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Samsung faces sanctions over leak of confidential Apple documents

34 points by gibwell 13y ago

iamshs 13y ago
So essentially apple's confidential patent agreements with Nokia, Sharp, Philips, and Ericsson are now compromised and known to Samsung through their external attorney. And allegedly, they were using them as a leverage against Nokia. Fantastic company right there. Fine the violators incredibly heavily, and stem this unethical behavior. http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-samsung-execs-were.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-sams...
- corresation 13y ago
  I'm not sure which is worse -- FOSS Patents or Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Both add such narrative noise and partisan detritus to the commentary that neither are worthwhile sources of information on this. Apple sent confidential information to an outside attorney, marking it as confidential. The attorney then used that confidential material in making other material, not rightly redacting or not including the material only they were to see, then sending it to many people at Samsung. Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.
  - iamshs 13y ago
    Which is what FOSS patents website is actually saying. I added that link, because it is more detailed than the CNN one. It is written as such on FOSS patents. Apple supplied the documents, David Teece (Samsung's witness and a UCB prof) compiled main clauses of the documents into a report, the report was then sent to Samsung's external attorneys (Quinn Emmanuel), who uploaded them on to an internal Samsung FTP server, then around 50 executives were notified one by one to access that report.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Are you trying to minimize the seriousness of what had been done here? Samsung illegally distributed information that was only disclosed under court protection for the purpose of a trial to it's executives, who used it to gain an advantage in negotiation. They did precisely what the court did not permit them to do. > Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this. Either you don't understand what Samsung have done, or you don't understand what discovery is, because obtaining trade secrets is clearly not the reason for it.
    - corresation 13y ago
      Discovery for this issue, gibwell (a 3-day old account that already has pages upon pages of attacks on Samsung, Google, and Amazon. Such a mystery who you imagine your team is). Samsung, it seems (again, this is why the judge is demanding discovery) didn't actually leak the information -- an outside law firm did. It is entirely possible Samsung (meaning specific executives) was simply ignorant about their right to have that information when it dropped in their FTP folder, as openly stating it and flaunting it in the face of a competitor virtually guaranteed that what is happening now would happen.
      - cube13 13y ago
        Uh, the "outside law firm" is Samsung's council. They're the ones representing Samsung in court. If you seriously think that Samsung is an innocent third party in this, you're completely mistaken. The lawyers going to face sanctions, as will Samsung. EDIT: clarification.
        corresation 13y ago
        How you came to the conclusions that led you to write your comment absolutely baffles me. EDIT: Okay, you edited your bizarre comment to something that can be replied to. You understand the concept of an outside council, right? The outside council works for a client but they are beholden to the law and restrictions of the court, with their entire firm lying in the balance. If you think Samsung just whispered kindly do them and they broke the law and professional credibility (again, if it was them), you don't understand law firms.
        jfb 13y ago
        It could have easily been a simple error in redaction. Knowing how information is disseminated in large companies, it's also easily possible that the actual source of the information to the Samsung execs had been obscured. Quinn Emmanuel is a reputable firm. I find it hard to believe that this was an intentional error. EDIT: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a card-carrying salary-drawing member of Team AAPL.
- jobu 13y ago
  Based on the quote from Judge Grewal in that article, he takes this issue very seriously, and will likely issue some heavy sanctions. Samsung is already on the hook for a Billion dollars, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
  - bsullivan01 13y ago
    Chicken feed is my guess. Now if he punishes the lawyers (as in hurt their careers) in any way he can that might serve as a deterrent. Samsung is super-rich and can take a hit. I doubt the judge can fine them into the $ hundreds of millions to billions.
smtddr 13y ago
Explain to me like I'm 5 years old. What happened here? I understand data was leaked, but I don't know why the author is "shocked" or "disappointed"(in who?). Why is this such a big deal and "extremely" illegal? How does this impact the companies involved?
- x0x0 13y ago
  as part of the apple-samsung lawsuit, apple produced apparently incredibly business sensitive licensing agreements, some of which where with Nokia. In order to avoid samsung using this to their advantage/letting samsung go on a fishing expedition, the agreement was apple's documents would only go to apple's lawyers and samsung's external legal firm. Samsung's external lawyers had a duty to avoid giving this knowledge to their employers. Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent benchmarking results), Samsung of course got their hands on a copy of this agreements in order to help negotiate negotiate their own deals with Nokia. Nokia told the court. Samsung and their firm and busy lying to the court and hiding. However, the court has subpoena powers. At minimum Samsung's external legal firm stands to be censured.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    > Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent benchmarking results) Oh come on, this is silly. You don't think Apple manipulate benchmarks and statistics? Or deny product faults and quietly settle years later e.g. iPhone 4 Antenna? Or how about e-book price fixing?!! It's ridiculous that people always assume foreign companies lie, cheat and steal, whereas homegrown companies are more kosher than a rabbi. The same thing happens in sport and politics of course. I guess humans just can't lose that tribal mentality.
    - x0x0 13y ago
      With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-andr...
WildUtah 13y ago
Samsung shouldn't violate court orders. Still, these documents are licensing agreements that implement and define the extent of a state granted monopoly. There is no plausible non-corrupt reason to allow them to be kept secret. Any serious effort at open government would require private companies invested with the power of law to make these documents public as soon as they're written. The patent office should require all contracts that involve patent assignment, licensing, and revenue sharing to be deposited at the patent office for public access. These companies have been granted a privilege by the state at a cost to the freedom of every citizen and are responsible for how they use that privilege. The public has a right to know whether those privileges are really being used in the public interest as we are so often told. In every case, the public is better off if competitors know what sort of value and advantage companies are getting from patents. The whole point of the system is supposed to depend on public disclosure of inventions and their use and value compensating the public. Hiding the terms of contracts is an abuse of the very supposed nature of the patent bargain. The continued sealing of documents in patent cases offends justice and integrity. Even the judge in this case agrees and has tried to make more of these documents in question public. So far the corrupt Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit hasn't been cooperative in reducing secrecy and opening up evidence to the public in patent cases.
- iamshs 13y ago
  The issue is compromise of confidential documents. Forget for a second that the documents were patent agreements.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gibwell 13y ago
  This issue has nothing to do with whether patent law is correct or not. It's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally.
  - forgottenpass 13y ago
    It's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally. Perhaps the parent poster should note that and clarify the fact they're speaking about patent law broadly. Maybe by prefacing the post with something along the lines of "Samsung shouldn't violate court orders. Still, "
yalogin 13y ago
Samsung has always come across as a company really willing to cheat without hesitation. Even then I am surprised with this.
shmerl 13y ago
When will Samsung already invalidate those patents for good? They have prior art.
- gibwell 13y ago
  How is that relevant to the linked article?
  - shmerl 13y ago
    It would simply make such articles irrelevant :) Since in essence those patents were never valid to begin with. Samsung is of course wrong with sneaky tactics. But so is Apple with using fake patents.
    - lttlrck 13y ago
      Well as it stands your comments are irrelevant.
    - gibwell 13y ago
      Even if Apple's patents were invalidated it would do nothing to excuse what you are calling 'sneaky tactics' by Samsung. What they are accused of is deeply illegal, and that isn't going to change. Apple hasn't done anything illegal and their patents aren't 'fake'. If they were fake, why wouldn't Samsung have had them reviewed? It seems as though you are trying to defend Samsung by smearing Apple.
      - iamshs 13y ago
        shmerl has been on HN for 2 years and amassed ~2K karma. I assume those other comments were not as gibberish as the ones on this story.
      - shmerl 13y ago
        In this case, Apple's patents are fake, because there is clear prior art. Samsung tried to use that defense, but the jury was really weird on that one. No idea why they aren't proceeding with invalidating them further. I'm not defending Samsung. They both are worth each other here. Apple started this idiocy first though - no one asked them to be patent jerks to begin with. When one crook is being bitten by another crook in a crooked fashion, because the first did something crooked to the second first, then the first one should look in a mirror, before pointing fingers to the second.

34 points by gibwell 13y ago

So essentially apple's confidential patent agreements with Nokia, Sharp, Philips, and Ericsson are now compromised and known to Samsung through their external attorney. And allegedly, they were using them as a leverage against Nokia. Fantastic company right there. Fine the violators incredibly heavily, and stem this unethical behavior. http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-samsung-execs-were.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-sams...

corresation 13y ago
I'm not sure which is worse -- FOSS Patents or Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Both add such narrative noise and partisan detritus to the commentary that neither are worthwhile sources of information on this. Apple sent confidential information to an outside attorney, marking it as confidential. The attorney then used that confidential material in making other material, not rightly redacting or not including the material only they were to see, then sending it to many people at Samsung. Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.
- iamshs 13y ago
  Which is what FOSS patents website is actually saying. I added that link, because it is more detailed than the CNN one. It is written as such on FOSS patents. Apple supplied the documents, David Teece (Samsung's witness and a UCB prof) compiled main clauses of the documents into a report, the report was then sent to Samsung's external attorneys (Quinn Emmanuel), who uploaded them on to an internal Samsung FTP server, then around 50 executives were notified one by one to access that report.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Are you trying to minimize the seriousness of what had been done here? Samsung illegally distributed information that was only disclosed under court protection for the purpose of a trial to it's executives, who used it to gain an advantage in negotiation. They did precisely what the court did not permit them to do. > Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this. Either you don't understand what Samsung have done, or you don't understand what discovery is, because obtaining trade secrets is clearly not the reason for it.
  - corresation 13y ago
    Discovery for this issue, gibwell (a 3-day old account that already has pages upon pages of attacks on Samsung, Google, and Amazon. Such a mystery who you imagine your team is). Samsung, it seems (again, this is why the judge is demanding discovery) didn't actually leak the information -- an outside law firm did. It is entirely possible Samsung (meaning specific executives) was simply ignorant about their right to have that information when it dropped in their FTP folder, as openly stating it and flaunting it in the face of a competitor virtually guaranteed that what is happening now would happen.
    - cube13 13y ago
      Uh, the "outside law firm" is Samsung's council. They're the ones representing Samsung in court. If you seriously think that Samsung is an innocent third party in this, you're completely mistaken. The lawyers going to face sanctions, as will Samsung. EDIT: clarification.
      - corresation 13y ago
        How you came to the conclusions that led you to write your comment absolutely baffles me. EDIT: Okay, you edited your bizarre comment to something that can be replied to. You understand the concept of an outside council, right? The outside council works for a client but they are beholden to the law and restrictions of the court, with their entire firm lying in the balance. If you think Samsung just whispered kindly do them and they broke the law and professional credibility (again, if it was them), you don't understand law firms.
        jfb 13y ago
        It could have easily been a simple error in redaction. Knowing how information is disseminated in large companies, it's also easily possible that the actual source of the information to the Samsung execs had been obscured. Quinn Emmanuel is a reputable firm. I find it hard to believe that this was an intentional error. EDIT: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a card-carrying salary-drawing member of Team AAPL.
jobu 13y ago
Based on the quote from Judge Grewal in that article, he takes this issue very seriously, and will likely issue some heavy sanctions. Samsung is already on the hook for a Billion dollars, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  Chicken feed is my guess. Now if he punishes the lawyers (as in hurt their careers) in any way he can that might serve as a deterrent. Samsung is super-rich and can take a hit. I doubt the judge can fine them into the $ hundreds of millions to billions.

smtddr 13y ago

Explain to me like I'm 5 years old. What happened here? I understand data was leaked, but I don't know why the author is "shocked" or "disappointed"(in who?). Why is this such a big deal and "extremely" illegal? How does this impact the companies involved?

x0x0 13y ago
as part of the apple-samsung lawsuit, apple produced apparently incredibly business sensitive licensing agreements, some of which where with Nokia. In order to avoid samsung using this to their advantage/letting samsung go on a fishing expedition, the agreement was apple's documents would only go to apple's lawyers and samsung's external legal firm. Samsung's external lawyers had a duty to avoid giving this knowledge to their employers. Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent benchmarking results), Samsung of course got their hands on a copy of this agreements in order to help negotiate negotiate their own deals with Nokia. Nokia told the court. Samsung and their firm and busy lying to the court and hiding. However, the court has subpoena powers. At minimum Samsung's external legal firm stands to be censured.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  > Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent benchmarking results) Oh come on, this is silly. You don't think Apple manipulate benchmarks and statistics? Or deny product faults and quietly settle years later e.g. iPhone 4 Antenna? Or how about e-book price fixing?!! It's ridiculous that people always assume foreign companies lie, cheat and steal, whereas homegrown companies are more kosher than a rabbi. The same thing happens in sport and politics of course. I guess humans just can't lose that tribal mentality.
  - x0x0 13y ago
    With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-andr...

WildUtah 13y ago

Samsung shouldn't violate court orders. Still, these documents are licensing agreements that implement and define the extent of a state granted monopoly. There is no plausible non-corrupt reason to allow them to be kept secret. Any serious effort at open government would require private companies invested with the power of law to make these documents public as soon as they're written. The patent office should require all contracts that involve patent assignment, licensing, and revenue sharing to be deposited at the patent office for public access. These companies have been granted a privilege by the state at a cost to the freedom of every citizen and are responsible for how they use that privilege. The public has a right to know whether those privileges are really being used in the public interest as we are so often told. In every case, the public is better off if competitors know what sort of value and advantage companies are getting from patents. The whole point of the system is supposed to depend on public disclosure of inventions and their use and value compensating the public. Hiding the terms of contracts is an abuse of the very supposed nature of the patent bargain. The continued sealing of documents in patent cases offends justice and integrity. Even the judge in this case agrees and has tried to make more of these documents in question public. So far the corrupt Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit hasn't been cooperative in reducing secrecy and opening up evidence to the public in patent cases.

iamshs 13y ago
The issue is compromise of confidential documents. Forget for a second that the documents were patent agreements.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gibwell 13y ago
This issue has nothing to do with whether patent law is correct or not. It's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally.
- forgottenpass 13y ago
  It's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally. Perhaps the parent poster should note that and clarify the fact they're speaking about patent law broadly. Maybe by prefacing the post with something along the lines of "Samsung shouldn't violate court orders. Still, "

yalogin 13y ago

Samsung has always come across as a company really willing to cheat without hesitation. Even then I am surprised with this.

shmerl 13y ago

When will Samsung already invalidate those patents for good? They have prior art.

gibwell 13y ago
How is that relevant to the linked article?
- shmerl 13y ago
  It would simply make such articles irrelevant :) Since in essence those patents were never valid to begin with. Samsung is of course wrong with sneaky tactics. But so is Apple with using fake patents.
  - lttlrck 13y ago
    Well as it stands your comments are irrelevant.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Even if Apple's patents were invalidated it would do nothing to excuse what you are calling 'sneaky tactics' by Samsung. What they are accused of is deeply illegal, and that isn't going to change. Apple hasn't done anything illegal and their patents aren't 'fake'. If they were fake, why wouldn't Samsung have had them reviewed? It seems as though you are trying to defend Samsung by smearing Apple.
    - iamshs 13y ago
      shmerl has been on HN for 2 years and amassed ~2K karma. I assume those other comments were not as gibberish as the ones on this story.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      In this case, Apple's patents are fake, because there is clear prior art. Samsung tried to use that defense, but the jury was really weird on that one. No idea why they aren't proceeding with invalidating them further. I'm not defending Samsung. They both are worth each other here. Apple started this idiocy first though - no one asked them to be patent jerks to begin with. When one crook is being bitten by another crook in a crooked fashion, because the first did something crooked to the second first, then the first one should look in a mirror, before pointing fingers to the second.