Samsung preps anti-iPhone 5 lawsuit before it's even out Samsung will try to get the iPhone 5 banned in Korea by using a patent lawsuit to block the phone, a source has told the Korean Times. A Samsung executive told the paper that the next edition of the iPhone will almost certainly break patents that Samsung holds in Korea. The exec told the paper: "Just after the arrival of the …
Apple didn't start it, they just jumped in with unprecedented vigour. As far as I can make out, Nokia started it by suing Apple in 2009. Apple have since gone after HTC (starting in 2010) and Samsung (this year), neither company having previously had much of an interest in legal pursuits.
My phone's an iPhone, but I'm with Samsung on this one. I'm a turn the other cheek person in any situation with serious consequences, but I doubt this is anything more than rounding errors on the Samsung and Apple books, so letting Apple know that it can't bully everyone into submission feels like the right way forward.
Are you for real? Apple issues a stop of sales for the Galaxy tab in AU as well as issues law suits in several other countries, all patent related. If I am not mistaken HTC and another Android manufacturer are also under the gun. Google passed along some of its newly acquired patents to 'assist' its partners in fighting Apple and they have launched counter suits. If we have taken anything from this it should be that patents are being abused.
Entering the market with a similiar, but obvious design is not patent infringement. I'm no particular fan of either Apple or Samsung, but to any outside observer, it is clear that Apple are the bully boys in the playground here and quite frankly they have all that is coming to them if they insist on trying to stifle innovation in this way.
Of course, the only real winners here are the lawyers.
Nah, it's just the point that Loyal Commanders makes is valid — there's a distinction between actionable copying (which relates to what's legally protectable and so invokes a whole bunch of other considerations) and merely following another company into a newly energetic segment of an existing market.
So if you want to establish that Samsung copied Apple then the test is: what have they done, that Apple did first, that wasn't obvious or taken from an even earlier source? I think multitouch gestures are the only potentially relevant thing (which Apple own by acquisition, but you get the idea), but Apple appear to be claiming ownership of the tablet form factor, the famous rounded corners, etc. So Samsung appear to be saying, you know, we've done a whole lot of hard graft engineering on radio technology and if you want to start being legal about it then bring it on.
I guess the iPhone 5 element is to threaten to hit Apple when it'll hurt them more and to make sure their threat gets the best possible airplay.
It seems the Germans and Australians agree with Apple about what's legally protectable. As for Samsungs threat, it BS, if they can sue Apple over the IPhone 5 then they can sue over the IPhone 4. But there phone patents like Motorolas and Nokias are only good for getting a licence fee as they are licenced under FRAND
These are big words, we'll see if Samsung has what it takes to push them through..
In the meanwhile, if iphone5, an as yet unreleased mystery device, is going to "break (sic)" patents, isn't iphone4 infringing on them too? Why not begin with attempting to ban the existing model too?
This saber-rattling paper flinging business is one good show. Absurd yet totally funny, all delivered with a straight face.
Apple legal vulture: "Hey, you can't sell a phone or tablet with rounded corners!"
Samsung legal vulture: "OK, but you can't sell phone or tablet with any form of wireless then!"
Apple legal vulture, in aside to colleague: "Ha, we have them now! I mean, who has something as old as a wireless on their phone?"
If the patents stick then Apple are screwed in those markets - not much point in having an Apple device if it's just going to be a paperweight! Shirley, someone at Apple did a risk analysis of the oppositions' patent holdings before they went on this crazy legal trip?
Why don't all the electronics giant patent absolutely everything, then we we can halt the progress of human development completely. In a few decades, civilisation will be reduced to a crumbling wasteland, populated by a strange, rodent-like scavenger that kills things by spraying them with sheets of paper secreted from a bodily orifice.
No.
Only trademarks must be defended, or they are considered to have fallen into disuse, and cease to be the "property" of an entity.
So if Samsung found someone using a misleadingly similar logo, they would have to take action, or risk losing their trademark.
Patents are a 20 year (I think) period of exclusivity. And no matter how many people are infringing, one offender can still be singled out and brought to court. The patent holder must choose to sue, but they are not obliged to.
Same with copyright. No matter how many people infringe, the copyright period doesn't change at all. If it was otherwise, pretty much every movie, every song, and every big of software would be out of copyright, due to being copied by so many people.
not really
There have been tablets/pdas/phones around for many years that look similar to the ipad / iphone.
my ancient 3g PDA video phone, that I cant even remember the name of, was similar enough to the iPhone 3/3gs. and acutally i think my galaxy s looks nothing like an iphone 3gs, and the galaxy s 2 is totally different to the iphone 4, there is no way you could mistake them as being the same!
Apple are just taking advantage of dumb judges that know so little about technology and design they will rule on anything that gets them media attention.
I would accept a technical patent on a real technological innovation as being a valid reason to pull it, but design? that's nonsense.
Next you will have them claiming they invented windows and folders in the os!
No I-'Phone Five ? Oh that makes me laugh.
Actually it is quite scary, because all of this legal stuff is starting to show just how mindlessly stupid some of these patents really are. I am no Apple fan, nor am I a Samsung fan, but, I have to say, it is about time that *all* the hardware and software makes get their acts together, stop bickering about "rounded corners" and "making calls" and get on with making products people will buy. In the end, it is you and me, the people who buy these devices that lose out, because whatever the cost of litigation, what ever the cost of "settlement" it simple makes the price point that we have to pay ever higher.
So, if anybody from Apple, Samsung et al ever reads this, STOP MESSING ABOUT SUEING EACH OTHER AND CONCENTRATE ON MAKING DEVICES.
You lose out if companies can't protect their R&D and design investment because they get ripped off by copycats as soon as they release an innovative product.
They'll just stop investing in R&D as it won't be bringing their shareholders value.
I disagree with many patents, but the concept of them is to protect inventors and hence they should benefit you as a consumer.
There's a difference between patents protecting real technological innovation and patents protecting rounded corners. From what I have read about the Galaxy Tab argument is that it looks a bit like an ipad.
No doubt someone who has read the whole argument will point out it's a bit more than that, but there still seem to be a lot of pointless patents out there. (Geddit?) :-D
Patents were never designed to protect large corporations they were designed to protect the inventor so that they could leverage their designs without large corporations muscling in, the spirit of patents especially in the software arena is subject to widespread abuse and has been for quite a few years.
I do not accept that apple needs protecting the same as a small startup company and I also despise the way in which all other software/hardware vendors patent some of the most trivial stuff to simply at a later date go after competition in an underhand and dastardly way, this time its going to backfire on apple, perhaps they may learn a lesson if a patent claim doesn't go their way in korea, a massive market for mobile telecommunications.
Both Apple and Samsung need to be grabbed sharply by the ear and marched out to the garage, given a paintbrush and a pot of paint and told to go paint the front garden fence! Teach them both to stop being so bloody stupid and to grow up a bit!
"Nyah, Apple strarted it!"
"Please Miss, Samsung keeps touching my stuff!"
"Sir, Apple won't leave me alone!"
"Please Sir, Samsung won't stop flicking things at me! Waahhh!"
" but, I have to say, it is about time that *all* the hardware and software makes get their acts together, stop bickering about "rounded corners" and "making calls" and get on with making products people will buy"
but that's what samsung wants isn't it? They've made an awesome product(which I own so I am biased) and want the chance to compete in the EU market, which apple is using patent abuse to prevent.
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