Apple v Samsung: Can Look and Feel Be Patented?

[tubemonkey]

Hmmm... American trial, American jury, American company vs foreign company. Verdict? American company wins. No shocker there.

[wyndslash]

sure, but most people will say that's a cheap shot

[HarryT]

This verdict is good for the consumer; it will encourage innovation, rather than mere slavish copying of another product.

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by HarryT

This verdict is good for the consumer; it will encourage innovation, rather than mere slavish copying of another product.

I hope that will really come true. I should find a list of all the patents apple holds.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

sure, but most people will say that's a cheap shot

It adds more spice to the thread

[tubemonkey]

Here's a blogger who thinks Samsung actually won. How might that be?

But Scoble, ever the contrarian, shared a different view on his Facebook account:

I think this is actually a sizable win for Samsung. Why? It only cost $1 billion to become the #2 most profitable mobile company.

Remember how much Microsoft paid for Skype? $8 billion. So, for 1/8th of a Skype Samsung took RIM’s place and kicked HTC’s behind.

And …

I bet that RIM wishes it had copied the iPhone a lot sooner than it did. So does Nokia, and HTC and a raft of other manufacturers I bet. Samsung is a much healthier company than any of those BECAUSE it copied the iPhone.

Interesting take. A billion dollars to become #2

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by wodin

Rectangular, with rounded corners and glass covering the front, are you really sure there is not prior art? Sounds an awful lot like the windows on my car to me!

Talking of PR.
Apple lost their claim based on the "rounded corners" design patent.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by obsessed2

One of the patent infringements was on-screen icons? This is insane. Absolutely insane.

No, it was for Apple's particular icons and layout, not the idea of on-screen icons. It was a design patent, not a utility patent.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

I hope that will really come true. I should find a list of all the patents apple holds.

While you are doing that, you could also find a list of all the design patents (the type people seem to hate the most), that Samsung hold:
http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsu...012_patent.pdf

As a result of these efforts, for the past five years, 2,499 design patents by Samsung Electronics have been registered in the US Patent Office.
This figure is approximately three times higher than our competitor’s, and this is one of our major achievements. We invested heavily in product design and established design institutes in seven countries including Korea.

The idea that only Apple files lots of patents, or that only Apple files design patents, is simply false, but shows that PR on Samsung's side has been working.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

It adds more spice to the thread

I don't spell "s***" with that many letters???



but I think there is some truth about the nationality thing. The South Korea verdict seemed more balanced.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Here's a blogger who thinks Samsung actually won. How might that be?



Interesting take. A billion dollars to become #2

This really has never been about the money though. It's a patent war and the problem as I see it is that Apple should never have been issued patents on the items in question. That's not what the patent system is for. But it is where World War III is being fought.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

This really has never been about the money though. It's a patent war and the problem as I see it is that Apple should never have been issued patents on the items in question. That's not what the patent system is for. But it is where World War III is being fought.

The patent system is terribly screwed up and I don't see it being fixed anytime soon. So if someone wants to "steal" someone else's patents, I say more power to them. It doesn't upset my moral compass in the least. It's a corrupt system, because many of these patents should never have been issued to begin with.

[tubemonkey]

Samsung has gotten around other sales bans by modifying some features of its products. The company last year changed the frame of a Galaxy tab model and the location of speakers after Apple won an injunction banning its sales in Germany.

Move the speakers??? really? speaker location is something that should be protected? what utter nonsense!!!

This is the kind of nonsense that's making a joke of the entire patent/copyright/trademark/(and any other legal terms that may appy) system.

[kennyc]

A U.K. Perspective:

Apple crushes Samsung in quest for global tech domination

A US jury has rubberstamped Apple's exploitation of the patent system. But Samsung's $1bn loss will cost consumers dear

A home-town jury has given Apple the world, or at least the United States, in its campaign to control the smart phone and tablet markets.

Samsung, which decisively lost the highest-profile case to date in Apple's sue-everywhere strategy against the Android operating system, will surely appeal the verdict handed down the San Jose, California, federal court on Friday afternoon. And even if Samsung ultimately has to pay the $1bn judgement, the company can afford it.

But we're likely to see a ban on many mobile devices from Samsung and other manufacturers in the wake of this case, as an emboldened Apple tries to create an unprecedented monopoly. If so, the ultimate loser will be competition in the technology marketplace, with even more power accruing to a company that already has too much.

The jury's quick decision – just two days of deliberations in an immensely complex case, with more than 100 pages of instructions from the judge – surely means the panel members had made up their minds in the courtroom and spent most of their time in the jury room filling out a 20-page form of checkboxes and granular detail. And on almost every point that mattered, they gave Apple what it wanted. The jury tossed out virtually all of Samsung's counter-claims against Apple for infringement on its own patents, and awarded no damages to Samsung.

Crucially, the jury found none of Apple's patents invalid, despite substantial evidence that others anticipated many of the innovations that Apple put together when it released its first iPhone. This is a shame,
....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ech-domination

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Move the speakers??? really? speaker location is something that should be protected? what utter nonsense!!!

This is the kind of nonsense that's making a joke of the entire patent/copyright/trademark/(and any other legal terms that may appy) system.

I agree completely. Rounded corners? A patent? what utter bulls*iT