Judge Lucy Koh Rejects Apple's Quest For Anti-Samsung Injunction 30
The Associated Press, in a story carried by The Financial Express, reports that Federal Judge Lucy Koh has has rejected Apple's attempt to block the sale of several older Samsung smartphones that copied features in the iPhone. Wednesday's rebuff comes nearly four months after a jury awarded Apple Inc. $119 million in damages for Samsung's infringements on technology used in the trend-setting iPhone. The amount was well below the $2.2 billion in damages that Apple had been seeking in the latest round of legal wrangling between the world's two leading smartphone makers since the tussle began four years ago. The Register also carries the story, and notes Perhaps because the ongoing battle was turning the two companies into law firms rather than tech titans, the two agreed to abandon all patent lawsuits outside the USA earlier this month. However, Apple still wanted the infringing features extirpated from American stores, and was seeking to have phones nobody bought banned as ammo for future battles.
Apple's Quest (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Apple's Quest (Score:2)
Silly English knigits!
I don't understand the injunction (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand the request for injunction against the Samsung phones in question. At this point, the Samsung phones are several years old and absolutely nobody short of a few ebay sellers are still selling them. What do they get out of asking for an injunction? They're spending millions of dollars in attorney fees and, for what, a meaningless "moral victory"?
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Apple's specific argument was: "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."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
However,
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Specifically, the term "colorably different" means:
"The phrase “colorable differ-ences” refers to alterations that do not essentially change the nature of the device, and are made only to evade the permanent injunction.17 Language enjoining adjudged infringers from producing products that are “only colorably different” from the infringing devices is typical in patent injunctions."
Nathan Ingham, Recording over Old Standards: TiVo’s “More Than Colorably Different” Sta
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The point of reference for "colorably different" is the patented features at issue (e.g., pinch/tap-to-zoom, snap-back scrolling), not the overall device.
Given that the patented features here are consumer-facing rather than internal functionality, design-around options would seem fairly limited short of yanking the offending feature altogether or replacing it with something fundamentally different (shake-to-zoom, anyone?). And if you skate too close to the edge of the ice on a design-around, a patentee is
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The argument gets weaker.
After the "Alice Corp vs. CLS Bank" supreme court ruling which states that "let's do it on an computer", where it is something that is well known, prior art, common practice, etc. is no longer patentable. The court stressed that the ruling was limited to the case at hand, but that hasn't stopped [at least] two lower courts from applying it in new rulings.
Samsung recently tried to apply the ruling retroactively towards the [infamous] slide-to-unlock patent, but was shut down by Koh
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Precident.
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That is to say, precedent.
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This is one case where I enjoy seeing the lawyers rake in the money at the expense of their asshole clients (both sides). Why Apple and Samsung don't settle this pissing match is beyond me. This can't possibly benefit either company.
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Remember the tale of the the scorpion and the frog? [wikipedia.org]. You identified what their nature is already.
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I can see the battered remains of Steve Jobs in a high-tech wheelchair with various wires and bits of technology embedded in him rolling out screaming in a ragged ring modulated voice: "Extirpate!...EXTIRPATE!!!!!!!!"
Patents cited in article (Score:5, Informative)
The linked article cite the following patents :
- Auto-correction/completion on keyboard entry...
Il looks quite similar to the autocompletion that you find in some Japanese IME under Linux... which sometimes allow both conversion to kanjis and completion. Auto-correction is quite old on the wordprocessor scene
- transformation of email & phone numbers to link
AFAIK, most forums and webmails already convert email to link for a long long time. As for Phone number, the extension is quite trivial
- slide to unlock
it's mimicking a physical (door) lock... so nothing real new...
Maybe judge Koh has enough of these bogus patents claims and other similar tactics from Apple...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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alas poor groklaw
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The linked article cite the following patents : - Auto-correction/completion on keyboard entry... Il looks quite similar to the autocompletion that you find in some Japanese IME under Linux... which sometimes allow both conversion to kanjis and completion. Auto-correction is quite old on the wordprocessor scene - transformation of email & phone numbers to link AFAIK, most forums and webmails already convert email to link for a long long time. As for Phone number, the extension is quite trivial - slide to unlock it's mimicking a physical (door) lock... so nothing real new...
In hindsight, everything looks trivial. That's why you need to find actual prior art that invalidates the claims. And in particular, mimicking something in the real world may still be patentable, if the patent goes to the method of how it's mimicked. For example, we're trained from birth to recognize faces, but would you say that a facial recognition technology for a computer would never be patentable, because it just mimics that real-world ability? No - it depends on what's actually in the claims, and whet
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Implies bias based on her nationality. Usually, you would expect to see "Federal Judge Rejects..." unless the judge happened to be well known.
Lucy Koh is well known to people who have been following the Apple vs. Samsung litigation, which has been going on for awhile now.
Also, Koh is American, and has made some pretty laughable rulings in favor of the American company. The fact that not even Lucy Koh buys Apple's bullshit is what makes this newsworthy.
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