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Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

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Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#52
post #37
post #2

>According to Judge Koh, “Apple has articulated a plausible theory of irreparable harm” in its argument against Samsung and the Galaxy Nexus, because of “long-term loss of market share” along with “losses of downstream sales.” This is not what "irreparable harm" used to mean. Apple's lawyers are celebrating tonight. EDIT: If I plan to kill a cat, and you file a lawsuit to stop me, the judge may issue an injunction fo…

It is irreparable harm considering they can't get back the monopoly/leading market-share effect at this very young stage of the tablet market. i.e. Sales and profits now is a lot more important than Sales and Money later.

Yeah, but AFAIK this economic model (and the Constitution) was supposed to work by trying to break monopolies, not encouraging them.

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are your products so terrible that you have to force people to buy them by preventing any other competition? Let’s say I invent and patent carbon fibre and start making bicycles out of it. My bicycles are vastly superior to lightweight steel, aluminium, and scandium framed models on the market. Are my products terrible? Obviously not! Now my competitors rush out to make carbon fibre bicycles of their own. I sue. Am I…

Except that isn't what is happening here. If you wanted a bicycle metaphor, apple has invented a wonderful carbon fibre bicycle that everybody wants. Then, despite the fact that bicycles have existed for a hundred years, they got patents on things like "using levers to shift" and "building a frame out of tube-like structures". And now, every time somebody starts to make a bicycle that is even remotely competitive, th…

Those are fine arguments against Apple’s business strategies, but not arguments that Apple’s products are terrible and/or inferior. Especially not arguments that Apple’s products are inferior to whatever-it-was that its competitors were doing before Apple introduced the iPhone.

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#54

Apple is implicitly admitting Samsung is a huge threat to them. Apple has intelligent people making these decisions. So they know in their heart of hearts that the patents they hold are overly broad to the point of bogusness. They know that the majority of the tech market is also intelligent enough to come to this same realization. They have an awareness that lawsuits exercising these quasi-bogus patents will have a…

It's more like Samsung explicitly admitting that they cannot find a way to unlock a phone without the swipe gesture.

Well that's nearly impossible when a tap is a zero length swipe.

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#56

Boy, they are getting a lot of mileage out of that regular expression "data tapping" patent, even though people were doing the same thing years before, including a NeXTStep app released with source and published on USENET in 1995 1 year before the Apple patent was filed https://groups.google.com/group/comp.archives/browse_thread/...

IBM Simon(1993/4) also had the same functionality[0].

Also, it seems that their main patent(8,086,604[1]) for this case describe a metasearch engine, something that have been around at least since the mid 90s(long before the patent was filled in 2004).

[0] http://youtu.be/wnFsJ9z_caY?t=1m57s (warning: terrible video quality ahead) [1] http://goo.gl/jjG1P

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#57
Make no mistake - all the major smartphones out there are infringing someone else's patent. If this is the precedent, next thing we'll have iPhones banned for infringing on Motorola, and Windows Phones banned for infringing on RIM patents.

This is bad news for consumers, bad news for innovators.

Everyone loses.

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#58
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is. Apple can't get back lost sales and revenue as a result of patent infringement by their direct competitor.

I think it's unfortunate that taligent has been downvoted into the negatives, because he (or she) is correct. How much is market leadership worth? How big of a check would Apple have to write RIM to restore their market advantage? How big of a check would Apple have to write Nokia to put them back where they were in the marketplace 4 years ago? I'd argue that there is no check large enough to restore a lost market ad…

> I'd argue that there is no check large enough to restore a lost market advantage.

I think you're considering the status or intangible satisfaction of being the market leader. That is not what Apple's shareholders are interested in. They are interested in money. If Apple had the choice between getting a check for all the money they would ever earn for all their products and liquidating the company, vs. remaining in business, they would close their doors, cash the check and pop the champagne. And that check would be worth much more than a "lost market advantage."

Now they're probably not going to get such a check. But if not that's because the court will deem they don't deserve it. But the real reason they want this is that it will clearly do much more harm to Samsung than it will diminish their case against Samsung, better yet, they still get to bloody Samsung's nose even if the court eventually rules against them!

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#59
I got annoyed when this happened to HTC, but Samsung is a different story. Their entire business model is based on dumpster diving at 1 infinity loop. I agree that these patents look silly on their own, but when you add them all up you see a concerted effort to copy apples products, and in some cases deceive the ignorant.

Re: Apple granted preliminary sales ban of Galaxy Nexus

#60

Make no mistake - all the major smartphones out there are infringing someone else's patent. If this is the precedent, next thing we'll have iPhones banned for infringing on Motorola, and Windows Phones banned for infringing on RIM patents. This is bad news for consumers, bad news for innovators. Everyone loses.

I support your comment, but the lawyers are making a killing.
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