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It's go time for that legal battle that refuses to die: Apple v. Samsung.
The two smartphone giants will meet in a San Jose, California, court for a week starting Monday to determine how much Samsung owes for illegally using three Apple design patents and two utility patents. The lawsuit, initially filed in 2011, made it all the way to the Supreme Court in late 2016 before being sent back to the lower court. This will be the third district court trial for the case.
Samsung has already been found to infringe Apple's patents. The argument centers on how much it owes Apple for copying some of its patented features, like the rectangular shape of the iPhone. Previously, Samsung paid $548 million, and $399 million of that is being reconsidered in this trial.
The South Korean company hopes to pay less by using a Supreme Court decision that changed how the parties may calculate the damages.
[...] Only $399 million of the $548 million paid to Apple -- considered the "additional remedy" amount under Section 289 of the Patent Act of 1952 (35 U.S.C. 289) -- is being examined in the 2018 retrial. The additional $149 million in damages Samsung paid Apple isn't at stake.
Now that the Supreme Court has said damages can be based on a portion of a product, not necessarily the entire infringing device, Samsung hopes the jury will award a smaller damages amount to Apple.
[...] In December 2015, Samsung asked the Supreme Court to examine the decisions reached by lower courts. It wanted the nation's highest court to determine whether design patent damages could be based on part of a device, not the entire gadget.
The court accepted the request and held a hearing in October 2016 -- the first time it had examined a design patent case since the 1800s. It ultimately agreed with Samsung and said damages could be determined differently than in the past.
Apple and Samsung faced off at the Supreme Court in October 2016.
That ruling reshaped the value of designs and how much one company may have to pay for copying the look of a competitor's product. Previously, an infringing "article of manufacture" was considered an entire device. Now an article of manufacture can be only a small portion of a device, which would limit the amount of damages that can be awarded.
Instead of making a decision on the damages themselves, the justices sent the case back to the lower court to determine the process for deciding how much money is owed for infringement.
That's the crux of this trial. Though the Supreme Court decision said an article of manufacture could be based on which part of a product infringes a patent, instead of the entire product, it didn't say how to decide that.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 14 2018, @03:33PM (2 children)
> how much it owes Apple for copying ... the rectangular shape
You can patent basic shapes such as the rectangle? If so, that's some seriously hyperbolic legal expansion of patent law! But I suspect the reporting is misrepresenting and exaggerating matters just a tiny bit.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday May 14 2018, @03:49PM
Er... nope.
Google for "rounded corners patent"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 14 2018, @04:07PM
Here is something I remember from a few years ago. I don't have a link to substantiate it. Sorry.
In a foreign court spat between Apple vs Samsung over a Samsung Tablet, Apple argued, with a straight face that out of the universe of design possibilities Samsung could have chosen to make its tablets with wider bezels and not as thin or light weight.
So Thin, Light and Slim Bezels are exclusive Apple design inventions.
So what's wrong with Apple owning basic shapes like Rectangles?
I mean gee, can't others be creative enough to design phones in other shapes? Especially those who were in the cell phone business for decades before Apple joined the party in 2007.
Don't get me started with Slide To Unlock, or heaven forbid Bouncy Scrolling.
In the cell phone industry, it was well understood that a flip phone is protected from waking up in your pocket by detecting whether the phone has been flipped open. For "candy bar" phones with exposed buttons, it was well understood that you require some unusual keypress sequence, like holding down a key or two keys (and only those keys) for slightly longer than would accidentally happen in your pocket.
Any engineer presented with a design problem of having only one "wake up" button would instantly understand that to protect from accidental presses of the wake button, some kind of on-screen gesture is required. And that gesture is going to involve some kind of a swipe in some direction. Or multiple directions as in the pattern unlock, or a PIN. The point being there is a very limited set (about 3) of solutions. All modern phones offer all three.
If Apple had invented cars, then every car would have completely different ways of steering, applying the brakes
breaksetc. The steering wheel is patented. Headlights are patented.As someone who once was a huge Apple fanboy and developer in the Classic Mac days, I have little love for Apple these days.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.