Apple Wants Another $707 Million From Samsung 316
angry tapir writes "A California jury may have awarded Apple more than US$1 billion in damages in late August when it triumphed over Samsung in a hard-fought case over smartphone and tablet patents, but the iPhone maker is coming back for more: late last week it asked for additional damages of $707 million. The request includes an enhanced award of $535 million for willful violation of Apple's designs and patents, as well as about $172 million in supplemental damages based on the fact that the original damages were calculated on Samsung's sales through June 30."
Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when you give into a terrorist's demands. You get more demands, closely followed by more terrorists. Blame it on the patent system all you want, it existed for a long time without companies behaving like Apple.
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Bull. Infringement actions like this are typical there is nothing unusual here at all legally. Global scale and high degree of usage by consumers makes the numbers large. But really the only thing unusual about these particular infringement actions is you care about the products being disputed and are following the case.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame it on the patent system all you want, it existed for a long time without companies behaving like Apple.
Bull. Infringement actions like this are typical there is nothing unusual here at all legally.
Uh, not bull, that's what he said. There's nothing unusual here at all, legally. That's the problem..
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Indeed. I had a friend (actually my ex-wife's brother in law) who worked in a factory. His boss would bring him a widget their competitor had come up with and ask "can we make these?" The first time they asked that he said "sure, but they'll sue for patent infringement." His boss replied "that's why we have a legal department." He said that often, you could build the exact same device and get around the patents by making it out of a different material.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just silly. Everyone knows that Apple's just trying to make sure they don't have to compete.
Competition is a pesky thing when you're on top. It's sort of the consumer electronics equivalent of the 1927 Yankees having the entire Philadelphia Athletics team killed on the way to the ball-park.
I mean, you're already 19 games ahead, but a little insurance is always good. And ultimately, it's not about winning, it's about humiliating the competition and making sure you win forever without having to try so hard.
It makes me understand why not everyone is comfortable having a businessman as president.
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Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Samsung in 2011 did $42b in sales and $4.7b in profits. They aren't going to be strapped for cash. On the other hand an award that large would destroy the profitability of their Android strategy. It would turn infringement from a money maker to a money loser.
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Posting as myself since AC would be lame and I can stand for it:
So the brand of the tards can single handely destroy the worlds biggest mobile maker by ridicilous patent claims?
Awesome.
As if there wasn't reason enough to think bad about the people buying Apple products. Or the actual Apple products. Or Apple.
In all honesty though I assume they could raise their prices to afford paying for this or proper licenses, eventually losing part of their position on the market but if that's how it should be then fine
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Interestingly enough Samsung is alleging jury misconduct, and also perjury during voir dire.
Since it was the jury foreman I foresee that either samsung is going to get a mistrial or apple will have had to do some serious bribing.
And one particular jury foreman will hopefully
Though ironically, how do we get rid of shills without booting conscentious jurors who believe in jury nullification?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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A cap on wealth? All this will do is turn the creative into criminals and increase nepotism.. I've reached my cap where do I put the money now? Oh my maybe its time for my nephew to open up a 10 million dollar company! Do you see how this works? And if they clamp down on this? Then our best and brightest will all be in jail or wasting time finding further loopholes, sounds like a productive thing for society?
Don't propose unnecessarty laws and restrictions for which you do not understand the consequences.
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In a similar vein, if you redistribute the wealth in the US so that X=5 for the
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That would just encourage more outsourcing. Any low paid jobs would be handled by company x. Possibly the executives will work for both companies and still make the same money so you don't even really end up screwing them just adding more bureaucracy.
We need to stop focusing on what other people as a means of justifying our lives or happiness. It doesn't make things better and it just makes everyone bitter (there is always someone unfairly/fairly doing better than you.)
good research to support smaller wage disparity (Score:5, Informative)
There's a fair bit of research showing that well-being is related inversely to the difference in income between the richest and poorest people in a society. The smaller the difference, the better off people are.
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Interesting. Someone who has hit the wealth ceiling would have to spend his money in order to get more. But then, isn't what he buys with that money also counted as wealth? I see the following difficulties here: one would have to keep track of ALL possessions in order to see when someone has hit the ceiling or not, sounds like a lot of bookkeeping and much room for abuse (wealthy people trying to hide their possessions). And the ones most affected by this scheme would do everything in their power to prevent
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why include possessions at all?
If the rich are spending money on things then that's good, it's productive money, going back into the economy, creating jobs, being passed onto others as wages and so forth. Bill Gates buys a $10bn mega-yacht with built on runway and plane included and that's thousands of staff who will be employed producing that yacht. Those people get a few years of well paid employment, Bill gets a mega-yacht at the end of it. It's win-win.
The problem isn't this sort of rich person, it's the hoarders who are the issue. They literally have hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions doing absolutely nothing other than generating more money for themselves. It's not productive, it doesn't create jobs, it makes society poorer - it literally drains money out of society and turns it into an arbitrary number with which said hoarder makes up for his small penis or whatever traumatic issue that made him that way does - that's the problem that needs to be dealt with.
Imagine you have a set of people living around a lake, living off of it for food and water. That's great, until one day one guy thinks you know what? I'm going to drain the lake and store it in my back garden in a massive sealed area no one can get to. That's great, he's taken all the water himself, well done, he wins, but everyone around him is then desperate for water, so their only option is to break in to his compound - commit crime, to get what they need to live. The point is the guy may have got an ego boost at having the most water around, but society itself has suffered greatly as a result.
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They literally have hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions doing absolutely nothing other than generating more money for themselves
Where is that money? How is it generating more money?
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So I live in the UK, the US dollar is trading at 2 USD to 1 GBP, and I buy £1million worth giving me $2million. The recession happens and the value of the pound drops to 1.4 USD to 1 GBP and I buy back pounds with my US dollars. I then end up with ~£1.4mill.
There are any number of ways to grow a pile of money without actually investing it into anything of value. Even in the investment market itself there are any number of schemes to grow income without the invested money actually act
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If mankind thought the same way you do we would still be banging rocks in each other's heads.
Although I don't agree with him he does have a point and is willing to discuss it, if you had an IQ bigger than 100 instead of shutting communication with irony and insult you would try to encourage it.
Close minded bafoon.
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:4, Funny)
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The idea isn't stupid, it's just one that will fail and at the same time expose the 1 percent for the greedy fuckers they really are when they stomp on it.
The rich should be taxed simply because they can afford it, and the worst a rich person could do is be brought down to be equal to the second richest person after him, and if that's not enough both of them only go down to tie with number 3, and so on. The worst that could happen is that they float down from heaven enough for us to see them, and all of us
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Two words for you: Paris Hilton
Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mind you, I'd rather government be this magical free thing that nobody has to pay for. But cops, judges, tax collectors, municipal plumbers, soldiers, mayors, senators, councilors, sheriffs, and even prison wardens have to eat too, and every hour they spend on the job of government that they then cannot spend in the private sector has to be compensated.
So the question is, who should pay for this burden?
I'd rather tax the rich simply because they can afford it. The worst that can happen to the number 1 rich man is that he gets down to number 2, and if the government needs more money they both go down to number 3, who joins them on the trip down to number 4, and so on until the government's "civilized society bill" gets paid. There is a LONG way down before a rich man starts truly suffering poverty, or even inconvenience. Until he actually comes up short on something he needs or wants BESIDES being richer than someone else, he's got more money than he can use.
And that's assuming a 100 percent tax on the top bracket, which doesn't even have to be the case.
Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, I share your sentiment. Apple is increasingly becoming a downright scary company, Perhaps *all* their staff should watch those "think different" ads again. The company seems to be almost aiming for a Big Brother badge these days.
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
This recent behavior by Apple is no different than they've always acted. They've always been scary, they just haven't had the resources to be particularly dangerous until recently.
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How is this any different to the way they behaved more than 20 years ago when they sued Microsoft over Windows [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
It took this long for people to realize that Apple has never been nothing more than a cut-throat Capitalist company?
Really? Steve Jobs was NEVER a Saint nor was he ever nothing more than Bill Gates (in his Microsoft days) with a "cool veneer".
I'm sorry to all you Apple distortion field loving fanboys and girls out there but Steve was ALWAYS a vicious business man.
The difference between Jobs and Gates (besides the obvious) is that Gates changed over time and became an amazing philanthropist. Even in Jobs’s dying days he was still cut throat, admirable if you’re a business person but that’s it.
I’m tired of the rhetoric. Apple is just another company that since it’s driving force (Steve) is gone has been reduced to pissing matches with patents.
I hope Samsung wins.
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i used to tell the army of people who ask nerds for advice on purchases to just buy apple because then i wouldnt have to rid them of spyware later. now that apple has taken the douche crown from microsoft, and microsoft has taken the oblivious crown from Sun, and oracle pulled an HP/Compaq/DEC on Sun, and ubuntu started bundling adware, and redhat is no longer relevant... and i intentionally have to break english grammatical protocol to emphasize each element in this never ending list in an annoying attempt
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Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
Right, because 2 million iPhone 5 pre orders in 24 hours is *clearly* an indication of declining fame.
I got news for you, the general public A) isn't aware of this litigation B) doesn't give a shit.
I'm not going to debate the right or wrong merits of the litigation itself, but if you think this lawsuit has hurt Apple in the court of public opinion, you're not capable of looking at the issue objectively.
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Right, because 2 million iPhone 5 pre orders in 24 hours is *clearly* an indication of declining fame.
Given 1.3 million Android registrations per day, Apple aren't even holding parity on launch events.
Ok, let's do some simple logic - #1 - That includes tablets #2 - That includes all Android suppliers, not just one manufacturer. If Samsung sells a brand new Android phone, HTC doesn't see a cent of that money. Apple gets a cut of *every* new iPhone sold. So not only do the Android manufacturers have to compete with Apple, they have to compete with each other... just like Apple. #3 - While people may be buying Android devices, the usage numbers show iOS well in the lead. To me, that says people are buyin
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— Android (Google Inc.) — 104.8 million units, 68.1 percent share (46.9 percent a year earlier) — iOS (Apple Inc.'s iPhone) — 26.0 million units, 16.9 percent share (18.8 percent a year earlier) — BlackBerry (Research in Motion Ltd.) — 7.4 million units, 4.8 percent share (11.5 percent a year earlier) — Symbian (mostly used by Nokia Corp.) — 6.8 million units, 4.4 percent share (16.9 percent a year earlier) — Windows (Microsoft Corp.) — 5.4 million units, 3.5 percent share (2.3 percent a year earlier) — Linux — 3.5 million units, 2.3 percent share (3.0 percent a year earlier) — Others — 0.1 million units, 0.1 percent share (0.5 percent a year earlier)
Yeah....
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
Right, because a stock price that's still over $700/share and 2 million pre orders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours is clearly an indication of declining fame. Most people don't know about or care about this litigation. They just know Apple makes stuff they like. I don't like alot of the things Apple does as a company, but I like the products they make. I don't like the products that their competitors make, they don't fulfill my needs. So what am I going to do, refuse to buy Apple out of some sense of moral outrage? Sorry, not going to make myself less productive as a show of support for some other big mega-corp? Samsung is not some innocent bystander getting picked on by the big kid on the block. There's sin enough to go around for *all* players invovled in the smartphone market, so the moral reprehension is pretty much a wash for me. So in the end it boils down to who has the product I prefer to use. Those are the people who get my money.
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Sorry to all the Apple fanboys out there, but it becomes increasingly hard to feel any sympathies for Apple. Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
Right, because a stock price that's still over $700/share and 2 million pre orders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours is clearly an indication of declining fame.
So you think mere sales figures are a good measure of fame? Sorry, wrong measure -- unless you also believe that Apple was a shitty, fameless company in the 80s and 90s and Microsoft the creme de la creme of software makers during that period...
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
I think 17% marketshare for Apple vs. 4 times that for Android (68%) runs a steamroller over your argument that "most people" and "the public" believe what you think they believe.
Honestly. If you don't know the figures then stop perpetuating the myth that Apple is somehow the most popular mobile phone manufacturer/OS provider around. It's not, it's not even close.
Apple makes the most profit from smartphones and that's it, they certainly don't have the most support from the public or any such thing. Most people avoid them. Even if you discount the budget end of the Android market and focus on high end flagship products like Samsung's Galaxy Sx series, HTC One X, etc. and the equivalents for all the other manufacturers then even at the high end, that is, the expensive end, far more people are still buying Android and avoiding Apple so it's not even simply Android's budget phones that are driving Android's sales figures vs. Apples, most people just prefer Android devices, most people choose not to buy Apple, it's really that simple.
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of curiosity, what do you believe the iPhone can do that a similarly matched Android phone cannot? What do you, in your estimation, "need" that only an iPhone can satisfy? Is it functionality present in iOS or is it software which is exclusive to the iPhone?
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Seems that Apple's fame is slowly declining...
You say that in the week that Apple's share price tops USD700, making it not only the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world but worth comfortably more than number two and three combined?
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is that Apple could get scrutinized like the United Shoe Machinery Company was during the 20th Century. (For those who don't know, United Shoe was sued by the US government starting in the 1940's for abusing patent rights on shoe making machines to eliminate competitors. This litigation eventually wiped out the company.)
I'm not sure if Apple wants to be in that position, given their enormous clout in the touchscreen computing device market with the iPhone and iPad.
Re:Hard to like Apple any longer (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's too bad Steve Jobs didn't pass away earlier.
You must be on the Samsung board of directors.
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Wall Street games... Drive the Samsung stock down, and buy it up...
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Kinda cool if Apple did that:
"See, there's no profit to be made in the Android field and you can't do it without using our patents."
Stock down, Apple purchases.
"See, we're number one in Android. Take that Nokia! Bye everyone else."
bad looser (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company has to make profit by law-suits there is something fundamentally wrong with it.
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Why? What Apple are doing here is driving their share price *up* and Samsung's *down*. It's thinking in the short term: someone somewhere is going to do a run on Apple stock very soon and make a killing, then buy Samsung stock as it floors with half the money. If/when Samsung recover, short that stock and retire obscenely rich either way... only difference between whether Samsung recovers or not is how many lobster testicles you get in your morning mojito.
This is bigger than Apple Vs. Samsung and patent who
Try to keep up ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...and asking the court to award on top of the judgment they already have in their favour.
That says "Troll" with hundred foot high letters and fucking lightbars.
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I actually agree with most of what you say:
"You cannot expect any company to ignore patent violations, and you cannot fault any company for refusing to ignore them."
Well that's exactly how the mobile phone market worked for the two decades before Apple rolled in. Why do you think it can't exist this way when it already did? The only reason it doesn't now is because Apple refused to license the same patents from Nokia that everyone else was willing to license fairly, and for the same fee Nokia was licensing
Re:Try to keep up ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is a patent troll because the patents they are beating over Samsung's head are bullshit and never should have been issued in the first place. Yet the court grants the USPTO a wide berth of "deference" when the USPTO is already rubber stamping things expecting the courts to clean up THEIR mess.
It's a chicken and egg situation where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
It's a racket.
And Apple is in on it.
That makes them a patent troll.
Worse yet, you can't get a reexam at the USPTO without shitting your position up in court if you get sued later. According to the law, if you botch a reexam you cannot use prior art as a defense in court.
I am but a small cog (Score:5, Insightful)
But hope that my action of replacing my broken 2007 MacBook Pro (yes, the Nvidia chip and out of warranty) with a PC will help send a message to Apple.
No more Apple devices in my home.
Re:I am but a small cog (Score:5, Interesting)
Since my current MacBook Pro 17" is still very capable, I'm cross-grading all of my pro-applications to Windows that don't have a multiplatform license and plan to be in Bootcamp fulltime before end of the year. This is easy for me, since I used PCs first back in the eighties and never abandoned them, even when I moved on to Macs fulltime -- I still build PCs for gaming and 3D work.
Another area I'm dropping, which is a bit harder to chew on, is IOS development. I'm not going to bother renewing with Apple come next March; but having said that, I deal mostly with enterprise and I noticed a trend towards Android tablets now, so this makes it easier.
This new Apple isn't a company I respect and care to support. It's going to be a bit tougher to get the wife off her Mac, but eventually it will happen.
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I've been buying Macintoshes since the nineties and working on them professionally longer, but when it comes time to upgrade to a new portable workstation, I'm moving to something like HP's beasts.
Whatever you do, do not buy an HP. I could go into great detail as to why, but suffice to say that it took me over 24 hours on the phone to get a replacement for an EliteBook with a GPU with a known GPU die bonding problem. You'd be better off with almost anything else, except of course Sony, I hope you know better than that already.
It does (Score:4, Insightful)
While an individual doesn't send a large message, every little bit helps and just because each individual message isn't large doesn't mean that a flood of them will be small.
It also helps in that Apple is in a positive feedback loop of their stuff being popular because it is popular. Well, the less people who are seen with Apple products, the more it works to break that feedback loop.
I certainly encourage anyone who is angered at Apple's business practices to find other devices. The good news is that it is perfectly doable. There's nothing Apple has I'm aware of that you can't find a workable alternative to.
Now if you like the stuff Apple makes the best and don't care about their actions, fair enough, but "I can't find anything else," isn't a valid point. Android or Windows Mobile phones work real well, tons of companies will supply you with a computer at any price and quality point you wish and so on.
So the parent has the right of it: If you are mad at Apple, don't buy their stuff. Better still, send them a polite e-mail, letting them know. Even better still, let others know why and encourage them to do the same (don't be pushy though).
New positions? (Score:5, Funny)
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They have to pay for the ex-Google Mappers somehow. It's either that or convince people to start renaming continents [tumblr.com].
It seems someone at Apple is reading xkcd: http://what-if.xkcd.com/10/ [xkcd.com]
And all those distorted map image makes sense once you realized Apple is mapping our dreams, Inception style.
The real news is Samsung's motion (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120922171505170 [groklaw.net]
The real news is Samsung's motion for JMOL or a new trial. This verdict is hopelessly inconsistent and compromised - the statements made by the jury foreman are hard to believe! - that there is no chance of it standing. If sane, Apple would admit that, argue that the verdict should be tossed in it's entirety, so the important points in Samsung's favor are lost as well, and keep it's powder dry for round 2. I'm not holding my breath for that, as they have shown a willingness to argue that the sky is green from day 1.
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There is not going to be a new trial. I think Samsung was treated unfairly. On the other hand Samsung also engaged in serious misconduct during discovery.
There are lots of problems with this filing as well. For example Courts have repeatedly denied a monopoly in the copyright context over the GUI design concepts that Apple seeks to protect here. See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. In Apple v. Microsoft the court never ruled that GUI design concepts weren't protected. The ruled the exact oppo
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Such as?
It's the 'preserving evidence' sideshow. (Score:4, Interesting)
He's referring to the side show where Apple claimed that Samsung should have guessed earlier than they did that Apple was going to take them to court, and begun preserving evidence. This is contradicted in that Apple also did not begin preserving evidence until after Samsung did. If Apple did not feel that it might take action, how was Samsung to guess? Crystal ball? Examining sheep's livers?
As I said, a sideshow. Apple backed off as soon as the judge started making noises that Apple should be punished as well.
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Not preserving evidence that was likely to be needed at trial. Trying to game the system with the late drop of the F700. Those are the two I know of.
Apple may have a problem, Houston... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple might have a hard time asking for more money from that judgment when Samsung has valid claims which could lead to a retrial.
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf4/ApplevSamsung-1990Samsung50and59motions.pdf [groklaw.net]
Of note: the table of references point to cases of jury misconduct, even though the arguments by Samsung were redacted. Bet on this judgment being tossed out fast.
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I don't think so.
1) Samsung engaged in misconduct during discovery.
2) Samsung was unable to provide a sound basis for the drastic shifts in their design approach after the iPhone was released
3) Some of the elements of copying, like icon styling are rather clear and none have been conceded to, which is likely what led the jury to draw the conclusion of intent. This happens all the time, X lies about his minor part in the crime so the jury decides to believe he's lying because he was a primary.
That being
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I don't think so.
1) Samsung engaged in misconduct during discovery.
This has been dealt with. Samsung started preserving evidence before Apple did.
2) Samsung was unable to provide a sound basis for the drastic shifts in their design approach after the iPhone was released
When you include all the phones, not just Apple's selection Samsung's 'before' and 'after' ranges are all rather similar.
3) Some of the elements of copying, like icon styling are rather clear and none have been conceded to, which is likely what led the jury to draw the conclusion of intent. This happens all the time, X lies about his minor part in the crime so the jury decides to believe he's lying because he was a primary.
Well, the icon stylings are standard things that all existed before Apple 'stole' them from previous designs.
That being said I agree with Samsung the punishments effectively allowed Apple to misrepresent the evidence in their presentation. I'd like to see those things tossed.
No real arguments there.
Oh, look I've done the 'quote and deny' thing that generally tells me that a conversation is no longer worth reading Oh well.
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This has been dealt with. Samsung started preserving evidence before Apple did.
Yes it was dealt with in the trial. I was actually more referring to the F700 evidence.
When you include all the phones, not just Apple's selection Samsung's 'before' and 'after' ranges are all rather similar.
I understand that's what Samsung claimed at trial. And no they weren't. If you look at the F700 it is rather clear that Samsung was chasing after Palm's theory of design, a PDA/phone mixture with calendaring being the
Obligatory Ice-T (Score:5, Insightful)
The game being IP.
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You are full of bullshit. Apple is abusing the system. I don't see Google suing over bing. I don't see Google trying to litigate competition out of the marketplace. And suing over gestures? And icons in a grid? And generally abusing software patents progressively making it impossible to write software without having to spend money on lawyers. The list goes on and on. So its notjust the game it the fucking player that is corrupt. Fuck apple. They won't see another recommendation from me until the
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And icons in a grid?
WHAT? No way. How about - Dungeon Master, 1987? That has Icons in a grid. A game of chess has bits you move about in a grid. I hope that patent wasn't given.
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I think this [google.com] might be the one.
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Re:Obligatory Ice-T (Score:5, Insightful)
Why shouldn't we hate the players? The players spend millions upon millions lobbying to change the rules of the game in their favor, often at the expensive of innovation.
I know it's fun to mindlessly spout clíchés, but they're not always true.
A saying only used by asshole players (Score:2)
That statement is only used by abusers of the system and their fanboys.
Don't hate the rapist, hate rape. Only a rapist would say that. The rest of the world hates both.
Re:Obligatory Ice-T (Score:4, Interesting)
This has always been a stupid statement based on a false dichotomy. There is absolutely no reason not to hate both.
Disclaimer: I am posting from a Macbook; while I am not a fan of parts of the Apple company, their engineering is quite excellent.
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You did buy it second hand, right?
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No particular criticism of Xero__Kelvin here, but:
I am posting from a Macbook; while I am not a fan of parts of the Apple company, their engineering is quite excellent.
This is a prefect excmple of why light regulation of companies does not work. The market simply won't make companies behave ethically. It doesn't matter if the company is unethical and evil, people will still buy their stuff.
I can very well hate the player (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple decided to go nuclear, and it is likely to backfire on them. While the patent system is broken for sure, most other large companies seemed to use stupid patents largely defensively. They'd patent everything under the sun so that if someone came after them, they could counter with thousands of patents and see what stuck. In terms of legit patents, they'd do cross licensing.
Not Apple, they've decided to go nuclear on other players. Sue them for stupid amounts of money, declare nobody can make anything that looks like an Apple product, and so on. They raised the stakes, and thus things are getting nasty.
So we sure can, and will, hate on Apple.
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To be fair, Microsoft and Apple have both been in patent wars with each other and with the rest of us for a long time, Microsoft more than Apple. And it's been over stupid shit. Look and feel? the GUI? Windows? It's not all patents, either. Let's not forget Microsoft's sock puppet SCO (nee Caldera... I don't want to malign the actual pre-Caldera SCO, they were lame in other ways) attacking Linux over bogus copyright. Apple is frankly not a dramatic example of bad behavior, they're just asking for lots of mo
Apple meet Sony (Score:2)
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I'm glad I'm not the only one with that list :)
Oh, don't forget ot stick Oracle on there too, just in case you're ever in the kind of position i your company where that matters. Sony hate their customers and randomly lash out out of spite, malice and perhaps ennui. Oracle truly despise their customers and seem to relish the opportunity to carefully devise and execute a plans to harm their customers with a persistence and glee that one can only marvel at.
Sony provide the very much the consumer version of cus
Not so funny anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the millions of damages for the idea of a tablet computer, posthumously, to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke?
Re: (Score:2)
I would be concerned if Apple ever get the patent for a remote microwave communications relay in geostationary orbit. (Clarke, 1945 [archive.org])
The Clarke estate would have KITTENS.
Lawyer costs (Score:2)
If I were a shareholder (Score:4, Insightful)
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Since when is do not disturb a new thing?
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The implementation is new. If you look at BlackBerry's setup scheme it is quite a bit different and doesn't do things like multiple calls from same number.
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a) An entirely new design for screen manufacture no one else (but the Apple rMBP) uses.
Made by Samsung.
b) An entirely new CPU design (and yes this is the Intrinsity division of Apple).
The credits for the CPU design belong to ARM
c) An entirely new mapping subsystem
Yet another object mapping system. So what?
d) Passbook
Kwallet has been around for at least 10 years.
f) VIP mail
So you filter your e-mail based on sender. This is so old that I haven't even been born when it was first implemented.
g) Do not disturb / call me later
You can't be serious with this one.
etc...
Please go on. Don't let the facts stop you.
Re: (Score:3)
No but for example it is vector based and that is quite innovative. The sky shots are innovative.
Bad data isn't innovative that's what mapping systems look like when they are young.
Swiss (Score:5, Insightful)
re-exam (Score:2)
Why doesn't samsung just have the USPTO do a re-exam of the patent, its cheap and would possibly invalidate the patent.
A song (Score:2)
Seemed somewhat apropos.
Samsung will be dealing with Apple Senior Counsel. (Score:2)
Ben Dover.
An ammended quote from Goodfellas (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You mean "going thermonuclear" no doubt.
It's what happens... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think it is a great idea to have technical trials before random experts. I agree with you.
But that's the way regulatory boards are setup. Far fewer court trials and more administrative trials would be a huge benefit. But that requires going back to "bigger government" since the burden on the administrators increases and the burden on the courts decreases.
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On one hand, you'd get people more familiar with the issues. On the other hand, if the lawyers can't distill the argument into something a layman can understand then it's a bunch of bullshit legal mumbo-jumbo that they can blow out their arse. On the gripping hand, those experts are a lot easier to pay off ahead of time than a truly random selection of the population.
Maybe what we really need here isn't panels of experts (we do have expert witnesses, any bias will be relatively apparent) but an overhaul of
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