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The Courts Apple

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."
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Will Apple Vs Samsung Verdict Be Overturned?

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  • Again (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @08:41AM (#41435973) Homepage
    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.
    • Re:Again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zemran ( 3101 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @09:17AM (#41436357) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • by puto ( 533470 )

        Actually, I live in America and work for ATT, everyone knows about Samsung and many Iphone users have jumped shipped for the note and the s3.

        And looking around in a building where a 1000 people work, the majority have moved to android.

    • That and features you can get on your iphone by jailbreaking. When I upgraded to iOS5 it was because apps I needed were no longer compatible with iOS4, not because of any features: I already had pretty much all of them. If anything, I lost some features, at least until I jailbroke again.
    • Re:Again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by itsdapead ( 734413 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @10:51AM (#41437865)

      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...

  • by andy16666 ( 1592393 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @08:42AM (#41435983)
    Is anyone else sick of hearing about Apple vs. Samsung?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 24, 2012 @08:47AM (#41436015)

      No, I love hearing about it. Especially because I used to love Apple. Now I see them as monstrous bullies.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      Yes, but Slashdot's new corporate owner has the editors posting stories that will bring the most clicks from the general public, not "news that matters".
      • by Sique ( 173459 )

        If stories don't generate clicks from the nerd folk, then they don't matter to the nerds. So they aren't enough news for nerds and don't matter to them.

      • Yes, but Slashdot's new corporate owner has the editors posting stories that will bring the most clicks from the general public, not "news that matters".

        In other news, articles posted are the ones most likely to get clicked.

        This kind of stuff has been getting posted for years - often in a way that cause people to make comments just like yours. It predates even the acquisition by geeknet.

      • by csumpi ( 2258986 )
        I think that actually started some time ago. Right around when timothy took over. But you're right, it might just get even worse.
      • You're about 10 years late to the bitch party about lame stories only being there for ad revenue.

    • by Morrighu ( 2737899 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @08:53AM (#41436079)

      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.

      • by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Monday September 24, 2012 @09:12AM (#41436291) Homepage

        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.

        • People need to stop throwing the word "innovate" around when they don't understand the confines of innovation within a certain market. There's nothing left for a phone to do. There is literally no more innovation that can be made with a mobile phone. The next step is a cochlear implant that interfaces with your brain, or smart glasses, to store your data and display webpages. Further innovation is unnecessary. We also need to stop trying to follow Moore's Law as if it applies in some sort of qualitative wa
        • Even Google said that Samsung was probably making their products look a little too much like the iPhone.

          Because Google assumed Apple would go after Samsung on ridiculous grounds, like rounded corners and icons in a grid. That doesn't make Apple's grounds legitimate.

          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.

          Apple knows damn well that Windows Phone doesn't pose any threat to their dominant position. Add to that the fact that Apple and Microsoft invested together in the establishment of a gigantic patent troll, and then you see how Apple would want to pretend like there is a competitor that "doesn't infringe". Let's conveniently forget the fact that the

      • There is literally nothing that people "taking more interest" could have do to change the outcome of that trial. Obsessively following groklaw isn't going to reform patent law, and complaining on the internet is not activism.

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        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.

        Ignoring the fact that Samsung was suing Apple at the same time, or that the iPhone was banned in Korea for two years.

        You're living in the exact blind loyalty dream world that ever

    • Actually, not me. I find it fascinating, because it seems so wrong in almost every possible way.

      I'm actually anxious to know if they fix it on appeal, and how fast, and with what consequences in the mean time.

  • by hillbluffer ( 1684134 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @08:55AM (#41436095) Homepage
    Apple and Samsung remind me of the seagulls in "Finding Nemo"....... "MINE!MINE!MINE!MINE!MINE!MINE!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4BNbHBcnDI [youtube.com]
  • War on Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Waiting for times when inspiring innovations in technology get more press than who in a courtroom wins the right to extract money from them.

  • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @09:02AM (#41436163) Journal

    I loved his position that a piece of prior art could be dismissed because the implementation discussed ran on a different processor architecture. Judicial functionaries have a proud history of pulling distinctions out of their asses and calling them 'tests'(later given first names, if they catch on more broadly); but that one was classic.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

      • Oh, I don't really blame the jurors for being dubiously clueful about ghastly intricate patent law(and probably unenthusiastic about spending months poring over the case), especially when the patent office itself has gone through a few waves of "just like things we did on mainframes and minicomputers; but over the internet and therefore novel!" and "just like things we did on PCs over the internet but on mobile phones and therefore novel!" patent grants themselves, and they are supposed to know better.

        I jus

        • What I find really fascinating is that we've got two jurors with previous patent case experience. Talk about a non-random slice of the population.

  • If Samsung's defence was based on the Apple patents baing invalid because of prior art, why are they not attacking these patents directly? It may be a tough way to go but their current strategy is in trouble.

    • Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)

      by punit_r ( 1080185 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @10:11AM (#41437177)

      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."

    • If Samsung's defence was based on the Apple patents baing invalid because of prior art, why are they not attacking these patents directly? It may be a tough way to go but their current strategy is in trouble.

      Because they have their own portfolio of obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents that might become worthless if they create any legal precedents against obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents?

      If you want to see patent law cleaned up, don't expect it to come from a trial between two big patent holders.

    • Re:Prior Art (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PortHaven ( 242123 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:40AM (#41438753) Homepage

      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.

      ***

      Just the fact that the jurors were selected from Silicon Valley is in and of itself enough to claim extreme prejudice to this case.

  • by Morrighu ( 2737899 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @10:13AM (#41437199)
    Everything that Apple sued over is prior art. Seriously.... 100% of it. I don't understand why Samsung's legal team didn't just go camp at the USPTO with their prior art and get those patents revoked. No patent = no law suit. What a bunch of screw ups. And Apple is infringing everyone from HTC to Mitsubishi to Nokia to IBM with their "patents". Feel free to pile on and offer up your own examples of prior art.... http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/457/prior-art-should-invalidate-apples-patents [stackexchange.com]
  • I'll be VERY surprised if the verdict is overturned. Why? Because history has shown that geeks absolutely suck when it comes to rooting for someone as far as court cases are concerned.

    Evidence: Hans Reiser, Thomas-Rasset, Pirate Bay founders, Apple vs. Samsung. In each of those cases there were plenty of people on Slashdot who supported the defendant(s) and figured there was no way they'd be found guilty, much less with any serious penalties. Yeah about that...

    So you can root for Samsung if you want. But I'

  • After enough lawyers get their payday the patents will be invalidated at some upper level court.
  • That page has more exhibits than a science fair. If they're all like the couple I read, kiss your billion goodbye, Apple. Since they have like 23, I mean the one from Samsung, lol.
  • I just don't get it. Here, we have one of the richest companies in the world suing another over an issue of their products being similar. What. crap. The only innovation either side has really come up with is creative new uses for lawyers and patent/trade dress laws, and lets face it, those innovations are not really serving to advance society in any way (I'm sure lawyers would argue differently, but I'm not gonna pay them to and if you don't either, they probably won't say anything). Do we have any idea wh

  • by whitroth ( 9367 ) <whitroth@[ ]ent.us ['5-c' in gap]> on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:35AM (#41438667) Homepage

    For that matter, didn't anyone here read google news the next day? There was an article about one of the jurors saying that the foreman had a patent, and explained to them IN THE JURY ROOM how it worked, and they thought that prior art was so complicated that they skipped it.....

    That's as miscarriaged as it gets.

                      mark

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by rgbscan ( 321794 )

      Already moderated in this forum... but posting anyway.

      That is NOT what the jury said if you read the full statement. Your as bad as fox news with taking a snippet and carrying on with it, totally out of context. The jury said they took the easy questions first, that could be agreed upon with only a small amount of discussion. And saved the ones where people were really far apart and divided and saved those for later discussion. This is the same way you take standardized tests. You knock out the easy questio

      • Already moderated in this forum... but posting anyway.

        That is NOT what the jury said if you read the full statement. Your as bad as fox news with taking a snippet and carrying on with it, totally out of context. The jury said they took the easy questions first, that could be agreed upon with only a small amount of discussion. And saved the ones where people were really far apart and divided and saved those for later discussion. This is the same way you take standardized tests. You knock out the easy questions first. When this person said they skipped prior art... they didn't disregard it or refuse to consider it. They tabled it for the lengthier discussion due to its complexity (skipped it from the initial discussion) and did indeed discuss it in quite a bit of detail. Please quit putting your faux-news tidbit spin on this. That's been discredited several times. Go read up on it.

        Actually OP is pretty close. Watch the Bloomberg interview again, it's on Youtube. You can skip to the 2:00 mark. Hogan states that they were discussing one (Samsung's '460 patent...he's suggesting this is the first one they began discussing) patent on the first day. Later at home, he starts thinking that patent "claim by claim, limit by limit "and how he would defend it in court. His "ah-ha" moment was that the two implementations were not interchangeable because "Apple's software could not be placed

  • by chowdahhead ( 1618447 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @06:21PM (#41444163)
    A lot of comments are kind of off track from what the article is linked to. There are two inconsistencies that are kind of connected. On page 7 of exhibit 1, he declares that he settled a lawsuit out of court in which he was sued by a programmer that worked for him over ownership of code. He also appears to have been involved in a second lawsuit, which he doesn't mention, in which he was sued by Seagate. He should have declared that as well. Secondly and more importantly, from the same exhibit, he promises to decide the case based on the evidence presented, and not drawing on any personal experience:

    NOW, SAME FOR MR. TEPMAN, AS WELL AS TO MR. HOGAN. YOU ALL HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE, BUT WILL YOU BE ABLE TO DECIDE THIS CASE BASED SOLELY ON THE EVIDENCE THAT'S ADMITTED DURING THE TRIAL?

    PROSPECTIVE JUROR: YES.

    THE COURT: OKAY. MR. HOGAN SAYS YES.

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