Samsung Found To Infringe On Apple Patents

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/samsung-found-infringe-most-apple-231101124.html

This is pretty huge for Apple. I think this could open the door for Apple to sue a number of other cell phone manufacturers.

And if the judge declares a ban on the sale of Samsung smartphones and tablets, Apple will essentially monopolize the entire market.

Game over, man. Game over.

The new black market niche: Smartphone smuggling!

Want a Galaxy S4 but live in the USA? Buy one from your local dealer-of-dodgy-items who gets boxes of the things in the mail from China.

Lots of the patents that they allegedly infringed are pretty damn shaky, horrible decision.

Wonder if the jurors all got free iPhones or some shit. Just one more reason to hate Apple, really.

This wasn't in the article I posted, but I read somewhere that Samsung owes Apple over a billion dollars in damages!

The trial was held in Silicon Valley, where Steve Jobs is revered as a god. I'm sure that helped Apple a bit. Maybe they should have held the trial somewhere else that was more neutral.

Conversely, a Seoul court ruled that Samsung didn't violate Apple patents.

I wonder what this will mean for Samsung customers? This might seriously damage the company... at least in North America. They might still do well in Europe/Asia.

Fuck Apple and all you Apple-using assholes!

There are companies out there with better defenses. RIM and HP (holder of Palm's patent portfolio) both could probably challenge enough things on the iPhone to avoid any law suits from Apple. Hell, if you want to go with the strictest interpretations, RIM and HP could probably do to Apple what was just done to Samsung. Those two companies have all the patents associated with inventing smartphones in the first place. Fuck Apple and all their slick packaged derivative crap.

Honestly, what really needs to happen is that patent laws need to be reformed. Because everybody has "stolen" ideas from everybody else.

Still, this does open up some interesting possibilities. With Samsung essentially barred from doing anything that too closely resembles the iPhone, they just might come up with something completely out of left field that utterly redefines smartphones and squeezes Apple out of the market.

Absolutely absurd. Can whoever designed the first touch screen phone now sue Apple for also using touch screen for their iPhones? Terrible decision.

I like Apple but this is a bullshit decision. Compete with your product, not your lawyers. If you have a great product and people love it, of course people are going to use it as inspiration to create something else great that evolves and adds some things. That's how technology works.

Who knows? Perhaps a tablet that focuses on a stylus?

Apple has jumped the shark. Are they a technology company or a patent troll?

Apple has always been the bad that everyone thought Microsoft was. If MickeySoft plays it right, they have the competing tech that can be licensed to compete and beat Apple.

$1.05B is the number I've seen in reports. Of course, they'll appeal it until the world has crumbled to dust, and rightly they should, whether their infringement was intentional or not.

Read the first line of article. It's right there.

So how long till Google sues the fuck out of Apple for stealing the notification bar and putting it into iOS?

Considering almost every single iPhone 4 and 4s use the notification bar, imagine how much in damages that would be.

Samsung had the chance to buy Palm (& webOS) from HP last year. The sale would have included all of Palm's patents and would have been cheaper than the judgement against them ($1.2B vs. $1.5B).

Its not the Droid you want. Is the Galaxy S3. Best phone out there, and will STILL be better than the iPhone 5.

Apple can go fuck themselves.

As for the math. Jury came back in 21 hours. They had to go over 700 questions, and apply 109 pages of instructions to each question. Do the math.

700 questions, 21 hours, 33 questions per 60 min, Gives them a little under 2 min per question. 120 seconds for one question, 9 jury members means each jury member had a 14 rough seconds to come to a conclusion on each question. It also leaves LITTLE room for debate. If they DID debate on certain questions, it cuts down the time per question even more.

My ass they did their job right.

WSJ article on the jury deliberations.

(bolding mine)

Interesting they let that guy on the jury.

Some thoughts:
1. Lots of people in Silicon Valley hate software patents
2. Apple sued its largest supplier of parts (knowing that if they won, Samsung would simply recoup the cost of any payout to Apple by raising prices)
3. Apple was given a choice on which handsets and devices of Samsung's they could use as evidence in court. They chose older hardware and not the newest phones on the market.
4. Samsung did the same thing in their countersuit, going after older versions of the iPad, rather than the iPad 3
5. Samsung seemed to care more about winning in the court of public opinion, than in the courtroom
6. Samsung is appealing, had Apple lost, I'm certain they would have appealed
7. The surest way to get the concept of software patents tossed out entirely is to push a case all the way to SCOTUS

Perhaps Apple and Samsung are working together to destroy software patents? Apple can surely survive the PR hit they got from Samsung's efforts at winning the public to their side. Both companies have piles of cash and can afford to fight this out to the bitter end.

If Samsung cares more about winning in the court of public opinion they are being extremely successful. The overwhelming majority of people on the tech sites I'm visiting hate the decision made by the jury.

Apple is a douchebag of a company. Always have been, always will be.

Fuck patent law in general.

^sure, throw property rights out the window, the developed world could all be el salvador. mexico even.

25 hours of arguing over electronics patents? I think my brain would have conked out a few hours into it.

Woooow, a HUMONGOUS INCREASE OF ONE PERCENT, that totally justifies your little heading there!

Boohoo, big bad Samsung went and put curved edges on its black rectangles. Lets sue them!

Fuck Apple!

I know there are supposed to be firewalls between Samsung's handset business and components business, but it's going to be real interesting how this plays out since Samsung is the sole supplier of microprocessors to the iPhone and iPad, as well as a major manufacturer of Apple's flat screens and memory chips.

Oops.

Google can't sue for that because they stole it from Palm. HP owns that patent.

There was a very interesting article in this month's Wired about Intel's recent all out effort to make mobile chips. They have some good things in the pipes, so on that front I think there are other options for Apple.

Screenwise, I don't think there is much room to go beyond "retina" right now, and I think that there are other manufacturers who can make it.

Actually Google has 'patent pending' on it and they expect it to be granted soon.

I guess they could 'Apple' the patent office and get it quicker.