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Apple Again Seeks Ban On 20+ Samsung Devices In US 235

An anonymous reader notes that Apple has renewed its patent attack against Samsung, asking U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh to prohibit Samsung from selling over 20 different phones and tablets. Apple made a similar request after it won a $1 billion judgment in 2012, but Koh did not allow it. An Appeals court later ruled that Apple could resubmit its request if it focused on the specific features at the center of the 2012 verdict, and that's what we're seeing today. Apple's filing said, "Samsung’s claim that it has discontinued selling the particular models found to infringe or design around Apple's patents in no way diminishes Apple’s need for injunctive relief. ... Because Samsung frequently brings new products to market, an injunction is important to providing Apple the relief it needs to combat any future infringement by Samsung through products not more than colorably different from those already found to infringe."
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Apple Again Seeks Ban On 20+ Samsung Devices In US

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  • How about no? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:19PM (#45797347) Homepage

    Competition is good for the market place. Apple is already doing well enough; no need to do them any favors.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is a matter of law. Why don't we wait for the judge to determine how the law applies here?

      • Re:How about no? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:31PM (#45797463) Journal

        The law is an ass.

      • Re:How about no? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:37PM (#45797533) Homepage

        This is Slashdot! We don't care what any silly judge says, or what the law says! We'll voice support for what we want the law to be, specially tailored to our limited knowledge of this situation, based on our own prejudices for or against the companies in question.

        • Re:How about no? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:49PM (#45797649)

          Except we already know that this was a Kangaroo court.

          This patent war is a prime example of what is wrong with patents. The jury in this case decided based on one man's vendetta against Samsung. Go ahead, look it up.

          You might learn something.

          • Re:How about no? (Score:5, Informative)

            by AlphaWolf_HK ( 692722 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @01:45PM (#45798407)

            Actually what I find more disturbing than a biased juror is how Obama permitted apple to sell its phones even though samsung won a ban legally, yet didn't grant the same favor to samsung in the exact same circumstances. That's pretty obvious favoritism, and unlike the biased juror, it's perfectly legal and not subject to appeal.

            • Re:How about no? (Score:4, Informative)

              by poetmatt ( 793785 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @02:27PM (#45798881) Journal

              That wasn't favoritism, that was corporatism. Apple was a big donor to Obama's campaign and Samsung wasn't as big a donor.

              It's no better in any form, but put the blame where the blame is due.

            • The reason was that Samsung's patents were standards essential FRAND, which means they agreed to allow them to be part of a standard in exchange for lesser royalties and harder to seek injunctions. Apple's patents were not FRAND.

              • Right, and Apple is infringing and not paying the licensing fees. So, why do they get a free pass? Their products should be banned just the same.
                • Sammy and Moro are trying to extort unreasonable fees. Motogoog is in front of eu right now for monopoly abuse.

                • Right, and Apple is infringing and not paying the licensing fees. So, why do they get a free pass? Their products should be banned just the same.

                  They don't get a free pass, just wait for the court to set a rate, and Apple will pay Samsung the amount that the court decides, including past damages. Part of the FRAND obligation is to make it difficult to ban products.

            • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

              That's pretty obvious favoritism

              Welcome to politics.

          • Yep yep, the article linked in the summary even states "Apple, which initiated the legal fight in 2011, had 13 percent market share in the third quarter of this year, while Samsung had 31 percent, according to IDC research."

            Sounds like sour grapes to me.

            I know I love my Galaxy S3 and have never had an iPhone due to not wanting to be locked to iTunes.

            I'm actually surprised Apple is only going after them in the US, though the US is primarily the only place Apple is relevant, everywhere else it's pretty muc
        • And if all else fails, we have the President of the United States of America to overrule any and all legal binding verdicts!

        • by msauve ( 701917 )
          "We don't care what any silly judge says, or what the law says! "

          It's good that you differentiated between the two, since they're oft times different.
        • Re:How about no? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @01:30PM (#45798193)
          This particular judge disallowed Samsung from showing the jury its prior art [arstechnica.net] (phones that it had in the design pipeline before the iPhone was announced) because the Samsung lawyers missed a filing deadline [arstechnica.com]. She let the letter of the law (a filing deadline) override the intent of the law (to get to the truth of the matter).

          Apple's tablet infringement claims were thrown out because of the copious amounts of prior art which the jury saw. The $1 billion judgement likely would've been thrown out too if they'd seen Samsung was working on iPhone-like designs before anyone outside Apple even knew what an iPhone was. In this particular case, the prejudice is in the jury, not the general public which got to see the documents the judge disallowed because of a technicality.
      • Um, no. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:50PM (#45797651)

        This "is a matter of law" only when law is on Apple's side. When Samsung got some of their devices blocked at ITC, they just came to Obama crying and Obama administration overturned ruling by decree. For me it's plain corruption, not a matter of law. Apple is a parasite who abuses laws when it suits them and using political connections to ignore laws when it works against them.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          So, no different than any other mega-corporation, then.

          • Re:Um, no. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @02:08PM (#45798677)

            Perhaps not. But who gives a fuck if Samsung hides from taxes in Korea. The US is not in Korea last time I looked.
            But, your buddies at Apple hide out in Ireland and pay only a tiny percentage of taxes they otherwise would. Meanwhile, we are firing teachers left and right. We cannot afford to fix our roads and bridges. But no, lets help companies like Apple and GE make insane profits operating in our society, while they contribute almost nothing back to it.

      • Oh you mean like the ITC banned Apple products the president overturned it, stating that such bans should not happen, but then a similar Samsung ban happened and the president said nothing?
        Yeah, the legal system works a treat in the US. No protectionism there at all.
        1 billion for look and feel pattens. Things where were NEVER intended to be patented. Only in the USA.

    • When a company starts to fight other companies in court for patent issues it's a sign that the company is in decline and is losing its edge.

  • by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:21PM (#45797363) Homepage

    Apple is a terrorist asking for the suspension of basic civil liberties just to suit their own bottom line. If there are other devices that "infringe on their rights", they need to go through the complete process to ban those. They should not get a free pass on due process. If they want to be anti-competitive jackasses, they need to follow the rule of law while doing it.

    • Apple can always ask for a ban, but it will only be approved if it's actually legit.

  • eh ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pop69 ( 700500 ) <billy@bCURIEenarty.co.uk minus physicist> on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:22PM (#45797373) Homepage
    Apple want an injunction to ban the import of future devices that the court hasn't found to be infringing?

    How does that work ?
    • They want an injunction to ban the devices the court found to be infringing. They could then use that to argue in a future case that new devices are essentially the same as the old devices (thus still infringing the same patents) and use that to support a new injunction banning the newer devices.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Nerdfest ( 867930 )

      Since they seem to be able to have the President waive their own bans, I can't see why they wouldn't ask for pretty much anything that would make them happy. There's quite obviously some biased process in place.

    • Re:eh ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Friday December 27, 2013 @01:08PM (#45797895) Homepage Journal

      How does that work ?

      Corporatism/fascism [econlib.org]. Oh, wait, you mean that rhetorically, didn't you?

    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      preemptive war, its something we do.

  • Just stop (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just stop selling electronics to the US. Prohibit all export from Asia. The dollar won't be worth anything soon anyway and the US will never pay back is debts. Don't do business with dishonest people.

    • Unfortunately, whilst Asia is the biggest manufacturer, the USA is the world's biggest consumer. They need each other.

  • by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:30PM (#45797447)
    LOL. This from a company that uses rounded corners as a patentable way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. By that light, being a different color sounds like "innovation" to me ;)
    • by MrCoke ( 445461 )

      Design patents are real, we have to deal with them. I'm surprised of the constant bickering about this on ./ . Classic industry is using them for decades (easiest example: cars). IT is catching up.

      Doesn't mean I like or endorse the concept of design patents though.

      • by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @01:06PM (#45797867)
        If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialized, one automaker would have had the patent on the gas pedal, another on brake lights, another on the turn signal lever, and still another on windshield wipers. They could all either cross-license each other's "IP", or invent a totally different way to do trivially simple operations. The Apple (or Amazon) of the day would have been claiming rights to the concept of "internal combustion". Of course, cell-phones have to interoperate with towers and other infrastructure, so there's really only ONE way to do certain things...
        • by FlatEric521 ( 1164027 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @02:39PM (#45799031)

          If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialized

          It was. George B. Selden is credited as being an early patent troll. He patented a version of the internal combustion engine, then went around demanding licensing fees from automobile manufacturers. It was eventually overturned, but was a early indicator of the problems in the patent system. Read more here: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-original-patent-troll.aspx [fool.com]

        • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

          If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialised

          It's been this way for a lot longer than that. Since the invention of the static steam engine, patents have been used like this. James Watt was a pretty egregious "patent abuser" back in the day, that ensured that his engines were the only engines that worked efficiently, brutally enforcing his patents on specific parts of the design to great effect.

        • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

          If the current patent mess had been in place when cars were first industrialized, one automaker would have had the patent on the gas pedal, another on brake lights, another on the turn signal lever, and still another on windshield wipers.

          The current patent mess was in place then, except there were a lot fewer inventors so a lot fewer patents. But when Ford started building the Model T, guess what happened? The other auto makers sued Ford for patent infringement, even though they infringed no patents!

          Oh, and

        • and still another on windshield wipers.

          Funny you mention that. The history of windshield wipers had multi-year patent disputes between inventors, copy cats, major car companies etc for every tiny change in design.

          There was a patent dispute about the manual wipers in the 1900s
          There was a patent dispute about split wipers for each windows in the 1910s
          There was a patent dispute about automatic wipers in the 1920s
          There was a patent dispute about intermittent wipers in the 1970s (they even made a movie about this one).

    • by sribe ( 304414 )

      LOL. This from a company that uses rounded corners as a patentable way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. By that light, being a different color sounds like "innovation" to me ;)

      Was that sarcasm? It didn't sound like it. So, learn to use a dictionary, start with the word "colorable"...

      • by S.O.B. ( 136083 )

        Was that sarcasm? It didn't sound like it. So, learn to use a dictionary, start with the word "colorable"...

        I believe it's "colourable".

  • Great. Another attempt by Apple to squash Samsung. What is this? Their third time? I lost count.

    You know, you are making it increasingly difficult to like you Apple.
  • Poor Apple. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:43PM (#45797593)

    Poor Apple. They just can't compete in a market that doesn't care about status symbols as much as basic functionality. Their only recourse, rather than making better products, is to keep others from making them, thus forcing users to pay more for less. So much for that little company seeing themselves as heros fighting against Big Brother in television ads, you're just another bully fighting over the mass market carcass now. You've fallen so far you're making Samsung look like David.

    • Re:Poor Apple. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mythosaz ( 572040 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:52PM (#45797669)

      The top end Samsung devices are status symbols as well.

      iPhones are ubiquitous. At a glance, people can't tell one from another, especially once they're in their protective case.

      Phones are like watches. Gotta have a big one.

      • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        I can tell the difference, even in their cases, the iphones are absolutely tiny

      • not so anymore! The cheap iphone looks different from the regular, as does the super gold iphone. Apple realized that once their stuff was ubiquitous, it'd be harder to differentiate the haves from the have nots. iphone c, and the gold iphone - problem solved
      • by knarf ( 34928 )

        iPhones are ubiquitous. At a glance, people can't tell one from another, especially once they're in their protective case.

        Most cases I've seen for those phones have special holes to show the precious fruit so that anyone may be in awe of the person holding it. Those fragile things obviously need to be protected from the real world but showing that partly-eaten apple seems to be more important than providing more complete protection...

    • by mikael ( 484 )

      That's what they were used to doing. Waiting for technology to advance in several generations in every aspect of computer technology, so they could combine them together and have a completely new, unique and distinctive product that no-one had seen before. Just about every creative person dreams of doing that. When it was Apple vs. Microsoft/Intel, they only had to worry about the OS and CPU, desktop cases were more or less the same; gray box under the monitor.or mini-tower unit.

      The shrinking size of compon

  • by spike6479 ( 205716 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @12:48PM (#45797639)

    If we had the same crazy patent environment when cars were being developed, every car would have a different way to control it. Patents should protect true invention for a relatively short period of time to allow the inventor to capitalize on his work. Now they are just barriers to keep the markets closed. Big companies cross license patents to keep their monopolies.

    • The thing you're missing out on is timeline. Checking wikipedia, modern cars were invented in 1886. Henry Ford started producing model Ts in the 1910s.

      Over the course of the last 130 years patents haven't hurt cars in the slightest.

      The key is that patents take a very long view of things. In 100 years your tablet will use technology from Apple that is long expired.

    • by Animats ( 122034 )

      If we had the same crazy patent environment when cars were being developed, every car would have a different way to control it.

      Early cars did have all sorts of control schemes. Some had steering tillers instead of wheels. There were throttle levers on the steering column on many vehicles. A Model T Ford has three pedals, two of which control the transmission. By the 1940s, things had settled down into something close to the current arrangement, but automatic transmission quadrants were not standardized until Congress stepped in. (GM had P-N-D-S-L-R, Ford and Chrysler had P-R-N-D-S-L). Standardization occured long after any relevant

  • A lot of these devices are older and not even sold anymore. There are also a lot already on the street. If Apple really wants these evil patent infringing devices off of the street, then they should offer an official free trade in program. Perhaps at least people with the older phones would take advantage, and then only if it doesn't reset their upgrade cycle.
    • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

      Microsoft tried this - they were offering money off Surface and Surface Pros if you traded in an iPad.

      Didn't work out so well for them.

  • How about Apple just cut their stock price in half right now and skip the whole legal battle. Then they can focus on shooting themselves in the foot, making their products worse, and pissing off their customers.
  • by PortHaven ( 242123 ) on Friday December 27, 2013 @01:46PM (#45798421) Homepage

    Do the world some good, next time, target the U.S. Patent Office, Mosanto, and the Federal Reserve.

    It'll be extremely awkward, we'll find it so hard to hate you. It'll be like the time the KKK counter-protested Westboro Baptists leaving us all going WTF, how did we wind up on the same side of the line as those !@#$s

    • Crap, this post is going to cause all my internet connections to slow down (work, home and cell). Hate when the NSA can't take a joke.

  • The Judge should rule, not only against Samsung, but every other device manufacturer. The end result, since all fucking phones are squar'ish. All smartphones by all manufacturers will be banned. Apple will be the sole seller of smartphones in the U.S.

    Then, we turn around, sued Apple for a monopoly and break it into 20 separate companies that will spend the next 50 years reunifying.

  • This sort of news *really* makes me miss PJ of Groklaw fame :-( - I have no doubt she could provide good insights and interpretations of what goes on...
  • I suspect most of these bans will be put in place. The hammer has started coming down on foreign tech, because U.S gov wants that flow of money into its own economy. U.S gov will leverage its power for the wider adoption of U.S based products and services both inside and outside of the U.S. The goal is to control and own as much of the global money flow as possible. The trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific "partnerships" only aim to increase the strength and market share of U.S based companies, services and pr
  • Apple invests a few bucks in some lawyers and government lobbyists and in return they get an army of police to do their dirty work at a fraction of the cost. If Apple had to hire it's own police and equip them with guns to enforce such ridiculous demands, their products would be twice as expensive and no one would buy them. The government is a weapon with a great bang for the buck.

    The best way to fight a corporation is with another corporation. Letting your enemies fight amongst themselves until they're bot

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