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Samsung: Apple wouldn’t have sold a single iPhone without stealing our tech

170 points by zacharye 14y ago

SODaniel 14y ago
I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. It is truly absurd that Apple has the audacity to claim some 'we invented it' right to any type of Cellphone tech or Tablet hardware. ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side and the fact that iTunes laid the pavement for the 'app' concept. Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, and once the 'Steve Jobs effect' wears off, they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets. And then, it might be time to look elsewhere for your 401k investment.
- cbg0 14y ago
  > Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products Actually, I doubt it will, as very few people care about the rivalry between large corporations. Apple even started suing mom & pop cafes that had the apple logo or just the word "Apple" in their name, and even that didn't hurt their image much.
  - user49598 14y ago
    If that's true, I don't think a lot of people know about it.
    - rmk2 14y ago
      For your reading pleasure: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verklagt-bonner-cafe-wehe-sie-veraeppeln-apples-apfel-1.1173840 http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verkla... [süddeutsche.de -> in german] http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html [thelocal.de] http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe-to-stop-using-this-logo-20111021/ http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe... [geek.com] Everything except the first link are the product of looking for English reports on the same issue, so I do not vouche for their quality.
      - MaysonL 14y ago
        The trademark arguably [arguably, not obviously] infringes on Apple's trademark, and one of the peculiarities of trademark law is that if you do not vigorously defend a trademark, it's scope and strength diminish.
  - SODaniel 14y ago
    Short term yes. Though I think we all remember Microsoft walking down the same path and basically paving the way for Apple to become 'the underdog' in the 90s and it sure hasn't helped their public image.
    - dannyr 14y ago
      This is true in Silicon Valley's startup world. A lot of people here dislike Microsoft. It's hard to find a startup built on the .Net stack. Microsoft has the BizSpark program that gives away software licenses for free to startups but that didn't make a difference. I'm starting to see the same sentiment against Apple though not yet to a point that they will be abandoning development on the iOS platform.
    - ajross 14y ago
      Right. Ultimately Microsoft's perceived opposition to the evolving open internet hurt it's perception among developers very badly. Where in the early 90's "everyone" wanted to work for MS and develop windows, by the end of the decade everyone wanted to be working with web apps and JS and Linux. Fast forward to today, and they're just another software company with no particular technical leadership ability. Right now, the Apple bandwagon is still really full, so it may be hard to tell: but I'm seeing more smart hackers jumping off than on these days. In 10 years, how likely is it that Apple will be just another dinosaur milking a legacy OS?
  - eridius 14y ago
    What does trademark protection (which they are legally required to do) have to do with patents?
- mtgx 14y ago
  What I found odd is that even though an iPhone or a Galaxy phone is using so much more important technologies in them, they get to banned for stuff like slide to unlock or pulling results from multiple databases. Even if you argue that it was an "innovative idea", in the end it's still just an idea, and the execution of it is not that hard to warrant a full ban of the whole product from the market for "copying their technology".
  - wmf 14y ago
    I agree that products shouldn't be banned based on small infringements, but it sounds like Apple doesn't want to license things like slide-to-unlock for any amount of money.
    - mratzloff 14y ago
      Which is, of course, their perogative.
      - wmf 14y ago
        The question is what to do with a product that's already on store shelves that has been found to be unknowingly infringing one of these "unlicensable" patents. Is it fair to ban it (potentially imposing massive losses) or should the court award some "reasonable" amount of damages?
- Terretta 14y ago
  > I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. Many of us are not thinking that. Many of us are thinking Apple didn't claim to have invented 3G radio, but purchased Qualcomm chips, and as the UK courts found, in licensing the technology to Qualcomm and its customers, Samsung had already "exhausted" its patent rights. It's on the record that Samsung changed its tune on these patents in April 2011, looking for something to use to counter Apple's concerns about the wholesale appropriation of iPad trade dress (device, packaging presentation, box cover art) by Samsung's me-too tablet. As Samsung's own quote notes, "Apple relied heavily on Samsung‘s technology to enter the telecommunications space, and it continues to use Samsung‘s technology to this day in its iPhone and iPad products. For example, Samsung supplies the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone." Apple was happy to pay for those, just as they paid for radio chips. Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. At least, this is what some people think. > they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets Apple is not a hardware company. As someone recently put it on HN, "ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side". And I'm also not sure that's true, considering the success of Macbook Air containing the same UI/UX as the rest of the Macbook line. The truth is they are a platform company, as noted in other threads here.
  - cube13 14y ago
    >Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. More importantly, how could Samsung claim Apple infringed on their patents when Apple purchased the chips from Qualcomm, who are licensed to produce and sell the chips?
- technoslut 14y ago
  This post is a rant of a fanboy which is why I downvoted it. It's one thing to prove your point but you didn't even do that. The BGR report is garbage as is most of their posts that doesn't involve Gellar's connections at RIM. No one is claiming the idea of button-free phone; not even Apple. What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. I don't claim for it to be right or wrong. What defined the iPhone was not the hardware but software and that is what Apple is going after. Samsung is suing over FRAND patents which is something else entirely. Apple's not suing over Samsung over what they asked them to build. This patent nonsense that exists on HN has really got to stop. It has affected very few except the claims by Lodsys. Do you really care about the brinksmanship that is conducted by two giants?
  - neya 14y ago
    >What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. Oh..Really? Then why are they suing the rest of the OEM's whose UI/UX is not even remotely similar? Before you make a point, its good to educate yourself with the topic, atleast to an average extent. Just my 2 cents. And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =)
    - technoslut 14y ago
      You're not mad that Apple is suing. You're mad that Apple is winning some arguments. What they've been winning is off of UI/UX. It's one thing to argue if software patents should even exist but you were not even arguing that. It's hard to tell what you're against other than Apple. You believe that Samsung is right for no apparent reason. All I can tell you is that I don't care and I'm tired of these stories on HN being ranked so highly since it's about ideology and not how it affects the lives of anyone. >And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =) I thought it was appropriate. What is your point?
      - incision 14y ago
        Why are you so angry?
- wmf 14y ago
  ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side... And isn't TouchWiz eerily similar to iOS's UI/UX?
  - chmod775 14y ago
    You're right. When Apple introduced the notification system I was like... I have seen that somewhere. TouchWiz itself is similar to most other OSes. I has a "desktop" with icons and a "start menu" with more software to put on the desktop.
    - josephlord 14y ago
      But does someone have a patent or design patent that covers the Apple implementation of notification? If not it doesn't matter. If so Apple should have to work around it. There is a separate question about what should or should not be granted and whether the law should be changed regarding patentability and duration. Now I think the law should be changed and less should be patentable but that isn't the law or the situation now.
      - fpgeek 14y ago
        Google has applied for such a patent. It has not (yet) been granted, but there's no particular reason to expect it won't be, given the track record of the USPTO. Especially since many of the infringements Apple claims began in the period between application and grant, it will be interesting to see the shoe on the other foot.
        josephlord 14y ago
        It will be interesting. Agree about USPTO track record but I do wonder if there is more prior art in this area, I seem to remember Symbian having some form of notifications which may at least limit the scope of the Google patent. I'm not familiar with the details of how patent protection is handled before grant. I would guess that licensing fees are not due for the period before grant but that as soon as it is issued you should work around it or pay licensing fees. Assuming it is granted and no cross license is in place by then I assume Apple would try to work around it pretty quickly. I don't see Google offering it for a fair price as they are more interested in market share and leverage than cash too.
- blhack 14y ago
  Apple didn't even come close to laying the pavement for the "app" concept. I was installing apps on my palm m100 back junior high school. They were paid, there was an app store, it just wasn't connected to the device because the device didn't have a network stack.
- el_cuadrado 14y ago
  > Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, I don't really care about lawsuits, I care about the product. I will buy Apple if they offer the best product on the market. Lawsuits won't change that.
  - incision 14y ago
    You're not the average consumer. Apple owes everything to effectively cultivating the notion that they are cool and unique, the product of choice for young rebels and everyone who thinks different. Cool enables their huge margins, grants instant forgiveness for any slip-ups and allows them to essentially dictate what constitutes the "best product". That's why they're fighting so hard. Samsung is a threat to their cool.
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      Sigh. No, they "owe everything" to effectively building the only cell phone that didn't blow goats.
      - incision 14y ago
        ...9 years after the iMac and 6 years after the iPod. Apple doesn't exist to release the iPhone without first being resurrected by those two products.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  So you think Samsung ought to be able to sue you for patent infringement for buying a cell-phone? Because fan-boy "rah rah fuck-Apple"isms aside, that's literally the legal outcome that Samsung is pushing for here. They licensed their patents to Qualcomm, who used them to build chips which were sold to Apple. Now, Samsung is arguing that the exhaustion doctrine should no longer exist and that Apple, by buying those chips, re-infringed on Samsung's patents (and, consequently that you re-infringe those patents when you buy a phone, or someone else's patents when you buy a TV, or a car, or a shoe, or anything). What Samsung is arguing for here would make the already fucked up patent system thousands upon thousands of times worse.
- Gibbon 14y ago
  Do I really need to point out that Samsung are awarded nearly an order of magnitude more patents each year than Apple? (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm) In order the most patents were awarded to IBM, Samsung, Canon, Panasonic, Toshiba and Microsoft. So Samsung is no. 2, while Apple is all the way down in 38th place. If anything, I'm willing to bet that Samsung and the other Asian manufacturers are the overzealous ones trying to use patents to muscle their way into the higher end of the technology market. More patents are now awarded to foreign countries than the USA. Mostly Japan, Korea, Germany and Taiwan. If you think Apple is on the wrong end of the argument, well I guess you don't want a domestic technology market?
  - v0cab 14y ago
    What's more, the South Korean government (owned by Samsung) has been blocking and putting up barriers to foreign phones for years, including delaying the introduction of the original iPhone to South Korea, to give Samsung and co. a chance to develop competitors. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html if you want more info on South Korean protectionism in regards to phones. You may also wish to read: 'Republic of Samsung' Confronts a Backlash http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung25 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung2... This may also interest you: Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-samsung-20100510 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-sa... Odd that I'm not reading so much anger about all that Samsung has done on HackerNews and Reddit.
bryanlarsen 14y ago
Linked article is basically just an edited copy of linked WSJ article: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/24/the-apple-samsung-trial-what-samsung-will-attempt-to-prove/ http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/24/the-apple-samsung-trial-...
hkmurakami 14y ago
I wonder if Apple is stepping into some really muddy territory with their legal brouhaha. While Apple's patents center around their HW and SW design, from what I understand, Samsung, Motorola, et. al's patents include some fundamental WiFi and communication patents that could be a huge counterpunch towards Apple.
- _djo_ 14y ago
  But they're almost all licensed under FRAND terms which in theory should prevent them being used the way Motorola & Samsung have decided to use them. There are many other discussions about that concept on HN.
  - bryanlarsen 14y ago
    Nokia's argument was that a "reasonable" term for FRAND was a patent cross-license. Apple disagreed, and a lawsuit ensued. Unfortunately, the judge agreed with Apple on that item. Everybody thinks that Nokia won their lawsuit since the judge awarded them a huge amount of damages. In my opinion, the whole industry lost. Cross-licenses were the standard way of dealing with the patent thicket before Apple decided to upset the cart. The cross-license racket effectively locked out smaller competitors, so it was far from fair, but it does seem saner than the current blood bath.
    - _djo_ 14y ago
      Apple refused to cross-licence because it was suing with design and function patents, not FRAND patents (of which Apple's were already fairly licensed), so it wasn't under the same obligations. It's the same logic underpinning their legal battles with Samsung and Motorola, where Apple is using design and function patents (some of them absurd) while the other two only have FRAND patents. Mind you the whole thing is a mess, I've said before that I hope this all leads to some very necessary reform of the system. For one, the whole idea of FRAND patents has clearly come apart.
    - cube13 14y ago
      >Unfortunately, the judge agreed with Apple on that item. Everybody thinks that Nokia won their lawsuit since the judge awarded them a huge amount of damages. In my opinion, the whole industry lost. Cross-licenses were the standard way of dealing with the patent thicket before Apple decided to upset the cart. This is how this is supposed to work, though. Apple and Nokia attempted to negotiate for a while, and could not come to an agreement. That's what prompted the lawsuit. The judgement was over two things: 1. Whether or not Apple violated Nokia's patents(which they were found guilty of). 2. Whether or not Nokia's terms to apple were in-line with FRAND(which they were found not). Since the two could not come to an agreement, they had to use the courts to decide.
makmanalp 14y ago
Does anyone have links to the mentioned internal documents from Apple / Samsung?
iamben 14y ago
I'm so bored of all this. It's like watching my parents going through their divorce - pretty much everything ended up with petty point scoring, and at the end of the day, the kids are the ones that got hurt. edit: And their legal representatives made a rather nice chunk of change.
- nsns 14y ago
  Fitting analogy, but at least they did not fight over who gave you which genes.
soup10 14y ago
This case has nothing to do with patents and everything to do with Jobs/Apple throwing a tantrum. There are so many overly broad and trivial patents that companies have no choice but to ignore them. Standard procedure is to acquire your own stash of broad and trivial patents so that other companies won't bother getting involved in a legal battle with you. This time though, Jobs thought Samsung and Google crossed the line in the scope and extent to which android devices copied the iPhone and iPad. So he started this patent war to spite them. I think everyone involved knows that nothing will come of this except legal fees.
- SODaniel 14y ago
  Strange conclusion considering Apple has already won several legal battles banning the sales of competitor products on German/European markets. Seems their 'fit throwing' is indeed working as intended.
  - ajross 14y ago
    Pyrrhic victories at best. So far none of the injuctions have had significant impact on revenue for Samsung or Google. Android is already ahead in units (though not app or media revenue, Apple maintains huge leads there) and gaining market share. And Apple is burning goodwill at a staggering clip: just look at the comment tone in these threads vs. the same ones a year ago -- people who used to defend Apple's behavior are getting quieter and quieter...
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      Well, there's little reason to defend apple when all it gets you are downvotes.
      - ajross 14y ago
        Which is my point. I have a truckload of -10's from a year ago to show you where I was expressing misgivings about Apple's behavior. The voting, like the posting, is part of the zeitgeist. And it's moving hard in the "anti-Apple" direction.
runjake 14y ago
Steal != legally licensed (from Qualcomm, et al) Look, from the 20,000 foot view, I think Apple's (ab)use of the patent system is pretty lame. But, this is just grandstanding on Samsung's part. If they have a legitimate legal complaint, I'm sure they'll bring it up in court. And then we'll see.
- bluelu 14y ago
  You are arguing as if USA judges wouldn't favor USA companies over foreign companies. Samsung can't win against apple in the USA.
  - runjake 14y ago
    1.) I think that's pretty speculative of you. 2.) The lawsuits and their impact go far beyond the US.
  - taligent 14y ago
    That's insulting, ridiculous and easily disprovable.
  - nl 14y ago
    There are plenty of counter-examples proving that to be untrue (eg the CSIRO WiFi patents)
    - anabis 14y ago
      The US made the problem worse by the pro-patent policy from 1980's. I also think the US companies have an unfair advantage in trials (eg. optical fiber Corning vs Sumitomo) I am hoping Apple, the crown jewel, getting badly beat with patents will make US reconsider their pro-patent policy.
i0exception 14y ago
Apple is fighting Steve Jobs' battle. If it weren't for Jobs and his overly bloated ego, we wouldn't have had these stupid patent wars.
- hetman 14y ago
  That may be a bit simplistic, but it does make you wonder to what extent Apple's currently chosen strategy was good business sense, and how much of it was the desire of a man facing his own mortality to desperately protect a legacy that would survive him. To be honest I have no idea what kind of influence Jobs had at Apple in his final year so the above is just musing out loud.
- duaneb 14y ago
  > we wouldn't have had these stupid patent wars. Patent wars are as old as this country is - there's just too many floating around. In any case, it has nothing to do with Jobs.
hetman 14y ago
What I think is fundamentally wrong with the way the patent system is applied today is that in many instances it serves as nothing more than an artificial monopoly only benefitting the patent holder. The idea of the patent system in itself is actually quite elegant. Government grants a temporary monopoly in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention. Everyone wins! The person issued the patent can more easily profit from their invention because they can work in the open. Society likewise benefits, no more secret guilds locking up knowledge, now everyone can see how it's done (and apply it once the monopoly expires). As a social contract this really makes sense. The problem is that a lot of the patents being thrown around today only really satisfy half of that contract. A temporary monopoly is indeed granted, but the disclosure received in exchange is worthless information. I say it is worthless because no one actually needs to read that disclosure to figure out how to do it themselves with basically no effort. Of the large companies, it seems to me that Apple is one of the worse offenders at exploiting the patent system in this way. Don't get me wrong, what they are doing is perfectly legal, but that doesn't make it OK. It does seem like Apple is following the legal rules and Samsung is thrashing around attempting to break them (perhaps feeling they have little alternative). But that doesn't mean that our legal system is perfect and cases like this will hopefully help us understand how it can be fixed to prevent this kind of exploitation in the future.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > A temporary monopoly is indeed granted, but the disclosure received in exchange is worthless information. Given some of the frivolous patents granted these days, and given the application process itself, I wonder how many companies spend more to obtain the patents than they do for the R&D on the technology that's being patented.
  - ThePherocity 14y ago
    All of them.
    - taligent 14y ago
      Actually almost none of them.
kenster07 14y ago
It's about time.
salem 14y ago
This is not news. The cell phone industry has a long history of petty non-novel patents, such as for vibrating _and_ ringing at the same time. A phone with a screen, a grid of icons and round corners sounds equally petty.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
While watching this battle, I always wonder what sort of covenants exist on Samsung's supply agreements with Apple. I was wondering after reading the article why Samsung doesn't just stop selling them parts, or raise the price of the parts 100% or something like that. Seems like they should be able to 'earn back' all the money they are spending defending themselves and cause Apple double pain. But they don't. And the other thing I wonder is if any of Apple's behavior is hurting them in the supply chain. If you make components that Apple uses and also make products in another part of the company for resale, do you put language in that Apple can't sue you? Or that you don't have to honor purchase orders if they do? Something?
- cube13 14y ago
  It's probably that way because Apple is buying so much stuff from Samsung that losing the contract would be a major hit on their bottom line. So Samsung can't really afford to lose Apple's business. Apple, on the other hand, does have the freedom to switch suppliers.
  - jarek 14y ago
    > Apple, on the other hand, does have the freedom to switch suppliers. Though it might be a hollow freedom if no one else other than Samsung can give them the volumes and delivery dates they need. Mutually abusive co-dependent relationship, oh boy.
    - msbarnett 14y ago
      Apple has enough cash on hand to literally pay upfront for TSMC or GlobalFoundries to expand enough to handle Apple's needs. (Apple tends to pay others to set up this kind of capacity rather than build their own because they don't like being stuck with the long-term upkeep on these uber-expensive facilities). It wouldn't be cheap and it would hurt like hell while they got set up, but it would equally cripple Samsung as their own component costs exploded from all of the suddenly idle capacity in their own foundries. It's enough of a nuclear war scenario that I can't imagine either side is eager to pursue it.
- 14y ago
jinushaun 14y ago
Read the article. Read the highlighted statements. 404 Apple stealing from Samsung not found. This whole patent battle is idiotic.
kirillzubovsky 14y ago
"Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them" - and that is why they WIN! Who cares whose technology came first. Samsung couldn't execute and Apple could. If we had it the Samsung way, Nokia 7200 flip phone would still be the standard of mobile technology. shivers
- tensor 14y ago
  You should care who invents technology. If you make laws such as patent laws that work to suppress innovators (ironically), then you will be left with a stagnant monopoly. You can see iOS starting to stagnate even now. In the long view, the innovators, thinkers, and dreamers of today will win. Companies like Apple will come and go as the markets collapse under the new monopolies. Forward thinkers will replace them. It's the same story over and over.
Steko 14y ago
And then http://allthingsd.com/20120725/apple-google-warned-samsung-against-copying-us/ http://allthingsd.com/20120725/apple-google-warned-samsung-a... happened. From Apple's brief: In February 2010, Google told Samsung that Samsung’s “P1” and “P3” tablets (Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1) were “too similar” to the iPad and demanded “distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad for the P3.” In 2011, Samsung’s own Product Design Group noted that it is “regrettable” that the Galaxy S “looks similar” to older iPhone models. As part of a formal, Samsung-sponsored evaluation, famous designers warned Samsung that the Galaxy S “looked like it copied the iPhone too much,” and that “innovation is needed.” The designers explained that the appearance of the Galaxy S “[c]losely resembles the iPhone shape so as to have no distinguishable elements,” and “[a]ll you have to do is cover up the Samsung logo and it’s difficult to find anything different from the iPhone.”
- tensor 14y ago
  I sure hope that the crowning achievement of our era is not simply a dress on a phone. This is not innovation.

170 points by zacharye 14y ago

I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. It is truly absurd that Apple has the audacity to claim some 'we invented it' right to any type of Cellphone tech or Tablet hardware. ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side and the fact that iTunes laid the pavement for the 'app' concept. Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, and once the 'Steve Jobs effect' wears off, they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets. And then, it might be time to look elsewhere for your 401k investment.

cbg0 14y ago
> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products Actually, I doubt it will, as very few people care about the rivalry between large corporations. Apple even started suing mom & pop cafes that had the apple logo or just the word "Apple" in their name, and even that didn't hurt their image much.
- user49598 14y ago
  If that's true, I don't think a lot of people know about it.
  - rmk2 14y ago
    For your reading pleasure: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verklagt-bonner-cafe-wehe-sie-veraeppeln-apples-apfel-1.1173840 http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verkla... [süddeutsche.de -> in german] http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html [thelocal.de] http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe-to-stop-using-this-logo-20111021/ http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe... [geek.com] Everything except the first link are the product of looking for English reports on the same issue, so I do not vouche for their quality.
    - MaysonL 14y ago
      The trademark arguably [arguably, not obviously] infringes on Apple's trademark, and one of the peculiarities of trademark law is that if you do not vigorously defend a trademark, it's scope and strength diminish.
- SODaniel 14y ago
  Short term yes. Though I think we all remember Microsoft walking down the same path and basically paving the way for Apple to become 'the underdog' in the 90s and it sure hasn't helped their public image.
  - dannyr 14y ago
    This is true in Silicon Valley's startup world. A lot of people here dislike Microsoft. It's hard to find a startup built on the .Net stack. Microsoft has the BizSpark program that gives away software licenses for free to startups but that didn't make a difference. I'm starting to see the same sentiment against Apple though not yet to a point that they will be abandoning development on the iOS platform.
  - ajross 14y ago
    Right. Ultimately Microsoft's perceived opposition to the evolving open internet hurt it's perception among developers very badly. Where in the early 90's "everyone" wanted to work for MS and develop windows, by the end of the decade everyone wanted to be working with web apps and JS and Linux. Fast forward to today, and they're just another software company with no particular technical leadership ability. Right now, the Apple bandwagon is still really full, so it may be hard to tell: but I'm seeing more smart hackers jumping off than on these days. In 10 years, how likely is it that Apple will be just another dinosaur milking a legacy OS?
- eridius 14y ago
  What does trademark protection (which they are legally required to do) have to do with patents?
mtgx 14y ago
What I found odd is that even though an iPhone or a Galaxy phone is using so much more important technologies in them, they get to banned for stuff like slide to unlock or pulling results from multiple databases. Even if you argue that it was an "innovative idea", in the end it's still just an idea, and the execution of it is not that hard to warrant a full ban of the whole product from the market for "copying their technology".
- wmf 14y ago
  I agree that products shouldn't be banned based on small infringements, but it sounds like Apple doesn't want to license things like slide-to-unlock for any amount of money.
  - mratzloff 14y ago
    Which is, of course, their perogative.
    - wmf 14y ago
      The question is what to do with a product that's already on store shelves that has been found to be unknowingly infringing one of these "unlicensable" patents. Is it fair to ban it (potentially imposing massive losses) or should the court award some "reasonable" amount of damages?
Terretta 14y ago
> I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. Many of us are not thinking that. Many of us are thinking Apple didn't claim to have invented 3G radio, but purchased Qualcomm chips, and as the UK courts found, in licensing the technology to Qualcomm and its customers, Samsung had already "exhausted" its patent rights. It's on the record that Samsung changed its tune on these patents in April 2011, looking for something to use to counter Apple's concerns about the wholesale appropriation of iPad trade dress (device, packaging presentation, box cover art) by Samsung's me-too tablet. As Samsung's own quote notes, "Apple relied heavily on Samsung‘s technology to enter the telecommunications space, and it continues to use Samsung‘s technology to this day in its iPhone and iPad products. For example, Samsung supplies the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone." Apple was happy to pay for those, just as they paid for radio chips. Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. At least, this is what some people think. > they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets Apple is not a hardware company. As someone recently put it on HN, "ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side". And I'm also not sure that's true, considering the success of Macbook Air containing the same UI/UX as the rest of the Macbook line. The truth is they are a platform company, as noted in other threads here.
- cube13 14y ago
  >Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. More importantly, how could Samsung claim Apple infringed on their patents when Apple purchased the chips from Qualcomm, who are licensed to produce and sell the chips?
technoslut 14y ago
This post is a rant of a fanboy which is why I downvoted it. It's one thing to prove your point but you didn't even do that. The BGR report is garbage as is most of their posts that doesn't involve Gellar's connections at RIM. No one is claiming the idea of button-free phone; not even Apple. What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. I don't claim for it to be right or wrong. What defined the iPhone was not the hardware but software and that is what Apple is going after. Samsung is suing over FRAND patents which is something else entirely. Apple's not suing over Samsung over what they asked them to build. This patent nonsense that exists on HN has really got to stop. It has affected very few except the claims by Lodsys. Do you really care about the brinksmanship that is conducted by two giants?
- neya 14y ago
  >What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. Oh..Really? Then why are they suing the rest of the OEM's whose UI/UX is not even remotely similar? Before you make a point, its good to educate yourself with the topic, atleast to an average extent. Just my 2 cents. And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =)
  - technoslut 14y ago
    You're not mad that Apple is suing. You're mad that Apple is winning some arguments. What they've been winning is off of UI/UX. It's one thing to argue if software patents should even exist but you were not even arguing that. It's hard to tell what you're against other than Apple. You believe that Samsung is right for no apparent reason. All I can tell you is that I don't care and I'm tired of these stories on HN being ranked so highly since it's about ideology and not how it affects the lives of anyone. >And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =) I thought it was appropriate. What is your point?
    - incision 14y ago
      Why are you so angry?
wmf 14y ago
ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side... And isn't TouchWiz eerily similar to iOS's UI/UX?
- chmod775 14y ago
  You're right. When Apple introduced the notification system I was like... I have seen that somewhere. TouchWiz itself is similar to most other OSes. I has a "desktop" with icons and a "start menu" with more software to put on the desktop.
  - josephlord 14y ago
    But does someone have a patent or design patent that covers the Apple implementation of notification? If not it doesn't matter. If so Apple should have to work around it. There is a separate question about what should or should not be granted and whether the law should be changed regarding patentability and duration. Now I think the law should be changed and less should be patentable but that isn't the law or the situation now.
    - fpgeek 14y ago
      Google has applied for such a patent. It has not (yet) been granted, but there's no particular reason to expect it won't be, given the track record of the USPTO. Especially since many of the infringements Apple claims began in the period between application and grant, it will be interesting to see the shoe on the other foot.
      - josephlord 14y ago
        It will be interesting. Agree about USPTO track record but I do wonder if there is more prior art in this area, I seem to remember Symbian having some form of notifications which may at least limit the scope of the Google patent. I'm not familiar with the details of how patent protection is handled before grant. I would guess that licensing fees are not due for the period before grant but that as soon as it is issued you should work around it or pay licensing fees. Assuming it is granted and no cross license is in place by then I assume Apple would try to work around it pretty quickly. I don't see Google offering it for a fair price as they are more interested in market share and leverage than cash too.
blhack 14y ago
Apple didn't even come close to laying the pavement for the "app" concept. I was installing apps on my palm m100 back junior high school. They were paid, there was an app store, it just wasn't connected to the device because the device didn't have a network stack.
el_cuadrado 14y ago
> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, I don't really care about lawsuits, I care about the product. I will buy Apple if they offer the best product on the market. Lawsuits won't change that.
- incision 14y ago
  You're not the average consumer. Apple owes everything to effectively cultivating the notion that they are cool and unique, the product of choice for young rebels and everyone who thinks different. Cool enables their huge margins, grants instant forgiveness for any slip-ups and allows them to essentially dictate what constitutes the "best product". That's why they're fighting so hard. Samsung is a threat to their cool.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Sigh. No, they "owe everything" to effectively building the only cell phone that didn't blow goats.
    - incision 14y ago
      ...9 years after the iMac and 6 years after the iPod. Apple doesn't exist to release the iPhone without first being resurrected by those two products.
msbarnett 14y ago
So you think Samsung ought to be able to sue you for patent infringement for buying a cell-phone? Because fan-boy "rah rah fuck-Apple"isms aside, that's literally the legal outcome that Samsung is pushing for here. They licensed their patents to Qualcomm, who used them to build chips which were sold to Apple. Now, Samsung is arguing that the exhaustion doctrine should no longer exist and that Apple, by buying those chips, re-infringed on Samsung's patents (and, consequently that you re-infringe those patents when you buy a phone, or someone else's patents when you buy a TV, or a car, or a shoe, or anything). What Samsung is arguing for here would make the already fucked up patent system thousands upon thousands of times worse.
Gibbon 14y ago
Do I really need to point out that Samsung are awarded nearly an order of magnitude more patents each year than Apple? (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm) In order the most patents were awarded to IBM, Samsung, Canon, Panasonic, Toshiba and Microsoft. So Samsung is no. 2, while Apple is all the way down in 38th place. If anything, I'm willing to bet that Samsung and the other Asian manufacturers are the overzealous ones trying to use patents to muscle their way into the higher end of the technology market. More patents are now awarded to foreign countries than the USA. Mostly Japan, Korea, Germany and Taiwan. If you think Apple is on the wrong end of the argument, well I guess you don't want a domestic technology market?
- v0cab 14y ago
  What's more, the South Korean government (owned by Samsung) has been blocking and putting up barriers to foreign phones for years, including delaying the introduction of the original iPhone to South Korea, to give Samsung and co. a chance to develop competitors. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html if you want more info on South Korean protectionism in regards to phones. You may also wish to read: 'Republic of Samsung' Confronts a Backlash http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung25 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung2... This may also interest you: Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-samsung-20100510 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-sa... Odd that I'm not reading so much anger about all that Samsung has done on HackerNews and Reddit.

bryanlarsen 14y ago

Linked article is basically just an edited copy of linked WSJ article: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/24/the-apple-samsung-trial-what-samsung-will-attempt-to-prove/ http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/07/24/the-apple-samsung-trial-...

hkmurakami 14y ago

I wonder if Apple is stepping into some really muddy territory with their legal brouhaha. While Apple's patents center around their HW and SW design, from what I understand, Samsung, Motorola, et. al's patents include some fundamental WiFi and communication patents that could be a huge counterpunch towards Apple.

_djo_ 14y ago
But they're almost all licensed under FRAND terms which in theory should prevent them being used the way Motorola & Samsung have decided to use them. There are many other discussions about that concept on HN.
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  Nokia's argument was that a "reasonable" term for FRAND was a patent cross-license. Apple disagreed, and a lawsuit ensued. Unfortunately, the judge agreed with Apple on that item. Everybody thinks that Nokia won their lawsuit since the judge awarded them a huge amount of damages. In my opinion, the whole industry lost. Cross-licenses were the standard way of dealing with the patent thicket before Apple decided to upset the cart. The cross-license racket effectively locked out smaller competitors, so it was far from fair, but it does seem saner than the current blood bath.
  - _djo_ 14y ago
    Apple refused to cross-licence because it was suing with design and function patents, not FRAND patents (of which Apple's were already fairly licensed), so it wasn't under the same obligations. It's the same logic underpinning their legal battles with Samsung and Motorola, where Apple is using design and function patents (some of them absurd) while the other two only have FRAND patents. Mind you the whole thing is a mess, I've said before that I hope this all leads to some very necessary reform of the system. For one, the whole idea of FRAND patents has clearly come apart.
  - cube13 14y ago
    >Unfortunately, the judge agreed with Apple on that item. Everybody thinks that Nokia won their lawsuit since the judge awarded them a huge amount of damages. In my opinion, the whole industry lost. Cross-licenses were the standard way of dealing with the patent thicket before Apple decided to upset the cart. This is how this is supposed to work, though. Apple and Nokia attempted to negotiate for a while, and could not come to an agreement. That's what prompted the lawsuit. The judgement was over two things: 1. Whether or not Apple violated Nokia's patents(which they were found guilty of). 2. Whether or not Nokia's terms to apple were in-line with FRAND(which they were found not). Since the two could not come to an agreement, they had to use the courts to decide.

makmanalp 14y ago

Does anyone have links to the mentioned internal documents from Apple / Samsung?

iamben 14y ago

I'm so bored of all this. It's like watching my parents going through their divorce - pretty much everything ended up with petty point scoring, and at the end of the day, the kids are the ones that got hurt. edit: And their legal representatives made a rather nice chunk of change.

nsns 14y ago
Fitting analogy, but at least they did not fight over who gave you which genes.

soup10 14y ago

This case has nothing to do with patents and everything to do with Jobs/Apple throwing a tantrum. There are so many overly broad and trivial patents that companies have no choice but to ignore them. Standard procedure is to acquire your own stash of broad and trivial patents so that other companies won't bother getting involved in a legal battle with you. This time though, Jobs thought Samsung and Google crossed the line in the scope and extent to which android devices copied the iPhone and iPad. So he started this patent war to spite them. I think everyone involved knows that nothing will come of this except legal fees.

SODaniel 14y ago
Strange conclusion considering Apple has already won several legal battles banning the sales of competitor products on German/European markets. Seems their 'fit throwing' is indeed working as intended.
- ajross 14y ago
  Pyrrhic victories at best. So far none of the injuctions have had significant impact on revenue for Samsung or Google. Android is already ahead in units (though not app or media revenue, Apple maintains huge leads there) and gaining market share. And Apple is burning goodwill at a staggering clip: just look at the comment tone in these threads vs. the same ones a year ago -- people who used to defend Apple's behavior are getting quieter and quieter...
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    Well, there's little reason to defend apple when all it gets you are downvotes.
    - ajross 14y ago
      Which is my point. I have a truckload of -10's from a year ago to show you where I was expressing misgivings about Apple's behavior. The voting, like the posting, is part of the zeitgeist. And it's moving hard in the "anti-Apple" direction.

runjake 14y ago

Steal != legally licensed (from Qualcomm, et al) Look, from the 20,000 foot view, I think Apple's (ab)use of the patent system is pretty lame. But, this is just grandstanding on Samsung's part. If they have a legitimate legal complaint, I'm sure they'll bring it up in court. And then we'll see.

bluelu 14y ago
You are arguing as if USA judges wouldn't favor USA companies over foreign companies. Samsung can't win against apple in the USA.
- runjake 14y ago
  1.) I think that's pretty speculative of you. 2.) The lawsuits and their impact go far beyond the US.
- taligent 14y ago
  That's insulting, ridiculous and easily disprovable.
- nl 14y ago
  There are plenty of counter-examples proving that to be untrue (eg the CSIRO WiFi patents)
  - anabis 14y ago
    The US made the problem worse by the pro-patent policy from 1980's. I also think the US companies have an unfair advantage in trials (eg. optical fiber Corning vs Sumitomo) I am hoping Apple, the crown jewel, getting badly beat with patents will make US reconsider their pro-patent policy.

i0exception 14y ago

Apple is fighting Steve Jobs' battle. If it weren't for Jobs and his overly bloated ego, we wouldn't have had these stupid patent wars.

hetman 14y ago
That may be a bit simplistic, but it does make you wonder to what extent Apple's currently chosen strategy was good business sense, and how much of it was the desire of a man facing his own mortality to desperately protect a legacy that would survive him. To be honest I have no idea what kind of influence Jobs had at Apple in his final year so the above is just musing out loud.
duaneb 14y ago
> we wouldn't have had these stupid patent wars. Patent wars are as old as this country is - there's just too many floating around. In any case, it has nothing to do with Jobs.

hetman 14y ago

What I think is fundamentally wrong with the way the patent system is applied today is that in many instances it serves as nothing more than an artificial monopoly only benefitting the patent holder. The idea of the patent system in itself is actually quite elegant. Government grants a temporary monopoly in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention. Everyone wins! The person issued the patent can more easily profit from their invention because they can work in the open. Society likewise benefits, no more secret guilds locking up knowledge, now everyone can see how it's done (and apply it once the monopoly expires). As a social contract this really makes sense. The problem is that a lot of the patents being thrown around today only really satisfy half of that contract. A temporary monopoly is indeed granted, but the disclosure received in exchange is worthless information. I say it is worthless because no one actually needs to read that disclosure to figure out how to do it themselves with basically no effort. Of the large companies, it seems to me that Apple is one of the worse offenders at exploiting the patent system in this way. Don't get me wrong, what they are doing is perfectly legal, but that doesn't make it OK. It does seem like Apple is following the legal rules and Samsung is thrashing around attempting to break them (perhaps feeling they have little alternative). But that doesn't mean that our legal system is perfect and cases like this will hopefully help us understand how it can be fixed to prevent this kind of exploitation in the future.

chimeracoder 14y ago
> A temporary monopoly is indeed granted, but the disclosure received in exchange is worthless information. Given some of the frivolous patents granted these days, and given the application process itself, I wonder how many companies spend more to obtain the patents than they do for the R&D on the technology that's being patented.
- ThePherocity 14y ago
  All of them.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Actually almost none of them.

kenster07 14y ago

It's about time.

salem 14y ago

This is not news. The cell phone industry has a long history of petty non-novel patents, such as for vibrating _and_ ringing at the same time. A phone with a screen, a grid of icons and round corners sounds equally petty.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

While watching this battle, I always wonder what sort of covenants exist on Samsung's supply agreements with Apple. I was wondering after reading the article why Samsung doesn't just stop selling them parts, or raise the price of the parts 100% or something like that. Seems like they should be able to 'earn back' all the money they are spending defending themselves and cause Apple double pain. But they don't. And the other thing I wonder is if any of Apple's behavior is hurting them in the supply chain. If you make components that Apple uses and also make products in another part of the company for resale, do you put language in that Apple can't sue you? Or that you don't have to honor purchase orders if they do? Something?

cube13 14y ago
It's probably that way because Apple is buying so much stuff from Samsung that losing the contract would be a major hit on their bottom line. So Samsung can't really afford to lose Apple's business. Apple, on the other hand, does have the freedom to switch suppliers.
- jarek 14y ago
  > Apple, on the other hand, does have the freedom to switch suppliers. Though it might be a hollow freedom if no one else other than Samsung can give them the volumes and delivery dates they need. Mutually abusive co-dependent relationship, oh boy.
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    Apple has enough cash on hand to literally pay upfront for TSMC or GlobalFoundries to expand enough to handle Apple's needs. (Apple tends to pay others to set up this kind of capacity rather than build their own because they don't like being stuck with the long-term upkeep on these uber-expensive facilities). It wouldn't be cheap and it would hurt like hell while they got set up, but it would equally cripple Samsung as their own component costs exploded from all of the suddenly idle capacity in their own foundries. It's enough of a nuclear war scenario that I can't imagine either side is eager to pursue it.
14y ago

jinushaun 14y ago

Read the article. Read the highlighted statements. 404 Apple stealing from Samsung not found. This whole patent battle is idiotic.

kirillzubovsky 14y ago

"Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them" - and that is why they WIN! Who cares whose technology came first. Samsung couldn't execute and Apple could. If we had it the Samsung way, Nokia 7200 flip phone would still be the standard of mobile technology. shivers

tensor 14y ago
You should care who invents technology. If you make laws such as patent laws that work to suppress innovators (ironically), then you will be left with a stagnant monopoly. You can see iOS starting to stagnate even now. In the long view, the innovators, thinkers, and dreamers of today will win. Companies like Apple will come and go as the markets collapse under the new monopolies. Forward thinkers will replace them. It's the same story over and over.

Steko 14y ago

And then http://allthingsd.com/20120725/apple-google-warned-samsung-against-copying-us/ http://allthingsd.com/20120725/apple-google-warned-samsung-a... happened. From Apple's brief: In February 2010, Google told Samsung that Samsung’s “P1” and “P3” tablets (Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1) were “too similar” to the iPad and demanded “distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad for the P3.” In 2011, Samsung’s own Product Design Group noted that it is “regrettable” that the Galaxy S “looks similar” to older iPhone models. As part of a formal, Samsung-sponsored evaluation, famous designers warned Samsung that the Galaxy S “looked like it copied the iPhone too much,” and that “innovation is needed.” The designers explained that the appearance of the Galaxy S “[c]losely resembles the iPhone shape so as to have no distinguishable elements,” and “[a]ll you have to do is cover up the Samsung logo and it’s difficult to find anything different from the iPhone.”

tensor 14y ago
I sure hope that the crowning achievement of our era is not simply a dress on a phone. This is not innovation.