PCFormat Forum Archive

Apple v. Samsung verdict is in: $1 billion loss for Samsung
Verdict comes quicker than expected.

A jury of seven men and two women has just read the Apple v. Samsung verdict to a packed courtroom—and it was all bad news for Samsung. The Korean electronics giant has been found to infringe all of Apple's utility patents and all but one of the four design patents asserted, and was ordered to pay more than $1.05 billion in damages to Apple.
That's less than the $2.75 billion Apple asked for, but still a huge sum. If it holds up on appeal, it will stand as the largest patent verdict of all time. More importantly, it gives Apple a huge leg-up in the corporate patent wars, and immeasurably strengthens the company's negotiating position with regard to the Android phones it is struggling against.
Samsung has been the number one seller of smartphones in the U.S. in the past few years, and this verdict could alter the balance of power. Apple's ultimate target is Google, which created the Android operating system that runs on Samsung smartphones. Steve Jobs thought Android was a rip-off of Apple products, and vowed to declare "thermonuclear war" on the competing OS, according to his biography.

Useful, new and non-obvious -- that's what a patentable invention has to be, according to the USPTO. But that office started brushing aside its own criteria around the internet's early days, and brought the system to its current, twisted state -- with the Apple v. Samsung decision being exhibit 'A'. Cupertino deserved to win. It was clear to me that Samsung was infringing on items like bounce-back (7,864,163), but that patent, for one, should never have been awarded in the first place. And the whole problem started a couple of decades ago, with the granting of a spate of eye-opening digital clunkers.

The first time I saw an absurd technology patent was in the early '90s. It was awarded, in part, for the electronic process of "storyboarding" still images, or arranging them in the same sequence they'd appear in a film or video. "That can't possibly be patentable," I thought. "Where's the novel process? How is that non-obvious?" Companies like Avid had to ante up to use that so-called technology for their video editing software, which increased the price of their products, shaking down them and their buyers. With precedent like that, the USPTO opened the floodgates to similar dubious products which aped existing methods but were now "digital." For instance, Hollywood has been doing storyboards for a hundred years on paper and celluloid, so why is transferring that process to a computer new and non-obvious?

That turned out to be the tip of the iceberg, as inventions like that led to all manner of ludicrous patents, bounce-back included -- which is merely an animation to indicate the bottom or side of a page. Does that mean that any smartphone effect that mimics an object falling and landing hard, like flying sparks (off the top of my head) -- is patentable? I know US patent law is liberal, but that's ridiculously thin. It seems that every half-baked idea that pops into a designer's head is thrown into the patent bin, and a big chunk of those are actually approved. Not only does that stifle budding inventors and companies, it makes a mockery of what an invention actually is.

Stuart wrote:Have you owned an iPhone, Cyrax?

ryanrich wrote:iPhone custom roms? Well it's clear you know what you're talking about...

How Apple's victory over Samsung will affect you: The good and the bad

. . .

A future where no one tries to mimic Apple could be a lot better. I’d love to see innovation start where these lawsuits stop.

Read more

A future where no one tries to mimic Apple could be a lot better. I’d love to see innovation start where these lawsuits stop.

ryanrich wrote: One of the things I like about Windows Phone and the new Nokia Lumia phones is how different they are to the iPhone compared to Samsung, HTC etc.

americantsm1 wrote:Then more and more phones started looking like my i-pod and later the i-phone I was not sure why Apple had not taken any action.

americantsm1 wrote:the i-pods looked like the i-phone before the i-phone existed.

americantsm1 wrote:everyone rips-off everyone else if you want to get down to the fundamentals

americantsm1 wrote:@ Jamin it does make sense though lol