killing one another. They do not make laws - politicians do that. And how to politicians decide which laws to make? You vote for them.

          You don't like lawyers getting money from disputes arising out of bad laws? Blame yourself. Your failure to control your elected representatives is what permits those laws to exist.

          But take a

          • You,re overlooking recommendation, the fact that lawyers have directly participated in the pursuit, drafting and sustaining of these same bad laws and they are the direct beneficiaries of these same bad laws.

            Sure lawyers have a key role to play in civil society.

            So what?

    • Imagine the judge having to wake up in the morning to look forward to something like this.

  • To prosecute someone more than once for the same reason?

    • "Reason" includes elements that are actually different in this case from the last. For instance, different products (tablets v. smartphones).

      I'm not saying "rounded corners" is a great basis for lawsuits, whether one or a dozen; I'm just saying that this lawsuit is distinguishable from the previous by the specific "infringing" products identified in each.

      So, yes, this suit is no less, and no more, valid than the prior one.

    • They are suing them not prosecuting them. Prosecution happens in criminal court not civil court.

      • Right, and that's why you want to get suits against you dismissed with prejudice and ones that you initiate dismissed without prejudice if things aren't going to go to completion.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by MrDoh! ( 71235 )

      Hmm, probably a civil/criminal thing, and some /tiny/ change in the model allows it to be reopened.

      It's obvious at this time that they've realised it's economically worthwhile to lock them down in a court, and it's just a warning to anyone else who'd think of entering the market that if they do well, they WILL be sued. So with Apple threatening legal action to totally block in one way, and MS grabbing for royalties in the other, it adds a huge extra cost to using Android they're hoping will stop future co

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It is. It's called Double Jeopardy, and was originally intended to stop people from being prosecuted until they no longer had the resources to defend themselves. However it only applies to criminal cases. It might be useful to have for civil cases though, since it's possible to be sued in civil court until you no longer have the resources to defend yourself.

    • Yes or no, depending what you mean by "same reason". If you violate a law twice, you can be prosecuted twice. If you take a single action that violates multiple laws, you can be charged with two crimes for the "same reason". Most countries, Germany included, prevent "double jeopardy", being punished more than once for the same crime. But your question is not relevant to this article since they are being sued, not prosecuted, and double jeopardy does not apply. Though if you have had a suit withdrawn/t

  • It's gone beyond ridiculous. (Score:4, Informative)

    by forkfail ( 228161 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @01:44PM (#38727676)

    Honestly, if someone could find a way to patent the wheel, they'd do it.

    Our patent system is such at this point that there is no advancement possible without asking permission and paying royalties to someone else. Every fundamental idea and concept is owned. As anything that has any sort of visual representation and interface.

    Of course, all this is incredibly ironic, given that back in the day, Microsoft and Apple both flagrantly ripped off [gizmodo.com] what are considered to be absolute fundamentals of a GUI from Xerox.

  • It's all they've got left (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @01:45PM (#38727694)

    It's all Apple has left: patents and lawsuits. Without Steve Jobs at the helm, what else did you expect them to do? Innovate new products? Please, even with Steve leading, all Apple has ever done is scoop up companies doing actual innovation and copy them. (It's become cliche to point out that Apple stole the Mac GUI from Xerox. Even more cliche is pointing out that they "licensed" it without realizing that the point is that they claimed it as their own without giving any credit to the people who actually designed it.)

    Have you seen iOS 5? All the new features were either stolen directly from Android (notifications, Siri, iCloud if we're honest) or ... um... actually, I think I listed all the new features.

    Have you tried Mac OS X Lion? It's this weird bastard child of Windows and iOS. And, yes, I mean Windows. They flat-out stole quite a few things from Windows and added them to Mac OS X. Even the style changes from Snow Leopard to Lion makes it look more like Windows Aero. Why they went that why?

    Well - this is Apple, post Steve Jobs. All they've got left is copying other people and then suing them.

    • Re:It's all they've got left (Score:5, Interesting)

      by forkfail ( 228161 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:11PM (#38728022)

      Well, perhaps it is cliche.

      Regardless, it seems like quite a number of companies (not just Apple) are saying, "To get here, I stood on the shoulders of giants. And by God, I'm going to make damn sure no one else does."

      This doesn't spur innovation; quite the opposite, really. Especially when you consider that pretty much all commercial works these days are derivatives of something else. And for the most part, if you want to learn/build something new, you need billions of dollars and a particle accelerator.

    • Re:It's all they've got left (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:11PM (#38728034) Journal

      It's become cliche to point out that Apple stole the Mac GUI from Xerox

      This is 'stole' meaning 'paid a big chunk of Apple stock in exchange for it and then added original features like the desktop metaphor with the trash can, the menu bar, window title bars and others?' Do you, by any chance, work for the MPAA?

      • and then added original features like the desktop metaphor with the trash can,

        Ah yes, the trash can, that was where you had to drag the disk icon in order to get the beast to let go of your floppy...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nethemas the Great ( 909900 )

      Apple was first to market with a well packaged MP3 player and a business model to support it. Everything else has been largely riding on those coattails with incremental improvements. After the rest of the electronics manufacturers woke up they came back hard with mass quantities of spaghetti flying at all manner of walls. Often times the products featured superior aspects sometimes not. But, for one reason or another they played second fiddle to the comparable iDevice. Recently Apple has been losing g

    • I don't fully agree. Many innovations of Apple came down to combining nifty products that were available, but underused at the time. For instance, look at the original ipod: it was the first to give a proper use to those mini-hd's, which were a novelty at the time. That is basically why their R&D budget has been so low: they looked for the right technology that was available. That being said, I still think it requires some imagination to envision these products, with or without big budgets.

    • It's all Apple has left: patents and lawsuits. Without Steve Jobs at the helm, what else did you expect them to do?

      it was steve jobs who had started these patent/copyright wars. he was berserk at android and had called them thieves and whatnot. we discussed it here in slashdot when it was disclosed. you werent around it seems.

      you are seeing the fruition of the policy jobs created and overseen.

  • Instead of going to court every other day, wouldn't it be easier to just threaten all retail outlets with not supplying them with products if the sell someone else's.

  • No details on the patents in question (Score:3)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:09PM (#38728000) Homepage Journal

    As Apple has engaged in an all out abusive patent war on anyone who dares compete with their Dynabook ripoff technology, I say "Fuck Apple."

  • Someone at Apple finally saw the commercial? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:11PM (#38728028) Journal

    I guess someone at Apple has finally watched [youtube.com] Galaxy S2 commercial?

    In online gaming, this kind of thing is usually remarked upon as "u mad?".

    • I guess someone at Apple has finally watched [youtube.com] Galaxy S2 commercial?

      That commercial is hilarious!

      (girl with iPhone) "That's a Samsung."
      (guy with MacBook) "I could never get a Samsung. I'm creative."
      (guy with iPhone) "Dude, you're a barista..."

  • Has Apple learned nothing from MS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:13PM (#38728048) Journal

    MS behaved once like a complete asshole and it slowly found itself in a world where nobody liked it anymore and it was starting to hurt the company. Nothing like outright revenge but in its proposed standards being ignored and its rivals providing each other with support just because. Or do you think IBM has no alterior motive in supporting Linux then because it doesn't care what it sells support for? IBM doesn't just sell patents to google for the hell of it either to fight Apple, or do you think IBM liked it when Apple ditched their CPU? Oh, not that it made much difference, Apple was a very small buyer but why help Google for just a tiny bit of cash with patents that IBM might one day need themselves?

    Reputation matters. How much? Well so much that MS has bought advertising space from GOOGLE to advertise its own browser despite that everyone who can USE Internet Explorer has it installed by default (it comes with Windows). Paying your competition to advertise a product given away for free... that was not the Internet Bill Gates envisioned in the 90's.

    Apple had a good reputation, god knows what for, pre-OSX the only time I saw Apples, they were crashing but still, it was a good rep, intresting devices and it never hurts to be considered the plucky underdog against the mega-corp. But right now, a LOT of mainstream media, at least in Holland, is presenting these cases as the relatively small Apple bullying the "small" mega-corp and super diversified semi-government Samsung... it would be like comparying say Harley Davidson against Yamaha. Sure both build motor cycles but HD isn't even in the same class when it comes to business clout.

    And yet in this case, many are starting to see Apple as the big evil giant stamping on its smaller cuddlier competitors. When Samsung becomes cute, you know you are doing something wrong with your image.

    Yet, the tablets do like a lot alike. Gosh, what do you know, so do many e-readers and for that matter phones. How many phones do you know that are rectangle with a rectangular screen and 12-15 buttons below it? Some form factors just belong to a type of product. Go ahead, redesign the refrigerator with a unique design that has not been seen before since the days of cupboards making started god knows how many centuries ago. Good thing Apple wasn't around when Gutenberg copied the printing press from the Chinese. We would have a thousand different book designs for each and every publisher.

    It would be better if plenty of people hadn't already found evidence of how many if not all of Apples own designs had been done by others before.

    Everybody copies from everybody else, in science they are even proud of it "if I seen furthest, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". Artists are inspired by their predecessors but suddenly in our society the slightest hint of similarity is evil. And for what? To protect your profits so you don't have to innovate (compare the iPad 2 to say a device like the Asus Transformer or the Samsung Note)? That works, for about as long until someone passes you (IE6 anyone?)

    It doesn't surprise me that the "new" iPhone is just a small update and that none of them have really upped the stakes let alone tried anything NEW. Smaller, bigger, new design... just updates.

    If you want a color e-ink display, you got to go to Korea. Not silicon valley, korea. Go to China and you can buy mobile phones that run rings around western models, laptops with features and specs you just can't get here. The west has become so obsessed with lawsuits, real innovation has stopped. Sure, maybe Apple can stop Samsung now on one of its many different markets but what if next some Chinese company comes up with a NEW idea that Apple wants to copy? Oops, it just introduced around the world that implementing the same broad design as someone else is illegal. Apple and MS have both been in court before for this where they claimed the other copied something only to find they themselves copied it too.

    Apple is fighting a legal battle it i

    • Everybody copies from everybody else, in science they are even proud of it "if I seen furthest, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". Artists are inspired by their predecessors but suddenly in our society the slightest hint of similarity is evil

      The quote came from Issac Newton, who had an infamous dispute [wikipedia.org] with Gottfried Leibniz on the bragging rights for inventing Calculus. There were no lawsuits, presumably the laws of the time were not sufficiently bloated to allow litigation over such claims, but the whole affair was not very pretty.

      they gone from a plucky fighter against the evil MS to a far greater evil then MS ever dreamed off. That is an achievement of sorts

      If you rate a tech company by "evil / not-evil" (and shades in between), you really need to grow up. Almost all companies exist to make profit, nobody (IBM, Google, Apple, whatever) exists to "fight against MS" (or

  • Don't buy Apple products. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WOOFYGOOFY ( 1334993 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:13PM (#38728050)
    There. Fixed that.
  • Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures. They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry. They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and

  • Software patent regimes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WOOFYGOOFY ( 1334993 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @02:21PM (#38728200)
    Sorry about teh unformatted post previous.. I am sure Slashdot is moving to WYSIWYG any day now ;)

    Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures. They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry.

    They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line.

    This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%.

    In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas.

    There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value.

    Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value.

    But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game?

    That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there.

    http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/ [ipwatchdog.com]

    although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side."

    which is more than you're likely to make from your patent:

    The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. ÃoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, ÃoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,Ã Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003)

    But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent?

    Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government?

    No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent.

    Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation.

    The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon.

    So what do we have, really? We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company.

    And who created that barrier?

    Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs.

    • Sorry about teh unformatted post previous.. I am sure Slashdot is moving to WYSIWYG any day now ;)

      You can change your posting settings (click the little gear icon), setting it to "Plain Old Text" is probably what you want:

      "Plain Old Text: Same as "HTML Formatted", except that <BR> is automatically inserted for newlines, and other whitespace is converted to non-breaking spaces in a more-or-less intelligent way."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tqk ( 413719 )

      Sorry about teh unformatted post previous.. I am sure Slashdot is moving to WYSIWYG any day now ;)

      A good carpenter doesn't blame his tools. No, I didn't bother to read your brain dump. dict succinct. If you can't bother to care what you write, why would I care to read it?

      • Yeah. I don't care what you think.

        Oh BTW Ayn Rand? An egomaniac, cigarette-addicted/ tobacco-company-excusing, life long amphetamine addict who also tried repeatedly to force a sexual relationship on the no longer willing Nathaniel Brandon who himself is famous for having said "I agree with Ayn Rand about most things and I admire most of her philosophy, but I don't see how any of that means I have to sleep with an old woman".

        Almost certainly an obsessional autism case also given her total inability

  • Whatever I wont even waste my time reading this tripe anymore. Fuck you Apple

  • I got into computers in the Apple II days, the first mouse I touched was on a Apple Lisa the forefather of the Mac. I worked for Mac software companies and Apple partners. So I have been around Apple and watched them a long time. I was never a Apple cult person because dealing with and watching their business practices they could be jerks. Apple was a company that tried to compete via innovation, but over the past few years their switch to litigation before innovation makes me sick.

    Apple get back to R

  • I think I'm going to file a new patent for the process where a company derives revenue from suing competitors over frivolous claims instead of producing a product.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by green1 ( 322787 )

      Too much prior art... of course if you have enough money prior art is much less relevant and you can still use it to drag all sorts of companies through the court system for decades on end... (at which point it doesn't really matter if you "win" or "loose" as the lawyers will be rich, and the opposing company will be bankrupt)

  • Here's my problem with the "looks" issues (Score:3)

    by vawwyakr ( 1992390 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @03:09PM (#38728836)
    How many TVs looks like a big rectangle with a screen? How many remotes are just a bunch of buttons? How many computer screens are a rectangle with a screen and maybe some buttons on a corner? How many mice are little rounded things with a few buttons at the top? Most things LOOK pretty darn similar, particularly after some initial iterations of refinement where eventually everything looks about it optimal as possible. Sorry but eventually you gotta just let go and try to make a better product.
  • and I'm sick of this shit. All the way around I'm sick of this shit.
  • Next Apple will sue LG for retroactively cloning the iPhone 4 in 2007. No way they could have designed the Prada on their own, it's just too similar to the iPhone 4.
  • Judging on how much time and money Apple are spending trying to block the sale of the Samsung Galaxy S2 it must be one hell of a good phone. One could almost deduce that Apple think its actually better than their iPhone 4S with the amount of attention they're giving it. Might be worth looking at the Galaxy S2......

  • Pretty much shows Samsung is going to win and Apple are on the ropes. The S2 is faster, thinner, lighter, has better reception, bigger and brighter screen, and an OS supported by now nearly all manufacturers. Oh and a hell of a lot cheaper (got mine for under $50 with short contract).

    Phillip.

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