Will Apple Vs Samsung Verdict Be Overturned? 300
An anonymous reader writes "While there's much talk of Apple asking for more money from Samsung, there's less talk of the likelihood that the verdict will be overturned completely. Based on voir dire, and the foreman's subsequent statements to the press, it seems he failed to follow the law."
Again (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I love hearing about it. Especially because I used to love Apple. Now I see them as monstrous bullies.
Re:Sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anyone else sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung?
Unless you want the only mobile device you can ever buy to be Apple, I'd suggest that you take a bit more interest in it. Because if things keep going the way they are, there will be NO other choice in cell phone or tablet. You will either pay Apple's premium price for 2nd rate hardware and 5th rate support or you will do without.
Re:Sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are buying anything based on what sort of labor makes it, then you're probably buying nothing. Manufacturing work is shit work, and has been since the dawn of time.
Re:Sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung (Score:5, Interesting)
What an utterly ridiculous statement.
Even Google said that Samsung was probably making their products look a little too much like the iPhone.
And then you've got the Nokia Lumia series, which not only doesn't infringe (and is a design that Apple themselves used to show that you can build a non-infringing phone), it's far and away the most beautiful phone design on the market today, in my mind. I WISH Apple would make something that looks like that. (I like my iPhone 4, but that Lumia really does look amazing.)
Oh, and the Windows phone OS design is ALSO an indication that you can build something that isn't anything close to the iOS design.
In my mind, Apple's crazy patents are the BEST way to ensure that there's choice in the market, not just choice between two of effectively the same thing. It's the big departures from the well established norms that bring interesting things to us. Apple's original entry into the Smartphone space was hugely disruptive, and they were very successful. Samsung has piggybacked on that success, whether you agree that they infringed or not. It's going to take another company doing the same sort of wild thing to really bring us something new and innovative.
Like I said, I own an iPhone 4, but I don't expect Apple to do anything innovative with their phone for years, if ever. They've made the product they wanted (something high quality and easy to use), and they'll stick with that--and that's not a terrible thing. There are worse ways to run a business. But for me to get EXCITED about phones again, well, that'll take someone doing something really revolutionary that I can't miss. Right now, beyond expectations, that looks like Microsoft. If they can really strike out on their own and differentiate their phone from everyone else, they'll claw their way into contention.
But Apple vs. Samsung is really just a sort of nitpicky argument. The iPhone 5 is better in some ways, and the Galaxy is better in others, but they do the same basic things. It's like comparing fridges. Both of them keep your food cold, but one has an ice dispenser and the other has a digital temperature readout. You pick and choose based on your needs at the time, but the Smartphone market is basically a choice between dull appliances now.
Re:Again (Score:5, Interesting)
You will have to remember that you are writing to a predominantly American audience and they have no idea of what the Samsung range of phones really look like. Have you seen the piece of shite that gets called a Galaxy II in the US and compared it to the Asian version. It is a completely different phone. Yes, Samsung are streets ahead of Apple but as Apple have managed to keep most of the Samsung products off of the American shelves the people there have no idea of where the real market is these days.
I was looking at tablets yesterday and there is no way that I would consider the Apple. I do prefer its gestures but it is so far behind in features (i.e. USB and microSD) that it is no good for my needs as I need a lot of storage. The phones are the same, I like the Apple but a couple of nice touches and gestures compared to usablilty means that it is not a contender and then when you look at the power of the Samsung you stop even considering the Apple.
I am an Apple fanboy or rather was prior to iOS. I much prefer using OSX with the ability to use the BSD CLI etc.
Re:It's too bad the juror wasn't on the supreme co (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah that quote was pretty bad. But I actually feel some sympathy for the jurors.. this case was so full of complicated issues, of trade dress, prior art, infringement, etc, and there were so many of these questions at hand (700??) that I don't know how any jury of laypeople could ever really untangle it all. I think they did just what most people would do. Boil it down to a couple of overly simplistic litmus tests, that you can just hold up each one to and say "yup,"yup","nope".. x700. Which of course is the wrong thing to do but that's just what happened. In this case, with the help of the foreperson who was clearly empathizing with the patent-holder from the beginning.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)
why are they not attacking these patents directly?
Samsung lawyers are doing that as well in one [groklaw.net] of the many filings. Basically calling each of the patents asserted by Apple invalid due to indefiniteness because of vague words like "substantially centered", ambiguous use of dotted lines in the design patents, and so on.
See comment here [groklaw.net] for a brief summary.
excerpt:
Claim 50 uses such a term of degree, requiring that the first and second "boxes of content" be "substantially centered" on the touch-screen display. JX 1046.49 (emphasis added.) [...] There are no tests, parameters, or other criteria for determining whether such a box is or is not "substantially centered."
Re:Android is a patent minefield (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a big Android fan, I've used various Android ROMs on my rooted phone, and on my tablet. Over Labor Day I got my hands on a Samsung Galaxy 5 Player. This was unlike any Android I've used before. The UI was re-worked quite a bit and my first reaction was "This feels more like an Apple device". The desktop (for lack of a better word) was set up so the home page was the first window, and all extra were on the right (like Apple, where android has the home be the center window). The icons in the app tray had a background image put behind them that made it feel very apple like. The Samsung apps on it looked like Apple apps (Like a notepad that had the same icon as Apple's app). It wasn't a stretch to see many of the UI elements were taken from the iPhone. It was to the point where I had to search for settings, because the UI was more Apple-like than Android-like.
As much as I hate to say it, as I really loathe Apple products... I think Apple has a case here for the specific devices that the look/feel were copied. The Samsung S3 has a much more "Android" feel to it. It isn't Android, but a custom ROM Samsung made using Android to make their own version of an iPhone.
Re:Again (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point Apple is actually copying Samsung, Samsung is a full generation ahead of where the iPhone in both hardware and software is, so anything that Apple does to the iPhone is just following Samsung, I think Samsung should come back and drive Apple into the ground.
The problem with the law is that it takes so long that it's like hitting a puppy with a newspaper 3 days after it made a mess on the carpet. There was a period a few years ago when Samsung's new phones were blatantly copying the look and shape of the iPhone and the look of it's icons (especially when you look at the front-on publicity photos used in adverts). More recent products such as the SIII and Galaxy Note 10 are good examples of how you can make phones and tablets that don't look like an iDevice's long lost twin, and actually increase consumer choice when it comes to form factors. The question is, is that change evolution, or is it a response to Apple's lawsuits?
The other thing is that there seem to be two issues here - Apple vs. Android and Apple vs. the "Android Skinners". While it's pretty obvious that Android did a major U-turn from Blackberry-like to touch-only UI post- the iPhone launch, any accusation of violation depends on some rather broad and possibly obvious software patents (tap/pinch-to-zoom etc.) The first couple of Android phones out of the gate (the G1 and HTC Hero - I'm still using the latter) looked nothing like iPhones, featuring a distinctive 'chin' and trackball design - the first had a swivel-out keyboard FFS - and the UI may have been "inspired" by iPhone but you wouldn't mistake the two.
I think Samsung deserve a slapping for "skinning" their phones to look so much like iPhones (and, even if the jury finding is invalid, there was plenty of evidence from the internal memos, and memos from Google to show that was what they were doing). For one thing, this could be responsible for making Steve Jobs really see red over Android. Also, if you're begging for the verdict to be overturned, remember that the jury also threw out some of Samsung's rather broad claims about mobiles that were possibly even more absurd than Apple's, and decided that they didn't deserve a second round of royalties over cellular patents that they'd already licensed to the chip manufacturer.
Unfortunately, Apple now seems determined to go after Android itself, which seems rather futile and likely to hand the game back to Microsoft. The first consequence of getting into a pissing contest with Google has already hit home with Apple's sorry excuse for a Maps application in iOS 6.
NB: I use both iOS and Android and until the Maps debacle I'd been 50/50 whether my next phone would be an iPhone or an Android. Since Maps on my iPad is now worse than Maps on my geriatric phone I think it will be Android... if I can find one with an SD slot, an up-to-date, unskinned version of the OS and enough CPU/GPU power to be good for a couple of years, and a medium-size screen (I have a tablet - I don't want a second mini-tablet that won't fit in a regular jacket/shirt pocket). That's harder than it seems...
Re:Prior Art (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to realize that Samsung was repeatedly refused to allow relevant evidence or experts. It was extremely frustrating, and Samsung eventually got pissed enough to release stuff out in the public. Which stopped some of the injustice.
Most of it stemmed from an email bias. Where Samsung was accused of destroying evidence by not keeping emails. Apple wasn't keeping the emails either, and just pleaded that they don't do those sorts of things.
This case was a boondoggle.
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Just the fact that the jurors were selected from Silicon Valley is in and of itself enough to claim extreme prejudice to this case.