Apple Claims New Infringement After Being Ordered To Tell Samsung HTC Secrets 287
An anonymous reader writes "Ordered to tell Samsung all of the company's HTC secrets, Apple throws a tantrum and adds a bunch of new products to the never-ending list of products Samsung has infringed on. Apple's tantrum stems from a ruling on Thursday that could have a large effect on the Apple lawsuit. The Apple lawsuit, which was filed in February, alleges that Samsung violated Apple patents related to user interface, technology and style. The first decision was found in favor of Apple to the tune of $1 billion, but Samsung is trying to get that ruling thrown out. But as the Apple lawsuit has gone on, the Apple lawsuit has gotten fiercer, and because of a ruling on Thursday, Apple throws a tantrum and is trying to add even more products into the lawsuit."
Re:Is 'Tantrum' the technical word? (Score:5, Interesting)
The legal term is argumentum tantrum. It translates to argument by tantrum and refers to the legal technique of making additional arguments based on rulings that are not made in the lawyer's favor. It's a seldom-used term since it's basically a trait of all lawyers.
Re:OPINOPS ?? LIKE ASSHOLES ?? YES !! (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't the HTC settlement help Apple's case? If HTC will settle patent claims with Apple, why doesn't Samsung do so on similar terms? Why does Apple have to sue Samsung when Apple is this big reasonable company that just wants to cross-license its patent portfolio at a reasonable price?
Well, Apple doesn't _want_ to cross-license its patents. However, the fact is that Samsung used these patents without permission, and Samsung sales have gone up, while HTC sales have gone down. So here is what most likely happened:
Someone at the negotiation table said, look, HTC isn't really Apple's enemy, Samsung is. And Apple isn't really HTCs enemy, Samsung is. So much better to join forces, license these patents to HTC, and to Microsoft, and to anyone other than Samsung. And do their best to f*** Samsung together. Samsung shouldn't be too surprised if there will be some HTC lawsuits following.
Re:OPINOPS ?? LIKE ASSHOLES ?? YES !! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, in a civil suit, actual damages are based on fair market value. The best guide to that is how much Apple freely chose to license the patents to third party for.
Re:OPINOPS ?? LIKE ASSHOLES ?? YES !! (Score:5, Interesting)
IANAL but I believe the issue that Samsung has is that Apple repeatedly seeks injunctions which would bar the sale of products by Samsung because Apple claims that monetary compensation, i.e. licencing fees, is not enough. Samsung is contending that many of the patents that Apple has used to have injunctions placed on Samsung products are included in the HTC licencing deal. In other words, monetary compensation clearly IS enough, and therefore any injunctions should be removed and Samsung should be offered similar licencing deals to the one that HTC has.
Re:Tantrum? (Score:5, Interesting)
> his legal team is still carrying on his maniacal vendetta
To complete your statement with direct quotes:
Apple has built such a Fuehrer cult around Jobs, that they now have to realize his last wish even if it greatly harms them, or risk admitting that he was crazy, at least with regard to his irrational hate for Google.
Re:OPINOPS ?? LIKE ASSHOLES ?? YES !! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tantrum? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple's plans are unraveling fast. While thier initial actions were very successful, the cases brought by Apple were getting increasing amounts of criticism and I have little doubt that judges are well aware of that sort of thing because to rule in Apple's favor while public attention is focused on it is causing what might have been a casual trouncing by Apple into a careful application of jurisprudence.
The $1B judgement against Samsung is unquestionably going to get tossed for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the fact that the HTC deal happened while no good faith negotiations between Samsung and Apple occurred shows that Apple isn't just "doing business" and are instead targetting and attackling Samsung specifically. That Apple would settle on reasonable terms with HTC also sets a reasonable figure for any judgements against Samsung which would be cause for appeal on the amount to be awarded to Apple.
Secondly, that the jury foreman did not properly answer the judge's questions and that he has since demonstrated his desire to hurt Samsung in particular shows ample misconduct. Additonal misconduct comes from the fact that this foreman gave completely wrong information about patents to the rest of the jury. They essentially rendered a judgement based on nonsense and a complete failure to understand the material. And finally, the math they used in their ridiculous amount is beyond reasonable.
So Apple already knows their case against Samsung is to be tossed. There is almost no avoiding it. But on top of this, they are having to disclose secret negotiations? I'm trying to avoid attributing human characteristic behavior on "Apple" but their pride has been guiding their zealous actions so far. They have gotten away with ridiculous things so far including using doctored images as evidence of Samsung slavishly copying Apple devices. Apple's pride also gave it a huge black eye as they attempted to dance around the rulings and punishment by the UK courts where they not once but TWICE defied the judge's orders.
Apple is successful because they market things extremely well. Some people want to believe it is the products themselves, but I just don't see that as being the case. And Jobs himself was a marketing guy, not a tech. He knew the value of image and perception. Apple's image is being tarnished through all of this for a wide variety of reasons. This is enough to return Apple back to its niche corner where it almost died before Jobs brought it back to life. This won't be happening a second time around...
Re:OPINOPS ?? LIKE ASSHOLES ?? YES !! (Score:4, Interesting)
You're confusing me guys. So is Apple refusing it out of hand or asking 30-40$ for glorious "pitch to zooms"?
"thermonuclear". what do you think that means? it means blocking - presumably this is because samsung is the one who made the commercially hugely successful android phone and because they figured that samsung doesn't have a bunch of patents that would force apple to pay half a billion to samsung.. licensing to htc or moto isn't such a big deal because moto and and htc aren't really doing that well.
the claim(apples view) is that apple is losing good profits money because of samsung products and that (reasonable) license fees aren't enough to compensate for that. samsung is trying to of course turn the table and show that there exists in fact reasonable licensing fee for these patents and thus the damages aren't that huge.
and apple isn't total stranger to cross licensing. nor is apple a total stranger to paying hundreds of millions to a competing company for patent rights..
Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SCO? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, seriously - other than churn out slightly-improved versions of the same product every 6 months, and attempt to sue their competitors into oblivion, what does Apple do?
Get their crowd of hypnotized tech fans and "because it's cool" hipsters to be early-adopters and drive THEIR version of "the next thing" into the position of being the first commercially successful version - creating the appearance that they came up with the concept (rather than just the first commercially successful design) - and leveraging this commercial success into enough perceived standing to sue the competition into oblivion.
Benefit for the rest of us: At least those with enough money and willingness to live in a walled garden, using only Apple's vision of how things should be done, get new stuff a little sooner.
Downside for the rest of us: Those of use who DON'T have the money, or AREN'T willing to live in a walled garden, end up waiting longer and paying more, or perhaps not getting the next-new-thing at all, due to Apple's litigiousness.