Court of Appeals Says Samsung's Legal Payments To Apple Should Be Reduced 66
Mark Wilson writes: Patent lawsuits in the world of technology are nothing new, and the case between Apple and Samsung resulted in one of the largest fines ever being handed down. Samsung was order to pay $930 million in damages after a court found that the company had violated Apple patents with its smartphone and tablet designs. Today the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned part of the original ruling, saying that the jury was wrong to say that Samsung infringed on Apple's trade dress intellectual property. The exact details of what this will mean are yet to come out, but it should lead to a fairly hefty reduction in Samsung's legal costs.
I miss Groklaw. (Score:2, Funny)
If only there was one convenient place where all the information about Apple v Samsung was collected, including all the reasons for this reversal...
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TFA at least mentions that "trade dress" has restrictions regarding functionality versus brand identity, but wikipedia is much more informative [wikipedia.org] to my mind. But yeah, I'd love to see a place that collected this stuff. Wikilegal, anyone? :)
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Which makes me think... pretty much all of Apple's design decisions have some functionality aspect, no? How do they get trade dress for anything?
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You get trade dress on the non-functional part.
Orange's Orange garb is not functional in so far as the COLOUR goes. They can't get trade dress on the overalls' style, since that is generic. Nor on the vans an cars. But the colour, they can.
Same here.
Rounded corners (and don't give me BS about "it's not rounded corners". Go to the patent. There's fuck all BUT corners- not even aspect ratios or curve radius appears in the patent - and a picture of someone holding the tablet).
I believe the correct patent number is D670286 [google.com]. This is the first time I have looked at this patent. I encourage everyone to take a brief look at it, it is a very short read and even more ridiculous than I ever could have imagined. I've read my share of BS patents but this one takes the cake.
Fuck Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
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2. The shape of a phone is a trade dress intellectual property, not a patent.
Which no company in the world should own in the first place. Just bloody stupid.
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There will undoubtably be slash dotters feeling superior screaming "Rounded corners?! Bah!" , since no one actually reads TFA or the relevant material. The Patent covers things like relative dimensi
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When Samsung's own lawyers were shown an iPhone and a Galaxy side-by-side, he could not tell them apart at a distance of 16 ft. thats pretty bad, don't you think?
No, because that's generally what small personal electronic devices look like.
Having square corners on them is kind of stupid idea and I don't think that patenting or claiming trade dress on something not being stupid is quite valid, much less innovative.
As for the first in not having a mechanical keyboard, whether that is true or not, that is just something that could be expected to be designed as devices evolve and model designs change. Laying some kind of "We got there first!" claim on something like th
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NO ONE had a "full screen, nothing but" phone with the shape the iPhone had, no one.
False [idownloadblog.com]
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No, the shape of a phone is bloody obvious, given its function.
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Actually it was. What wasn't obvious was the technology to make it work reliably, but Apple didn't invent that, they waited for it.
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Having done some research, it seems you're right. Pictures were triangular, books were round and walkmans (walkmen? - Ed) were in the form of a stellated dodecahedron.
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the shape of a phone is trade dress if it is not done for functional reasons. What has apple done that they don't claim a functional reason for? Round corners have an obvious functional aspect: they're not pointy, so they don't poke you in the hands.
also doesn't break, as any *smith knows (Score:2)
Also, as anyone who makes things (any things) knows, sharp corners have thin edges, which break, get dinged up and worn down. Chamfering edges and corners makes them last longer. It's also easier to mold, and to make molds - you can use a rotating mill bit rather than hand-chiseling.
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Sharp corners also damage other objects, like clothes, bags & children.
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> not a patent.
Apple were issued with a _patent_ on their design. It is a 'design patent'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
Oh come on (Score:3, Insightful)
I had never seen a black rectangle with rounded edges before the iPhone! ... ...well unless you count the TV I had as a child. And the TV I have now. And probably half the electronics in my house.
The whole "trade dress" concept seems a bit silly to me in the first place but ti is beyond stupid when they can claim something as simple as their rounded rectangular design as being "trade dress".
Re:Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
The communicators in the original Star Trek were sort of like this. The original Moto Razr copied some design elements from that - if you just take that phone and permanently flatten it, you have something roughly the same shape and size as an iPhone.
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My calculator back in the early 1990's had rounded corners.
Most things you put in your pocket do to avoid them getting stuck.
Amazing what you can patent/trademark.
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It's sad to see a marketing company that copies everyone else fleece an innovator like Samsung. At least the amount is being reduced since patenting the shape of a smart phone is absurd.
MODDING THE ABOVE DRIVEL "INSIGHTFUL"?!?!?
Really, Mods? Really?
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Even if Apple copied Braun, the products are not the same and there are plenty of differences in the design. Whereas Samsung copied iPhone the whole stock and barrel, up from the biggest things down to lowest details. That's called copycatting. Samsung owes its smartphone revenues to Apple and they richly deserve this fine.
Re: Fuck Apple (Score:2)
Samsung make all sorts of devices. Does their refrigerator line steal ideas from the iFridge? The iPhone looks like a small TV to me. That's not an original idea either.
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Patents are too powerful and copyright too weak to protect from such copycatting. Are the lawmakers sleeping? It's a digital world where companies thrive from intellectual work. Where are the laws to prevent such blatant design copying?
Not reduced enough, I guarantee it (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless, of course, it's being reduced to $0.
Whole case was insane to begin with.
Re:Not reduced enough, I guarantee it (Score:4, Informative)
Did Samsung knowingly and intentionally copy the iPhone? Yes and yes.
The problem--and the Federal Circuit recognized this--is that Samsung copying Apple's "trade dress" was not something for which Apple could get damages, because the iPhone trade dress was functional and hence not protectable.
Trade dress is a subset of trademark law, and trademarks generally operate indefinitely. Trademarks cannot be functional, because if we allowed that, you could do an end run around the (constitutionally mandated) "limited time" afforded to patents. If your identifying feature happens to also be useful (e.g. it makes your phone more durable or usable), you can get a utility or design patent on it. But not a trademark.
Thus Samsung or anyone is free to copy any unprotectable trademark/trade dress material embodied in the iPhone. But notice that CAFC left the patent award intact.
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How are the Chinese American Family Coalition involved in this?
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How are the Chinese American Family Coalition involved in this?
Good question! They filed a brief with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit urging them to think of the children... specifically the Chinese children who build iPhones.
Outside, the Crematory Assistants for Cremation almost settled their long-running feud with the Cemetery Activist Funerary Club, but they couldn't decide whether to burn or bury the hatchet.
And the Canadians Against Feral Cats told them both, "I don't care which one of you does it, but someone has to pare the persistently probl
Re:Not reduced enough, I guarantee it (Score:4, Insightful)
A year before the iPhone was announced Samsung released a digital photo frame that looks exactly like it. The only difference is that it wasn't a phone. That's how mid 2000s electronics looked.
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I wholeheartedly agree. This has been an immense waste of, ultimately, consumers' money over what amounts to crap. I don't understand how that judge in the UK could have sided with Samsung yet in the US the court sided with Apple. I love what the UK judge said too about Samsung not being as "cool" as Apple. LOL.
What is "trade dress"? (Score:1)
I've never heard the term "trade dress" before. What does it mean?
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=trade+dre... [lmgtfy.com]
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Thank you! That was really cool!
Terrible article, and reduction wasn't on patents (Score:5, Informative)
The full court documents go into some details about the reasons for the decision. It explains that "the requirement that the unregistered trade dress 'serves no purpose other than identification' cannot be reasonably inferred from the evidence" (trade dress patents cover design elements that are functional as well as aesthetic) so a recalculation is in order.
The article is confusing two things here... First is trade dress, which is part of trademark law and covers the look and feel of something. It's under the commerce clause of the Constitution, and is codified in the Lanham Act at 17 USC 1051-1127. Trade dress is also a common law doctrine (and some states, particularly the original colonies, have their own state trademark law), and accordingly, there is such a thing as unregistered trade dress rights (there are also registered trade dress rights).
Second is design patents, which are part of patent law and also cover the look and feel of something. It's under the patent clause of the Constitution, and is codified in the patent act (35 USC 100 onwards). There is no such thing as an unregistered design patent or a "trade dress patent".
Finally, neither trade dress nor design patents can cover functionality. They only apply to aesthetic features or "surface ornamentation".
"But wait, Theaetetus," some Slashdotters protest. "Rounded corners are always functional, because otherwise, you'd cut your fingers off on the sharp edge!"
That's true, and neither the trade dress nor the design patents cover the concept of rounding a corner... Instead, they cover this specific radius of curvature. Specifically, why would you choose rounding the corner? To avoid sharp edges. Why did you choose a 1/8" radius instead of a 1/6"? An arbitrary aesthetic design choice.
Moving on to the real point here...
The jury found that Samsung infringed the (i) unregistered trade dress, (ii) registered trade dress, and (iii) design patents. With regard to the first one, the unregistered trade dress, Apple has the burden of proving that it's nonfunctional. They failed to do that, because the design as a whole offered some utilitarian advantages. So the damages placed by the jury because of (i) should be struck.
Turning to (ii) the registered trade dress, this had nothing to do with rounded corners. The registered trade dress covered the 16 icons on the iPhone's home screen. The Court held that those icons have functional features, since they tell people whether they're clicking on email or a browser. So, since they're functional, the damages placed by the jury because of (ii) should also be struck.
That leaves us with (iii), the design patents. Here, however, the jury was instructed to disregard any functional elements and focus just on the aesthetics. And here, Samsung loses, because they can't show any error in that.
So, the jury award is reduced to just what is applicable to the patents, not the trade dress.
As an aside, the court also upheld the validity of Apple's utility patents over Samsung's objections. So this is a net loss for Samsung.
Not so hefty reduction... (Score:3)
For example, take the Samsung Epic 4G, which the jury counted as $130.1M in damages. It infringed all but one of the patents, but wasn't found to infringe either the unregistered or registered trade dress. So this judgement won't reduce that award by a penny. Same thing for any of the Samsung Galaxy S II models other than the Showcase, which collectively are $250M.