Samsung attacks 'patent law abuse' after Apple win

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

Samsung has sent a memo to staff in the wake of losing a court battle with Apple hitting out at what it calls abuse of patent law.

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Shares in Samsung fell 7% in Seoul in Monday trading, their biggest one-day fall in seven years, as a result.

Samsung said there had yet to be a company that had succeeded by relying on the "outright abuse of patent law".

The case is one of the most significant rulings in a global intellectual property battle.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19388633

[originalpckelly]

1. Samsung has taken Android which only looks a little like iOS...

and they skin it with touchwiz, which really does. The hardware of the earlier phones was a total knock off. The more recent ones, however, look nothing like Apple's phones.

The Galaxy products look nothing like the iPad in their most recent incarnation.

I seem to remember Steve Jobs at another point in his life talking about the rivalry between Microsoft and Apple, and saying that it wasn't a good time for Apple to go after other companies and say their products resembled their own and sued them. Odd how they didn't use that lesson on the phones.

More and more phones are Android based. As time goes on, more people who program Java on other platforms and have more than a decade experience with it will make better programs for Android.

There is a reason Apple is scared, because Objective C is the only programming language they use, and it's a fucked in the head language if you've actually tried to learn it compared to C derived languages like Java and C++.

[Odin2005]

2. Intellectual property protection used to be about promoting innovation.

Now it is about defending the status quo.

[groundloop]

13. Unfortunately, you are so very correct

In the industry I work in companies routinely get patents on products they have never produced nor ever plan on producing just to keep others out of the market. Patents are filed (and often granted) on ridiculously broad claims. And the patent lawyers get rich.

[Did I Just Type This]

3. Funny how all the other nations felt the suit was frivolous.

[dipsydoodle]

6. Yes

That's what happened more or less including here in the UK.

Patent on a rectangle with rounded corners.

[4saken]

4. Good. Let the phones stand based on their quality.

The "similar" designs between the phones can be attributed to shifts in social interests. And appealing to those interests. Just because people started to like the idea of high offset bevels, and larger screens have become more affordable to produce, doesn't mean they should be owned by Apple.

This kind of bullshit by Apple really makes me dislike them. As if I didn't have enough reasons not to buy their products.

I really hope Apple doesn't pull this off, shutting down their main competition without even producing a better product.

[Democat]

5. It's only "patent abuse" when you lose the lawsuit?

Has Samsung never sued another company over patents?

[4 more years]

7. Samsung attacks 'patent law abuse' after Apple win

Samsung builds some of the worst products on the market. Kia can sell cars to Iran and to the USA. The Big three car co's can't sell to Iran. This is really not well known to Americans . Why do we buy so many Kia's ?? Why do we buy so many Samsung ( Korean )products? Most people think Samsung is like Sony built in Japan and good quality. It is built in Korea and like China very poor quality control.

[4saken]

9. What are you talking about, Apple products are built in China.

Many Samsung products are better than Apple's. Like Samsung's Galaxy S3 when compared to the newest iPhone.

[4 more years]

12. Samsung a Korean Co

I said the majority of people think Samsung is a Japan Co. That's all

[4saken]

17. Liar, your post is still right there.

[Posteritatis]

11. Not over anything as vague as "rectangles with rounded corners," I'd imagine. (nt)

[onehandle]

8. Apple's stock is Way up today. Samsung and Android stole things that took them years to develop.

Samsung slapped their copy of the iOS UI together in three months.

This is just the beginning. Google begged them not to copy. Now Google will pay as well.

"Boy have we patented it"

[Xithras]

14. Everyone is speculating, but most of Apples claims don't apply to Google.

Most of Apples complaints against the Samsung UI didn't derive from Android, but were part of the TouchWiz UI that Samsung draped over the top of the stock Android OS.

Google has been warning vendors for a couple of years now against overly customizing Android, because Google legally vets its features against known patents. By going off the reservation and deciding to turn Android into an iOS workalike, Samsung created its own problem. Google carries no liability for that.

Only three of the patents in the lawsuit potentially apply to Google, and all three of those are already under review by the patent office. In at least one of them, Apple utterly failed to disclose prior art. Samsung tried to raise this issue during the trial but, as we now know from the juror comments, the jury utterly ignored the entire prior art argument. I doubt the USPTO will be in as big of a hurry to issue their judgement.

[dawg]

10. Apple now has a patent on rectangles.

But they better watch out. I think Yahoo! has a patent on the concept of having patents on ridiculous things.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. I fully expect this to be overturned on appeal

the basis of Samsung's case hinged on prior art (the fact that Apple's patents were for things that other people had done already, see for instance "slide to unlock&quot . And the jury in their own words "just skipped over" the question or prior art which calls their verdict into serious question.

[onehandle]

16. Not only will it not be overturned...

...but there are whispers of Google opening it's checkbook.

Samsung tried to settle before the verdicts. Innocents don't do that.

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. Nonsense

prior art would invalidate the patents; the jury didn't consider it and disregarded instructions. There are strong grounds for an appeal.

[Xithras]

19. People "whispering" about Google are clueless

Generally they're the chattering media classes who don't know the difference between a patent and a pancake.

Only three of the patents involved in the case have any potential to impact the underlying Android operating system. None of the three are essential, and all are already under review by the USPTO and may be invalidated depending on their findings (remember, a court may find a patent valid, but the USPTO can still overturn it and wipe it out...the USPTO investigation is unrelated to this case, and is not impacted by the verdict).

The verdict against Samsung was primarily based on its Touchwiz interface, and on the design of its hardware. Neither of those has any impact on Google or Android.

If the patents aren't invalidated by the USPTO, here are the changes that will be coming to Android: 1. When zooming on images, there can't be a timer involved in repeated pinch-zooms. 2. Tap to zoom will be removed (Android already relies on the long press over the tap anyway, so that's a minor modification). That's it. The other software patents specified in this suit already don't exist in the Android operating system. Technically Apple MIGHT be able to make a claim on the physics based scrolling thing, but that's solved by a simple timer based workaround, and would be an invisible change to the user.

Those are trivial compared to the danger Apple would be facing if they tackled Google. You know that fancy Notifications system that Apple added to the iPhone 4? The one that finally gave iPhone users the ability to see all of their application notifications in one place? The one that Google invented for the Android long before Apple could be bothered? The one that Google PATENTED back in 2009, before Apple even started work on theirs? How happy would iPhone users be to see THAT go away? I can live without tap-to-zoom on my Android. Can iPhone users go back to a Notification free world? Would iPhone users ever like to have widgets, which are also patented by Google (survey says its the single most requested feature for iOS6)?

In spite of the media chatterboxes, Apple won't be strongarming Google anytime soon. Apple is fully aware of the fact that Google owns as many vital patents as they do, and that any patent fight between the two would be brutal for both companies.

[onehandle]

20. It's not going to be a lawsuit.

Google lost by proxy last week.

It's going to be elevated fees.

Oh, and... Bookmarked.