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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

#131

Post by mpweiher »

tooltalk wrote: post #94

There is one important aspect of this re-trial many of you are missing. The case was already decided years ago against Samsung -- there is nothing more to debate on that end, however absurd the decision. Now the new jury decided that those frivolous infringements amount to most of Samsung's entire profit. In another word, Apple's hometown jury decided that Apple's patents rounded corners drove market demand for Samsu…

Totally agree with the other commenters (importance of design, punitive nature of damages,...), but there's one additional aspect:

> entire profit .. demand .. single-handedly

You are conflating/confusing profit with overall sales/demand. The overall sales are driven by all the things you wrote: the "brilliant displays", the battery, etc. However, even with all of that, you may not have any profit whatsoever, as the rest of the mobile industry shows. Particularly because design, by itself, doesn't have any additional production costs, unlike batteries and displays, though it may lead to higher cost manufacturing.

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

#132

Post by bildung »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #51
sjwright wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that comment being voted down? It's exactly on point.

The iPhone was always going to happen as soon as capacitive multitouch technology became feasible at the consumer level. It was never going to happen a minute earlier, and it was absolutely inevitable a minute later. It was just a question of who was going to build it. Apple kept their eye on that particular ball, while Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung, and others did not. As a result, Apple was (properly) rewar…

To support the obviousness of multitouch interfaces Camperbob mentions: See this prototype from Synaptics from 2006: https://www.slashgear.com/synaptics-onyx-concept-live-demo-c...

The original iPhone used a Synaptics touchscreen IIRC, so it's pretty reasonable that Apple and every major phone manufacturer has been shown the Synaptics tech demo in 2006, probably earlier.

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

#133

Post by oblio »

stouset wrote: post #74
prepend wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how you think the p800 looked anything like the iPhone, https://goo.gl/images/t3XvMA Yes, they are both rectangles. But there were massive differences aside from the capacitive touch.

There’s an image out there of what phones used to look like imminently before the iPhone’s release and what phones looked like immediately afterward. It tends to bring this pointless debate to a quick end. Edit: found them. Before: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsu... After: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsu...

While what you're saying holds a bit longer term, those images seem cherry-picked, maybe there's another one missing?

I'm saying that because if you look at the years, the first one goes:

2004 - 2005 - 2006 - iPhone (2007)

And the second one goes:

iPhone (2007) - 2010 - 2011

If they want to prove the point they should not be disingenuous and show some Samsung phones from 2008 and 2009. I doubt that Samsung transitioned from the old design to the new one instantly in 2007, via their magic iPhone cloning machine.

Also, the iPhone was more of a forcing function than anything. If you look at a longer term evolution, screens were getting bigger and bigger and the keyboard smaller and smaller. The iPhone shaved 5-10 years from that evolution by shaming complacent phone producers into moving forward at a decent pace.

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

#134

Post by bildung »

krustyburger wrote: post #67
CamperBob2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone was always going to happen as soon as capacitive multitouch technology became feasible at the consumer level. It was never going to happen a minute earlier, and it was absolutely inevitable a minute later. It was just a question of who was going to build it. Apple kept their eye on that particular ball, while Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung, and others did not. As a result, Apple was (properly) rewar…

This is such a blatant attempt to diminish the massive effort huge numbers of very talented people put in in order to make the iPhone a reality when it became one. And I’m not at all convinced that it was such an obvious idea given the development of multitouch. I think it only seems obvious after the fact.

Multitouch and the accompanying interface was most probably developed by Synaptics, Apples touchscreen supplier: https://www.slashgear.com/synaptics-onyx-concept-live-demo-c...

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

#135

Post by berti »

lostmsu wrote: post #130
berti wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Touch was announced on 5 June 2007... the iPhone was announced on 9 January 2007.

June 5 is the release date, not the announcement date AFAIK

June 5 is announce date AFAICT https://www.google.com/search?q="htc+touch+announced"

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

#138

Post by bsaul »

avar wrote: post #127
tooltalk wrote: post #94

There is one important aspect of this re-trial many of you are missing. The case was already decided years ago against Samsung -- there is nothing more to debate on that end, however absurd the decision. Now the new jury decided that those frivolous infringements amount to most of Samsung's entire profit. In another word, Apple's hometown jury decided that Apple's patents rounded corners drove market demand for Samsu…

> Apple's hometown jury decided that Apple's > patents rounded corners drove market demand > for Samsung's infringed device almost > single-handedly - not their brilliants > displays, battery, or even wireless radio > functionality. You're completely losing the plot here here. The reason for the high amount of damages is not because it's believed that Samsung phones wouldn't have sold as well without rounded corners…

i found this comment interesting, could the person who downvoted it explain what's wrong in its reasoning ?

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

#139

Post by saagarjha »

tooltalk wrote: post #83
philwelch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense; I generally find that dismissive drive-by comments on Hacker News are better much thought through than actual court decisions made at the conclusion of a court trial. /s

Well, I think average HN'er has much better judgement over average Joe jury in Apple's hometown on technical design and patent issues. The role (or problem) of non-technical jury in highly technical patent litigation is also often debated in academia too.

> average Joe jury in Apple's hometown

Keep in mind that most of the people in Apple's hometown are have graduate degrees and work in the technology industry…though, it's likely that they wouldn't be selected for the jury at this trial.

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

#140

Post by piyush_soni »

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.

But "rounded corners"? Seriously?
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