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Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

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Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#11

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

wvenable wrote: post #2

> covering the rounded corners of its phones, the rim that surrounds the front face, and the grid of icons that users view -- and two utility patents, which protect the way something works and is used. Does anyone know the details of this? On the face, it seems disgustingly trivial. Rounded corners are patentable, really? But the devil is often in the details.

This is a Trade Dress lawsuit

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/18/8619871/apple-samsung-app...

It’s not that Samsung has rounded corners and grids of icons. It’s that they had phones that were almost indistinguishable from iPhones.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#12

Post by wvenable »

mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

I had an early smartphone, the Sony Ericsson P800, and it was a full screen and the home page was a grid of app icons. The iPhone design was extremely well done in comparison but hardly some radical unknown thing. The real design innovation was the capacitive touch screen

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#14

Post by denzil_correa »

mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

There's a book which explains this phenomena : "Everything is Obvious ... Once you know the answer"

http://everythingisobvious.com/the-book/

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#15

Post by c3534l »

mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

A choice isn't a technology. You didn't invent anything, you made the right choice. Patents used in this way aren't rewarding invention or creative work which is being plagurized, they're rent-seeking. They're using the government's power to stop competition from improving on their products by registering things that already exist. The mere fact that they made a good choice is not grounds to prevent other people from making that choice. It's anti-capitalist corporatism at it's finest.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#16

Post by rayiner »

asdfologist wrote: post #5
mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

It doesn't matter if they're original. No company should have exclusive rights to rounded corners.

It's not just "rounded corners." The patent addresses a very specific design, with rounded corners, a border, etc. It is basically only infringed if you try to make your product look like an iPhone, in order to free-ride on the iPhone brand, which is exactly what Samsung did.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#17

Post by glandium »

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

Palm Pilot, 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_1000 http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8493/pilot-1000-retrospec...

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#18

Post by rayiner »

c3534l wrote: post #15
mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

A choice isn't a technology. You didn't invent anything, you made the right choice. Patents used in this way aren't rewarding invention or creative work which is being plagurized, they're rent-seeking. They're using the government's power to stop competition from improving on their products by registering things that already exist. The mere fact that they made a good choice is not grounds to prevent other people from…

There are two kinds of patents: design patents, which protect the arbitrary look of a product, and utility patents, which protect a technology. The relevant patents here are design patents that address the recognizable "look" of the iPhone (rounded corners, colored border, etc.).

These are arbitrary choices, and that's precisely why it isn't rent-seeking to protect them. There is an infinite number of arbitrary designs that would achieve the same function; the only reason to use the ones Apple chose is to try and trade on the consumer goodwill Apple has created with its products, or confuse people into associating your product with Apple's. Those aren't legitimate bases for competition; they are free-riding (a concept at least as important as "rent seeking").

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#19

Post by zumu »

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

There's also a decade or so of PDA's with grid of icon interfaces that predate the iPhone.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#20

Post by monochromatic »

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

Design patents are different from utility patents.
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