There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
This is definitely not the end of this story. It can't be. It's preposterous."
Posted Aug 25, 2012 15:43 UTC (Sat)
by reddit (guest, #86331)
[Link] (3 responses)
Otherwise, start the riots and burn down Apple's offices, Apple stores, the patent office, the court, and Congress.
Posted Aug 26, 2012 5:08 UTC (Sun)
by geofft (subscriber, #59789)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 14:44 UTC (Mon)
by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 20:30 UTC (Mon)
by geofft (subscriber, #59789)
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Posted Aug 25, 2012 16:20 UTC (Sat)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
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Posted Aug 25, 2012 19:19 UTC (Sat)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (20 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2012 20:58 UTC (Sat)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (16 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2012 22:04 UTC (Sat)
by dashesy (guest, #74652)
[Link] (15 responses)
Posted Aug 25, 2012 22:07 UTC (Sat)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Aug 26, 2012 10:02 UTC (Sun)
by tcourbon (guest, #60669)
[Link] (13 responses)
Posted Aug 26, 2012 15:05 UTC (Sun)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (12 responses)
To be honest it will be mostly sad to watch, as this whole swpat farce has been so far.
Posted Aug 27, 2012 1:34 UTC (Mon)
by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 1:50 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 2:06 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
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Posted Aug 27, 2012 17:15 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 17:37 UTC (Mon)
by dashesy (guest, #74652)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 21:19 UTC (Mon)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (4 responses)
I believe that 'pure' software patents technically are 'illegal' in the USA also. Just like in the EU they are not patentable. However the combination of 'software' and 'hardware' creates a patentable invention.
So to get around this limitation every single 'software patent' references many times to the fact that it involves running on actual hardware. Since software is nothing without hardware then this means that pretty much any software algorithm is patentable as soon as you try to actually use it.
The key thing is that you can't try to make sense of it. Patents and what is patentable and is not patentable is completely arbitrary. People try to draw lines about physical inventions or algorithms and such things, but that isn't really relevant. It's purely 'decide by committee' law that is not based on any naturally occurring concept or natural practice by human beings... therefore common sense doesn't apply.
Posted Aug 28, 2012 10:58 UTC (Tue)
by HenrikH (subscriber, #31152)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 28, 2012 11:25 UTC (Tue)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 28, 2012 12:49 UTC (Tue)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Aug 30, 2012 18:25 UTC (Thu)
by JanC_ (guest, #34940)
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So doing the computations mentally or on paper is okay, doing it in any device is supposedly covered by the patents. Which is totally absurd, of course, but unfortunately it is how patent law is interpreted currently.
Personally, I think a general computation device that can be programmed by its user to do many different things should not be covered by such patents, as the computer is only used there as a help to do the computations faster. (And of course "general" means that you can run on it whatever you want, not a locked down & restricted system... ;) )
Posted Aug 28, 2012 7:50 UTC (Tue)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (1 responses)
> An optimist would say that it has enjoyed some of the best global advertising in recent years, and that $1 billion is a fairly low price to pay for that. After all, there can't be many potential buyers of smartphones who are not now aware that Samsung is a rival of Apple, and in many respect highly similar. Some of them might well take a look at Samsung's offerings, and might be pleasantly surprised at the lower price of many models compared to Apple.
And it looks like he's exactly right:
> Husband: "... Samsung's iPad is the same as Apple's iPad, and I paid how much for the Apple one? Honey, I told you they were a ripoff", after looking up the Samsung tablet on his iPhone.
Looks like Apple has blown off its own foot.
Posted Aug 28, 2012 11:02 UTC (Tue)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Aug 26, 2012 0:53 UTC (Sun)
by hadrons123 (guest, #72126)
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Posted Aug 26, 2012 1:34 UTC (Sun)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (1 responses)
I think that Apple's stock has reached at such a level that there is VERY significant interest by third parties to keep the stock price rising. You can see evidence of this by the fact that whenever Apple does a press release about a new product or whatever then it automatically turns into a fawning news broadcast on CNN or whatever. Unfortunately this has a strong effect on most people's opinions.
(The news media doesn't exist anymore in the USA. It's completely and utterly compromised. Apple is just one example of many. They are now just the advertising and propaganda arms of the corporations that own them.)
If I was a Samsung lawyer I'd look very carefully at who has invested in what.
And what is more look at what Apple has been able to do to HTC. What they have been able to do to Samsung pales in comparison. Apple has managed to _DESTROY_ HTC's ability to sell phones in the USA. I don't know all the details, but HTC had a lot of terrific products that people bought, but now they have a very difficult time working around the legal hurdles that Apple has set up for them.
Posted Aug 29, 2012 16:32 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
What's going to happen when companies decide that the US market isn't *worth* going after? If HTC and Samsung decide that they're going to abandon it for Europe and Asia?
If all that's available in the near future in the US is Apple and Nokia, then there's going to be a LOT of grey importing.
Cheers,
Posted Aug 25, 2012 20:43 UTC (Sat)
by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498)
[Link] (24 responses)
Posted Aug 26, 2012 0:48 UTC (Sun)
by donbarry (guest, #10485)
[Link] (12 responses)
That said, the continued delineation of an increasingly narrower role for juries and the battles over what they can actually hear is a disturbing one -- it essentially devalues what life experience the jurors can actually bring to bear. Given what was actually heard in court, the jury decision is understandable. If a greater context ("inadmissible!") were provided, the outcome would almost certainly have been different. What trust is actually given to ordinary citizens? The evolution of American bourgeois democracy suggests that increasingly, they are expected to give a decision artfully decided by the actors above them, and merely imprint it with their authority.
Posted Aug 26, 2012 4:43 UTC (Sun)
by aristedes (guest, #35729)
[Link] (11 responses)
You may disagree with this point of view, but it has been the basis of jury trials for literally several centuries.
On the other hand, there has certainly been a move toward fewer jury trials overall. It is a shame that the US Constitution allows for jury trials in cases like this one: highly technical and with a great deal of subtlety. Juries are a good way to keep the judiciary in check, however or complex civil trials they aren't always a good substitute for a judge with decades of legal knowledge, paid to spend weeks or months analysing the evidence in detail, and required to back up their decision with a detailed judgement.
Posted Aug 26, 2012 21:52 UTC (Sun)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (9 responses)
If it's a matter of "the undisputed facts are this, how does the law apply", it's something that the Judge is supposed to decide.
The Jury comes in when the facts are in question (including things like "this undisputed action was done as the result of this disputed motivation"
This calls for deciding what is probably true in the face of conflicting statement, In most cases with the people making the statements having some self-serving motivation for their statement.
The Jury needs to not only listen to what is said, but evaluate the reliability of the people making the statement.
This is not something that it is good for a single person to do.
The hard thing in a trial like this is to separate out the two aspects, have the Judge decide the matters of Law, and have the Jury decide the matters of fact (i.e. what probably really happened). Trials try to work with the Judge deciding the Law matters by allowing the Jury to only hear the relevant information, and the laws related to that information to keep them from straying 'out of bounds' into areas that they don't have the legal background to understand.
Posted Aug 26, 2012 22:09 UTC (Sun)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (2 responses)
How much would you trust the results if medical malpractice cases could not go to trial and were instead always decided by a board of medical professionals.
Or if all financial related cases were decided by a board of finance people.
Yes, the "jury of our peers" approach does have problems, but all attempts to form "panels of experts" to evaluate things have had much bigger problems.
Posted Aug 27, 2012 19:36 UTC (Mon)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
[Link] (1 responses)
There's a difference between this case and a medical malpractice case. In a malpractice case, you have a doctor (or other medical professional) on one side and a member of the (non-medical) public on the other. Any chauvinism on the part of the medical community will favor one side only.
In the case of Apple vs Samsung, both sides consist of multinational corporations and their associated lawyers and software developers. It's not clear that a panel of their professional peers would favor one over the other.
I do think that there should probably be greater use of special masters in this kind of case, but that's not a guarantee against bias.
Posted Aug 27, 2012 21:47 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
Part of this case is "are the patents valid", but there is also a substantial part of this case that boils down to "did Samsung intend to infringe" and other "who knew what when and what were they thinking" types of questions. It's exactly this type of thing that a random jury should be deciding, not a panel of experts.
I raised the example of medical malpractice because I was on a Jury for such a case last year. And afterworlds I spoke with the lawyers and they mentioned that there has been talk among the medical community questioning if Jurors are able to understand enough of the medical terminology and other information to be able to make a fair ruling in such cases (among other things, just because there is a test that could have been run, and with 20-20 hindsight may have provided information that changed a diagnosis, was the Doctor negligent in not ordering the test)
This sounds eerily similar to the logic that laymen can't handle the complexities of a case like the Samsung/Apple case.
Posted Aug 27, 2012 19:58 UTC (Mon)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
[Link] (5 responses)
If it's a matter of "the undisputed facts are this, how does the law apply", it's something that the Judge is supposed to decide.'
This case is complicated by the fact that the Judge is deciding *which* fact the jury will be evaluating. And that decision will often decide the outcome.
Also, this case raises a tricky issue. In court, the structure of the trial is supposed to ensure that all evidence will be critically examined by the opposite side. That is *not* the case for "evidence" introduced by a member of the jury during deliberations. Of course, you can't prevent jurors from introducing their own knowledge and experience. However, I think this case (if yokem_55's statement about the jury foreman is correct) demonstrates that the in court portion of the trial and jury deliberations need to be more interactive. For instance, if the jury foreman introduces "facts" from his own experience, another member of the jury should be able to ask questions of the judge or counsel.
In general, I don't see why jurors can't ask questions about facts as well as points of law.
Posted Aug 27, 2012 21:55 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (4 responses)
> This case is complicated by the fact that the Judge is deciding *which* fact the jury will be evaluating. And that decision will often decide the outcome.
Agreed, but if the two sides don't disagree on a fact, then the Jury should be informed of the fact if it affects their deliberations (for example, when determining the amount of a penalty), but there's nothing that they need to decide related to that fact.
Sometimes a fact becomes "undisputed" at the end of closing arguments. One side may claim some fact, and if the other side doesn't present any contradictory evidence, that fact is assumed to be proven. This came up during the Google/Oracle case where there were some things that Google decided not to spend time arguing, and at the end of the trial Oracle filed a motion to have the Judge declare those items decided as there were no facts in dispute (and the motion was granted)
In any case, Jurors are not supposed to be introducing evidence or providing testimony on 'how things work'. The fact that in this case, reports are saying that the Jury Foreman did exactly that doesn't indicate that the Jury deliberations need to be more interactive, it indicates that the Jury foreman was doing something that he was not supposed to be doing.
Yes, Juror's have the option of sending a question to the Judge, but since that goes through the foreman, it really doesn't work in this case.
Posted Aug 28, 2012 4:25 UTC (Tue)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
[Link] (3 responses)
Yes. I'm certainly in favor of the bias being toward giving the jurors more information, not less.
>In any case, Jurors are not supposed to be introducing evidence or providing testimony on 'how things work'.
It sounds like the jury foreman did cross a line in this case. But jury decisions will inevitably be informed by the knowledge and experience of the jurors. Which is why counsel are given so many opportunities to exclude potential jurors. I can't imagine why Samsung didn't bounce this guy.
>Yes, Juror's have the option of sending a question to the Judge, but since that goes through the foreman, it really doesn't work in this case.
I think that interfering with another juror's desire send a question to the judge would be an even grosser violation than "advising" the jurors on patent law.
My point was that it would be worthwhile to allow jurors to make requests for additional *evidence*, not merely clarifications of points of law, as is currently the case. While this would certainly have downsides, I think it would be preferable to the current "management" of the jurors.
Posted Aug 28, 2012 6:09 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (2 responses)
This was a question to an expert witness.
However, remember that as much as you may want to know something, there may be legal reasons why it's not allowed to matter.
Again in the drunk driving case, while the Jury was deliberating, one Juror mentioned that she wished that she knew why the defendant didn't take the stand, and several of us pointed out that the Judge had told us that we weren't allowed to speculate on that. There are a LOT of landmines out there if the Jury starts investigating.
a Grand Jury is a different story, they are empowered to do exactly that, but they don't decide that someone is guilty, they only decide that someone is likely enough to be guilty that the state is allowed to file charges against the person.
you really don't want the people directing the investigation to be the ones deciding guilt.
Posted Aug 28, 2012 17:28 UTC (Tue)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
[Link] (1 responses)
Wow. I had no idea that such things happened. I thought that jurors were only allowed to ask about evidence already introduced and points of law. I wonder how general this is in US jurisdictions.
>There are a LOT of landmines out there if the Jury starts investigating.
True. But as long as jury questions are mediated by the judge, it doesn't seem like that much of a problem (except for the judge, that is).
Posted Aug 28, 2012 18:31 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
Posted Aug 27, 2012 4:49 UTC (Mon)
by donbarry (guest, #10485)
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dlang: the division between the trying of facts and law is not so clean cut. John Jay, first supreme court chief justice, in an unusual case with the justices actually hearing a case before a jury, in charging the jury (Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794), spoke, "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision - you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy".
Posted Aug 26, 2012 14:14 UTC (Sun)
by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
[Link] (8 responses)
Not only that - it turns out the foreman is a holder of a rather silly trivial patent and thus has a vested interest in setting a precedent for trivial patents being upheld.
He has even admitted almost as much, in saying that he specifically wanted to "send a message" with their judgement.
Posted Aug 26, 2012 16:49 UTC (Sun)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Aug 26, 2012 16:53 UTC (Sun)
by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 0:49 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
BTW, the jury foreman holds a patent on a DVR, filed in 2002 (Tivo was shown at CES in 1999). No, really, it is actually a patent on a DVR!
I'm really not surprised that the patent system is a complete mess when generic and obvious stuff like that can be patented after working machines are being offered for sale. And I'm also not surprised he convinced other jurors that Apple's patents are oh so precious.
Posted Sep 13, 2012 22:42 UTC (Thu)
by xyzzy (guest, #1984)
[Link]
If your fate is being decided by a jury, pray that you get enough people who care about doing a good job, and/or a foreman who will *make* everyone go through a proper decision process.
Posted Aug 27, 2012 20:01 UTC (Mon)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 21:28 UTC (Mon)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 22:35 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Please do yourself a favour and read his patent:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&...
Obvious, non-inventive, too general and filed 3 years after Tivo was a product.
More like viewpoint of a patent holder wannabe...
Posted Sep 7, 2012 8:02 UTC (Fri)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
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Posted Aug 27, 2012 19:30 UTC (Mon)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 27, 2012 20:04 UTC (Mon)
by Kluge (subscriber, #2881)
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Posted Aug 26, 2012 4:36 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
As a (yet unaffected, outside US) Samsung/Android customer/user, some of the questions that are yet to be answered in terms of what lies ahead are:
- injunctions
One thing has been confirmed beyond any doubt. The most monopolistic and evil IT company in existence is Apple.
Posted Aug 26, 2012 8:04 UTC (Sun)
by bokr (guest, #58369)
[Link]
Reading the verdict form [PDF]:
* 1. For each of the following products, has Apple proven by a preponderance of the evidence that Samsung Electronics Co. (SEC), Samsung Electronics America (SEA), and/or Samsung Telecommunications America (STA) has infringed Claim 19 of the ’381 Patent?
Answer: Yes, Samsung infringes Apple's '301 patent, all devices
Posted Aug 28, 2012 4:50 UTC (Tue)
by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
[Link] (1 responses)
This article seems to sum up some key points: It's not just the U.S. Legal System to blame, but also a quot;dysfunctional" patent system. (Actually, Mr. Hiltzik asserts that the USPTO is "understaffed" and "underfunded"—likely explaining how bogus patents all-to-often get by them.) I agree. If the USPTO hadn't granted the patents to Apple, then this lawsuit mess wouldn't have happened to begin with. Of course, now there appears to be all sorts of legal criticism in how the verdict was reached (did the Jury actually read all 100 pages of instructions?).
Posted Aug 28, 2012 6:11 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
remember that the Judge read the instructions to the Jury aloud. Also, many of those pages were very short. Each instruction has it's own page, so many of the pages are a paragraph or so. printed normally they would have been about 30 pages (still a lot)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
I assume that you are familiar with Reddit.
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
Perhaps Google will win its suit against Apple, being also an US company and quite popular too; perhaps all smartphones will eventually be banned and US citizens will have to buy "feature" phones (the variety with buttons; touchscreens are a patent minefield) or smuggled units. Apple's "going nuclear" will end in a nuclear winter for cellphones... Now that would be fun.
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
No, the real fun would be if Apple iPhones and Microsoft Phone got banned too, and only "feature" phones with big numeric pads were allowed to survive in the US. ("Going nuclear" means that all parties lose.) That day there would be a big possibility that software patents were really re-evaluated.
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
Most of us euro-geeks we have not suffered the evil consequences of software patents yet. Or at least not in full force. If this nuclear winter scenario develops, we will be able to watch the evil consequences of software patents from a distance, without suffering. Then we will have a solid argument against them when they try to reenact them once more via some sneaky EU directive. We have not won the war against them, you know.
Going nuclear
Most of us euro-geeks we have not suffered the evil consequences of software patents yet.
Going nuclear
If I understand this correctly, this case was not (primarily?) about software patents but about design patents, a very different kind of beast.
Oops, I stand corrected. Suddenly it is not funny anymore! Design patents are valid in Europe, and seem to be even a bigger mess than software patents.
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
I have found information clearer than Groklaw's massive document collections from Glyn Moody: apparently the patents include several software items, e.g. one covering:
Going nuclear
touchscreen interactions, including dragging documents, multi-touch, pinch-to-zoom, twist-to-rotate and that nifty little scroll bounce when you’ve reached the end of a list of items
Disgusting. Interesting article, by the way.
Software patents are disgusting and these iTouch, iPinch ones in particular are even more so. It is funny how software patents are worded starting with "method and apparatus" as if it is a machine they describe.
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
It was not personal use but corporate use, in fact developers using the product. Here is an example.
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
Going nuclear
https://plus.google.com/114476892281222708332/posts/246sr...
> Wife: "Oh wow," looking at the screen, "... that's a lot cheaper. Think we can return it?"
That is a good one: at the next WWDC Apple is going to present the iPaid 2 Much.
Going nuclear
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
People need more common sense. Americans cannot go this path. Its just plain wrong. Apple is the most greediest company in the history of the world!
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
Wol
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
one thing to think of for those who say laymen can't understand the technology
one thing to think of for those who say laymen can't understand the technology
one thing to think of for those who say laymen can't understand the technology
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
Ouch!
- treble damages
- appeals
- Samsung/Android product redesign
- Samsung/Android future viability as a competitor
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
-- wonder if they caught this one ('381 != '301 below).
Or did groklaw retype with a typo?
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There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)