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Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

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Re: Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

#91

Post by dkonofalski »

tooltalk wrote: post #82
dkonofalski wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not individually, but, as a collection of choices, absolutely. Considering that most phones from Samsung, at that time, had a physical keyboard and were more like Blackberry devices, I think it's incredibly telling that their next iteration was a full-screen, touch-based device with a single button at the bottom and rounded corners. The guidebook wasn't simply about the physical design either. It included large…

>Considering that most phones from Samsung, at that time, had a physical keyboard and were more like Blackberry devices, I think it's incredibly telling that their next iteration was a full-screen, touch-based device with a single button at the bottom and rounded corners. https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/31/3209204/samsung-angers-ju... Please see the link above. There are plenty of evidence to indicate that Samsung ha…

>plenty of evidence to indicate that Samsung had released touch screen phones before Apple

Samsung hadn't released a single one of those phones and you're completely ignoring a major difference between those "designs" and the hardware changes that occurred from before to after. The iPhone's main innovation wasn't just that it was a full-front touchscreen but that the full-front touchscreen was a capacitive multi-touch screen. There was no stylus and you could capture multiple inputs at the same time. None of Samsung's devices, and even the LG Prada that you mention without any context, had capacitive multi-touch and yet all their phones had it afterwards.

Again, it's not just about the individual components. It's taking them as a whole and seeing the sudden shift that happened right when the iPhone launched. Samsung was working on all the components individually but was basically caught with their pants down.

Re: Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

#92

Post by dkonofalski »

tooltalk wrote: post #41
dkonofalski wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're thinking of something different. The "guidebook" that I'm referring to was an internal Samsung document that Apple was able to get its hands on during the trial discovery period that showed pages of hardware and software features of the iPhone along with the progress Samsung had made on copying those features. It included the touchscreen and also the UI of the OS. (Edit: Not exactly it but this makes t…

Sure, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Evaluating/comparing/benchmarking your competitors is something that everyone, including Apple, does daily. Now, my understanding is that both Apple and Samsung initially agreed not to present any evidence from the "trade dress" part of the lawsuit that might mislead the jury's ruling on other part of the lawsuit (eg, design patent infringement). Apple waited until the las…

>Evaluating/comparing/benchmarking your competitors is something that everyone, including Apple, does daily.

Except that that isn't at all what's in that document. It was way more than just a benchmarking/evaluation and, when combined with evidence that Samsung knew of Apple's proposed full-front display as early as 2005, it makes it a little less likely that they just independently came to the exact same conclusions about so many things at the same time. Again, individually, I think there's a case to be made where the components are just natural evolutions of where certain technology can go but, as a whole, I think it's too coincidental to say that this was all innocent benchmarking and that the judge just had it out for Samsung. I think she ruled against Samsung's submission because she recognized that Samsung was being disingenuous.

Re: Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

#93

Post by spocklivelong »

MagicPropmaker wrote: post #18
krastanov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always found it somewhat questionable to use a service like outline for paid content... I am very much against DRM services, but DRM-free advocacy efforts are hampered by people flocking to services like outline instead of paying for the content they want to consume (and content creators are pushed to embrace consumer-hostile DRM measures as well).

Apparently this upstanding moral armchair-lawyer on Hacker News wants to comment on an IP theft case by stealing intellectual property! (I'm with you. I pay for my WSJ and don't complain about commercial news sources I don't pay for.)

I'm not complaining about anything. All I stated is outline does not work with WSJ. I find it hard that WSJ charges $38.99/month[1], while I hardly read 5-10 articles a month? I would like to see some sort of pay-per-use or aggregated new service that I can subscribe to.

[1]: https://store.wsj.com/v2/US/US/1110600005

Re: Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

#94

Post by tooltalk »

dkonofalski wrote: post #91
tooltalk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Considering that most phones from Samsung, at that time, had a physical keyboard and were more like Blackberry devices, I think it's incredibly telling that their next iteration was a full-screen, touch-based device with a single button at the bottom and rounded corners. https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/31/3209204/samsung-angers-ju... Please see the link above. There are plenty of evidence to indicate that Samsung ha…

>plenty of evidence to indicate that Samsung had released touch screen phones before Apple Samsung hadn't released a single one of those phones and you're completely ignoring a major difference between those "designs" and the hardware changes that occurred from before to after. The iPhone's main innovation wasn't just that it was a full-front touchscreen but that the full-front touchscreen was a capacitive multi-touc…

It doesn't matter whether Samsung released them or not -- the legal standard required to avoid infringement is evidence that Samsung had knowledge or sought similar designs before Apple's public release. Samsung's internal document on competitive product evaluation likewise is just valid as their R&D department's document on on-going research. I'm willing to bet that at least half a dozen other phone makers considered those designs before Apple released theirs. Again, LG Prada who came out with their own months before Apple was one such example.

Apple of course knew that Samsung was exploring all kinds of different designs, including those resembling LG Prada and iPhone -- that's probably why they agreed to not to bring up such evidence during their lawsuit; only to change their mind at the last minute.

> that the full-front touchscreen was a capacitive multi-touch screen

the underlying tech doesn't matter, because we are talking about "design" and "trade dress" part of the lawsuit.

> Again, it's not just about the individual components.

This is again where your lack of understanding of patent law is clouding your judgement. Patents are for very specific, narrow design or method; not for over all implementation or shapes of products. What you are talking about is often covered under "trade dress" -- 'trade dress' deals with the overall impression of a product. Apple lost that part of the lawsuit because in order to win a trade dress suit, in addition to being novel and uniquely identifiable to Apple, it also has to be "non-functional."

Re: Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

#95

Post by tooltalk »

dkonofalski wrote: post #92
tooltalk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Evaluating/comparing/benchmarking your competitors is something that everyone, including Apple, does daily. Now, my understanding is that both Apple and Samsung initially agreed not to present any evidence from the "trade dress" part of the lawsuit that might mislead the jury's ruling on other part of the lawsuit (eg, design patent infringement). Apple waited until the las…

>Evaluating/comparing/benchmarking your competitors is something that everyone, including Apple, does daily. Except that that isn't at all what's in that document. It was way more than just a benchmarking/evaluation and, when combined with evidence that Samsung knew of Apple's proposed full-front display as early as 2005, it makes it a little less likely that they just independently came to the exact same conclusions…

Sure, go read the document. The title of this doc says "Samsung Relative Evaluation Report on S1, iPhone." I'm guessing that you never worked in technology or product engineering team?

Again, this internal doc was presented in the trade dress part of the lawsuit -- which Apple eventually lost. Both parties initially agreed not to present anything too confusing to jury because there were so many confusing overlaps between the design and trade dress parts of the lawsuit. Apple suddenly changed its mind at the last minute -- and the judges duly embraced Apple's evidence, but rejected Samsung's counter-evidence on procedural ground (untimeliness). A lot of Apple fanbois like yourself are just still confused about the trade dress and design parts of the lawsuit -- I could only imagine the confusion the internal doc had on the jury, but obviously in Apple's favor since Samsung's never saw the light.

Re: Apple Violated Qualcomm Patent, U.S. Trade Judge Rules

#96

Post by tooltalk »

saidajigumi wrote: post #45
tooltalk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common industry practice is to collect royalties at the end of the supply chain -- from smartphone OEMs. So, SEP holders, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia, etc, usually don't after each other or chip makers for royalties. Now, Apple's judge, Lucy Koh, in a pretrial decision last year, declared that Qualcomm is obligated to license their SEPs to all willing licensees under ATI/TIS FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discrimi…

I'm not sure if patent exhaustion applies since QTL (licensing) and QTC (chip-making) are technically two separate business entities (subsidiaries). I wasn't aware of that; that's quite interesting. But it's unclear whether it affects exhaustion, in that QTL would still have (or have not) licensed Intel (or QTC). So either (Intel or QTC) have a license and exhaustion applies, or they do not, and are the actual infrin…

Ok. it's actually fairly simple. A minor correction though: Qualcomm actually never made their legal argument based on QTL and QTC. Qualcomm did argue that their patent portfolio goes beyond baseband chips and their customers are paying for non-chip related features that cover security, encryption, algorithm, etc.. (hence no exhaustion)

And yes, it's perfectly legal to pick anyone one, not all, layer in the supplier chain and collect royalties there. The wireless industry agreed to collect the royalties from the last manufacturer in the supply chain decades ago -- and that's more or less the de facto industry practice today. This isn't to say SEP holders can go after any random body as they please -- there are legal analysis and factors that help determine if that's fair. For instance, I think it's reasonable to use the end-user smartphone device as royalty basis since Qualcomm's IP adds significant value and drive market demand for Apple's iPhones. On the other hand, it would be silly to make similar comparison to a BWM 8 Series Coupe with wireless functionality.

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