Samsung to pay $1bn in damages to Apple

[db]

well, it's safe to say that now is not an ideal time to buy a samsung galaxy S3!


Apple awarded $1bn in damages from Samsung in US court



samsung will have to recoup that money somehow, and it won't be easy when they've got to start pulling handsets off the market that "infringe" apple's copyrights

despite me slagging off android in my iphone vs. android thread, this story makes me a sad panda - 1) all these patent disputes are ridiculous and only serve to stifle product evolution/ingenuity, and 2) this will be quite a blow to samsung, who are making a real effort to bring a serious iphone competitor to market, and without competition apple could rest on its laurels or, even worse, get too big for its boots!

that being said, $1b sounds like a lot of money, but i'm pretty sure to a company like samsung it will just be a moderate aggravation and nowhere near a deathblow.. the prospect of having to pull such a highly anticipated device from several markets is probably far, far worse for them than the fine

 

[Gramaisc]

I don't think it's over yet. Samsung are taking the piss out of the judgement of a US court in favour of a US company, by saying that it's basically like the court is saying that Apple own the concept of the 'rectangle with rounded corners'...

 

[db]

I don't think it's over yet. Samsung are taking the piss out of the judgement of a US court in favour of a US company, by saying that it's basically like the court is saying that Apple own the concept of the 'rectangle with rounded corners'...

lol i sincerely hope samsung win on that basis alone.. "your judgement is stupid - you can't patent a rectangle!"

 

[Gramaisc]

I suspect that Samsung are prepared to put a bit of effort into this - and, for example, if you put a Korean and a Californian into a locked room, who would you expect to walk out when you unlocked the door after the noise had stopped..?

 

[tek-monkey]

From what I can see only last generation tech is involved, so the S2 and the original tablet. Did find it amusing that they were originally awarded damages for devices that didn't even infringe, you can tell how thorough they were!

It's all bollox, how far can you patent look and feel? Plus apple willfully infringe various technical patents on wireless technologies, why wasn't that looked at during this trial rather than a separate one? All that will happen is various countries will reach different decisions making life hell for the consumer who will only be able to buy certain phones in certain countries. While this is decided apple are giving themselves a lot of bad press, as they haven't really explained what Samsung copied exactly. If they were to list the breaches, in layman's terms, people would not feel they were taking the ****.

 

[My Name is URL]

What tek-monkey said... the case concerns old phones, not the S3....

 

[tek-monkey]

Interesting in this case, the jury were asked to rule on over 600 separate issues regarding the case and reached a unanimous, decision in 3 days. Less than 3 minutes to digest, and consider, and decide and then debate per issue raised.

Still think it's all bull though, my 6210 had rounded corners.

 

[Gramaisc]

Still think it's all bull though, my 6210 had rounded corners.

Maybe, if the case had been heard in Mexico, the Aztecs would be claiming to have thought of it first..

 

[shoes]

this will be quite a blow to samsung, who are making a real effort to bring a serious iphone competitor to market, and without competition apple could rest on its laurels or, even worse, get too big for its boots!

What can your iPhone do my Samsung S2 can't?

This is totally outrageous IMO, without wishing to get too tinfoil-hat-brigade this smacks of apple having bought the ruling.

I totally agree with you about stifling progress though, it's a sad day for technological advancements.

 

[Jonah]

 

[tek-monkey]

Interesting read earlier, apparently both google and a Taiwan university hold patents that make siri work and apple haven't licensed them. Plus Samsung own a lot of wireless patents used in the iphone too. If the judge does force Samsung handsets from sale due to patent infringements, how can they not force iphones off sale for the same reason? I think Apple need to tread rather carefully with what they push for here, as a precedent could bite them in the ass.

Besides, how can a full touchscreen phone not look like a rectangle with a screen on it? Apple didn't invent the touchscreen, or pretty much any technology associated with it. Surely apple should just patent 'using a full screen touchscreen' and be done with it? They can't patent large touchscreen with a few buttons, as the HTC Wallaby did that about 5 years previously. They could possibly patent 'screen with one button', but then very few people use that design. Can they patent rounded cormers? Can you imagine what cars would look like today if Ford had done that in the mid 90s? Its all just natural evolution, people want more natural feeling devices and I'm not really sure that should be allowed to be patented by a single company. That is of course assuming thats what the 'look and feel' war is about, as I've not seen a list of actual issues raised.

I think this ruling is a bit off, and can see the appeals working TBH. I much prefer the UK judgement (STFU) and the South Korean judgement (Fine, now nobody gets to play).

 

[tek-monkey]

Why aren't apple chasing all the companies that make rounded touchscreen MP3 players?

 

[tek-monkey]

Cursed 5 minute edit functionality! Anyway, the first real touchscreen smartphone appears to be the IBM Simon

 

[hop]

$1b sounds like a lot of money, but i'm pretty sure to a company like samsung it will just be a moderate aggravation and nowhere near a deathblow..

$1bn is not that much, they will probably just impose a furlough this quarter so it has minimal effect on the quarterly / half yearly P&L.

 

[tek-monkey]

They've already announced they are ploughing just as much into R&D with a chipmaker (of whom Intel own a 10% stake), although I saw that as a bit of willy waving on Samsungs part as it appeared to say sod your judgement, it wont harm us.

Mind you, they made $5bn profit last quarter so is it really that much? Incomprehensible to me and you, but they have deeper pockets!

 

[Jonah]

Interesting read earlier, apparently both google and a Taiwan university hold patents that make siri work and apple haven't licensed them. Plus Samsung own a lot of wireless patents used in the iphone too. If the judge does force Samsung handsets from sale due to patent infringements, how can they not force iphones off sale for the same reason? I think Apple need to tread rather carefully with what they push for here, as a precedent could bite them in the ass.

Besides, how can a full touchscreen phone not look like a rectangle with a screen on it? Apple didn't invent the touchscreen, or pretty much any technology associated with it. Surely apple should just patent 'using a full screen touchscreen' and be done with it? They can't patent large touchscreen with a few buttons, as the HTC Wallaby did that about 5 years previously. They could possibly patent 'screen with one button', but then very few people use that design. Can they patent rounded cormers? Can you imagine what cars would look like today if Ford had done that in the mid 90s? Its all just natural evolution, people want more natural feeling devices and I'm not really sure that should be allowed to be patented by a single company. That is of course assuming thats what the 'look and feel' war is about, as I've not seen a list of actual issues raised.

I think this ruling is a bit off, and can see the appeals working TBH. I much prefer the UK judgement (STFU) and the South Korean judgement (Fine, now nobody gets to play).

I haven't followed the case closely as I think it is all a waste of time really. As you say, the UK and SK judgements are far more sensible and realistic but I do think that Samsung have slavishly copied the general look and feel especially of Apple. Whether they have infringed patents I really don't know. The thing is, Samsung knew Apple were on to a winner and wanted a slice of the action.

 

[tek-monkey]

Didn't Apple do the same, they weren't the first smartphone by a long shot? I still can't find a list of actual patents breached though, from what I can tell most are 'look and feel' related but there are some software ones too. If so, I thought that would be android in the dock not Samsung? Not sure Apple are willing to take on Google yet though.

As for look and feel patents, what are they? The joking answer I keep seeing is rounded corners on a rectangle, I can only hope there is more to it! Like you say though, its all a waste of time. All it will do is force up handset prices, restrict development and in some cases remove peoples choice to own certain products. Madness, as both sides will be affected.

Samsung also rely on Apple as they sell a hell of a lot of tech to them to make the iphones in the first place. I wonder how much of that $5bn was from apple related products? I also wonder what would happen if they pulled the plug in spite? How much of a hit in profits would it be worth to disrupt apples production this close to the iphone 5 launch? Keep your enemies close? I suppose they have a lot of advance knowledge of what goes into apples new products just by looking at what they order!

 

[db]

What can your iPhone do my Samsung S2 can't?

i haven't got an iphone - as per some of my other posts/threads i am merely thinking of getting one because of my withering opinion of android.. on paper, as you imply, the top-end android handsets can do everything the iphone can (and sometimes more), but in practice i have found them to be idiosyncratic at best, and buggy & unreliable at worst..

there are plenty of things that android handsets do better - swiftkey & facebook are 2 things that spring to mind - but i would be willing to trade these for a phone that doesn't regularly turn itself off, apply updates that are not suitable for the hardware they're running on, etc.. not only that, but as hop says phones/OSs are so similar these days that it boils down to what works for you personally, and seeing as i have an imac and an ipad it makes sense for me to think about getting an iphone which would slot nicely into this infrastructure..

that being said, this isn't a samsung/iphone bashing thread - as i say above, i think this ruling is ridiculous & apple are in danger of getting too big for their boots if samsung doesn't win their appeal and stop them filing stupid patent disputes that only serve to stifle innovation..

 

[hop]

and seeing as i have an imac and an ipad it makes sense for me to think about getting an iphone which would slot nicely into this infrastructure..

The iphone does fit in in well with existing apple kit.

Personally I wish the manufactuters of phones, cameras and social media sites would work together to adopt common standards. Phones are now being increasingly used as cameras and yet there are so many difference proprietary methods of saving metadata such as face tags and geo-data.
Considering most phones save the image as jpeg files I don't see why they can't agree on common exif tags to store metadata such as faces and geographic location.

I use iPhoto as my may photo management application but because of the lack of standards have had to create a script which is a mashup of applescript and python to update this metadata when I upload the images to picasa so they can be viewed by relatives on the web.
This lack of standardisation bothers me more than superficial differences in OS such as iOS / Android, since it creates a lock in. It would be difficult for a less technical user than myself to change photo management tool without loosing metadata. Likewise if you were to save images from a site such as facebook you would loose information such as the face tags.

Apple / Google and facebook should sort out a common method of storing this data in exif tags once and for all, then you know all the metadata is stored with the picture not in a series of binary blobs.

 

[tek-monkey]

Do all androids use the same, or does it change between handset manufacturers and their overlays?