Re: Appeal
Samsung's own lawyers agreed to the limited time. They were told they could have a separate trial of their own case vs Apple if there wasn't enough time and they said it wasn't a problem.
2645 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2007
Looks like a case of suing the wrong party. Apple only ever sell music as middle men. A record company provides them with a batch of tracks and says "sell these for this price". The artist in question is claiming that the record company didn't have rights to these tracks. Must be all Apple's fault right?
They won't license any of their IP, except for the stuff in h.264, oh and OpenCL (which they gave away for free), and the complete cross license they have with Microsoft, plus numerous other examples. They license their IP where they think it is in the companies interests to do so, just like every other company out there.
Please take some time to learn what FRAND is, and why standards bodies like the ETSI and 3GPP won't include patents in their standards that haven't been committed to FRAND. It might make your next post look less foolish.
@Tom. Utterly and completely wrong. There is evidence that, during the design process, Apple asked the question "what would the iPhone look like if Sony designed it" but the resulting phone didn't look much like the finished iPhone, and other prototypes (created both before and after the Sony inspired model) looked much more like it. For that reason the judge held that it wasn't relevant.
It's a bit like you claiming "that Ford designer sketched out a design based on Ferrari while he was working on the Focus. The Focus is a Ferrari rip-off!"
The stupidity is strong with this one. The jury said that 3 of the 20 odd devices being considered infringed Apple's design patent. The job of Apple's lawyers is to try and get the broadest interpretation possible of their patents. Samsung's lawyers were out to get them found invalid or have the narrowest interpretation. Now that they have a court ruling under their belt Apple have a much better idea of what is or is not going to be ruled in their favour. At no time have they ever shown signs of going after devices other than phones or pads with them and you've got to be insane if you think the ruling will encourage them to do so.
Did you bother to read that Reuters article? It wasn't a case of the Forman giving the others instructions, it was a joint decision based on the evidence provided, testimony and examination of the devices in the jury room. They honestly thought as a griup that the prior art claims were't valid so threw them out.
It doesn't set any precidents for the forman's own patent so there is no benefit to him.
You want Samsung to try for a breach of contract suit next? They make quiet a lot of money supplying parts to Apple, and they aren't the sole suppliers of those parts. They'd be cutting off their own nose to spite their face if they broke their supply contracts, and Apple wouldn't be inconvenienced much as most of the parts come from multiple suppliers anyway.
For commercial film and chemicals is ripe for growth?
That was the kind of idiot decision that got them where they are now. If they have any sense whatsoever they'll ditch film completely, keep the patents and try to leverage their way back into digital imaging (not printers, it's easy to see that competing on having cheaper ink is a losing proposition).
So the screen is pretty crap also (I make it to be about 640x430)
Camera phones are basically killing P&S phones because most people take their phones everywhere, so rather than making a slightly bigger phone with proper Nikon optics they only copy the OS. Bad move Nikon.
But completely wrong. We KNOW that Samsung was selling phones quite successfully pre 2007 and have no problems with that. They still make a whole range of phones that aren't covered by this suit. There are some issues with them adopting Android, but Google seem to be engineering those out. The big problem is that Samsung took Android, modified it to look more like iOS (the TouchWiz skin), changed their case designs to look more like the iPhone and changed their packaging to look more like Apple's.
It's those three factors in combination that caused Apple to sue.
That's the over simplification that Samsung would have you believe. The patent office and the courts don't believe that the sum total of Apple's design is a flat black rectangle with rounded corners, and you certainly wouldn't need 8 drawings to show that. The Galaxy Tab 10.1N is also a flat black rectangle with rounded corners, just like the 10.1, but it is considered not to infringe while the 10.1 does.
Your original claim that it wasn't a valid comparison because Dyson hadn't claimed to invent the vacuum cleaner. When it was pointed out that Apple weren't making an equivalent claim you moved the goalposts.
Dyson didn't claim infringement on their design patents not because they didn't have them, but because Hoover didn't copy them.
The point of the trial is to determine if Apple's designs are protectable and infringed. Best let the jury, who have heard all the evidence, work that out.
An exactly valid comparison since Apple aren't claiming to have invented the smart phone and tablet PC either. In case you hadn't noticed the trial was about copying cosmetic designs, packaging and certain technical patents. Non of that prevents others from designing phones or tablets, just like others can design vacuums.
I've never understood this fetish for MMS. What's wrong with sending photos or videos via email, where you don't get charged extra by your cell company.
As for iTunes, pre iOS 5 you had to connect it once to activate (that you could do at the store) and once for each version upgrade (again which you could do at the store). As of iOS 5 you need never touch it.
The original iPhone had two things going for it, firstly it had a really excellent web browser, one that would work with normal web sites, rather than the cut-down WAP rubbish the mobile operators were trying to foist on the world. The original idea was that all apps would be web apps and there would be no need for a central store to sell them (devs screamed hard for binary local apps and the rest is history).
The other thing that Apple managed was to strong-arm the cell companies to provide unlimited data rather than charging silly money per megabyte. This encouraged people to actually use it rather than worrying about charges.
About that time I had an LG Viewty. On paper it was a match or better than the iPhone (it was 3G while the iPhone was only 2G EDGE for example). The software was however rubbish, and its the smoothness and polish of Apple software which built Apple's following.
You forget that the 3G option isn't ONLY 3G, you get an AGPS/GLONAS positioning chip, assorted aerials (some 3G, some GPS, but covered by separate patents), a SIM socket and carrier (again separate patents) etc. Apple's charge for the 3G chip/radio stack isn't all of the $100.
Once again, most of the rest of the marketplace buys their baseband chips from someone like Qualcomm or Intel. They buy them license paid, that is to say that all of the required 3G patents are covered in the price of the chip. Why is it non-discriminatory for Samsung to revoke this license and try to charge Apple more?
They do so knowing that what is considered reasonable in FRAND terms is much less than normal patents, but in doing so they will get much more total income. Someone charging 10 cents per device on 3G patents would have made over 100 million last year. They'll keep on making that or more until their patent expires, easily over a billion dollars total, not bad considering that they only have to collect it, not make anything.
The standards setting body will deliberately try to remove or engineer out any patent that is considered too expensive. The technology is also in competition with other patents, the prize being to be included in the standard. The result is that what's on offer must be both cheap and good. Part of the objection here is that Samsung were late in declaring that part of the 3G spec was covered by one of their patents, making it hard to remove in favour of competing technology. This was a breach of the rules also.
Apple didn't try to sue over the ideas they got from Xerox (bought and paid for in pre IPO stock lest we forget), but for the ideas they had then built on top. Star didn't have the concept of an explorer/finder app, it didn't repaint uncovered sections of window etc. Xerox had their case tossed out of court.
Even if you assume that Apple charge $100 for the 3G chip (wildly inaccurate, the BOM shows a mark-up of about 3x on cost, which would put the 3G chip at around $30-50) then Samsung would only be due $2.50 per phone. They are asking about $15, i.e. they are basing their prices on RRP.
You missed out Reasonable. If the two are charging 10% royalties then they have to show that 10% is reasonable and its similar to the amounts charged by others in the patent pool. There are about 30 companies in the pool, so if each asked 10% then anyone not in the pool would have to pay 300%, which manifestly ISN'T reasonable.
it's the idea of FRAND going right over your head. The idea is to DELIBERATELY prevent cartels of incumbent companies from using their patents to block new entrants to the market. What did Samsung or HTC bring to the table when they first started in the 2G market? Sod all, but FRAND allowed them to enter and become major players. It's one of the reasons that GSM was such a global success, it was easy for companies with new ideas and products to bring them to the market and compete.
They don't treat the cost of a cross-licenced patent as zero, something that adds nothing to the cost of their devices. They had to forgo charging for their own patents, and that lost them money. The profit margin of completed chips includes this factor.
If you extend the argument, should Samsung be due 2.4% of the retail cost of a car with a built-in phone? What about a jet airliner with built-in phones? By convention only the module that provides the functionality attracts the fee.
I don't think Samsung managed to show anyone was paying 2.5% of the RRP of a completed device. Most companies get their license as part of the cost of their baseband chip. These sell for about $10. I'm sure Apple would have no problems with paying a fixed 25 cents per phone (they were getting this via Qualcomm until Samsung cancelled their cross-licensing deal with them), but the idea that anything with 3G needs to pay Samsung 2.5% of RRP is against FRAND principles.
All sports shoes need to look like Nikes? Different does not imply "won't sell". Samsung didn't try to work out what they could do differently and possibly better, they just assumed that all of Apple's choices were right and copied them as close as they thought they could get away with. Apple says that was too close.
No, you've got that wrong.
It was quite possible to make cars that looked nothing like the first Benz. For the first 20 years there were patented parts of its design that couldn't be used without licensing. There onward anyone could use them.
The point is that patents are time limited, government backed monopolies. You get exclusivity ONLY for the life of the patent, after which the design becomes public domain.
With SMS there's a FROM and a REPLY TO field. The issue was supposed to be that you could spoof the REPLY TO fields and users would end up sending to a premium number without realising it. The iPhone shows ONLY the REPLY TO number so that won't happen.
The SMS standard allows to to spoof either sender field, so you're no more secure if you see the FROM number, and a number of bulk SMS systems will show you their internal ID, not the correct ID of the system to contact so that it isn't work using that field instead.
Conclusion: SMS isn't secure and isn't likely ever to be. Treat with caution.
Of course it's a transmitter, it's generating radio frequency energy deliberately on its output pins. The only part of the equation missing is an aerial, and your mains circuit provides that. How long would it take them to jump on pirate radio stations if they weren't using an aerial, but were wiring their transmitter to a bit of pipe.
"Those numbers" are the official US DoT range numbers based on performance on a rolling road test, just like conventional cars get their MPG numbers.
The charge speed is based on Tesla's latest charger, which is a 20kW unit that connects direct to your distribution unit. It assumes a charging efficiency of 80%, so well within practical capabilities, but the rate will fall back as the battery aproaches full (IIRC above 80% full).
Like any car if you use a heavy right foot then your fuel economy will be significantly less than government figures. Charging from lower rated units will also take longer (12 hours implies a charger with only 5-6kW capacity), but doesn't mean that it has to be that slow.
Apart from the fact that you're changing the subject, the current Tesla home charging rig can charge at a rate of about 60 miles range/hour. That's from a standard 240 volt domestic supply.
It doesn't matter that fission based power is cheap, you'll still need a lot more of it to supply hydrogen as a fuel than charging batteries (the methods discussed were suitable for a fuel tank, but not bulk distribution, you'd still need tankers full of high pressure or liquid hydrogen to deliver it to fuel stations).
"Can't go more than 50 miles on a charge"? So the Tesla series (with models rated at between 160 and 300 miles on a charge) are a myth then? IBM's plans for a Lithium-Air battery with a 500 mile range is all pie in the sky?
You don't just have to electrolyse hydrogen, you need to cool it to a liquid or highly compress it for shipping, which needs lots of energy too. More than the power loss from grid transmission and charging, The moment that people can do what they want to do in en electric car for less money then you'll have to beat them off with a stick.
Oddly enough the designer of the F700 was quoted as saying that NON of the devices that Apple were claiming infringed their design was based on the F700. Given that and the fact that the F700 wasn't under dispute how was her testimony going to make a huge difference in the case?