Well, that didn’t take long. Groklaw notes several interesting inconsistencies and other issues with the jury verdict. “If it would take a lawyer three days to make sure he understood the terms in the form, how did the jury not need the time to do the same? There were 700 questions, remember, and one thing is plain, that the jury didn’t take the time to avoid inconsistencies, one of which resulted in the jury casually throwing numbers around, like $2 million dollars for a nonfringement. Come on. This is farce.” My favourite inconsistency: a Samsung phone with a keyboard, four buttons, and a large Samsung logo on top infringes the iPhone design patent. And yet, we were told (in the comments, on other sites) that the Samsung f700 was not prior art… Because it had a keyboard. I smell fish.
The damages have not been awarded yet. Samsung will likely win small victories as the Jury is prone to error in a verdict this complex. Plus, the Judge can overrule the Jury in instances where they did not understand the minutia of the law.
The number could be revised slightly downward, and I expect it to..but
Samsung as also found to have willfully infringed which opens the door to up to a tripling of damages.
“And yet, we were told that the Samsung f700 was not prior art… Because it had a keyboard.”
The documents regarding the f700 were not admitted as prior art because Samsung failed to enter them until six months into the trial.
Can we not make up propaganda on an already heated topic.
Edited 2012-08-25 19:19 UTC
I was referring to people here in the comments and in other articles (e.g. The Verge).
So it was a completely useless, trolling statement. Yes, I agree.
No one has to like the verdict. It wouldn’t have been my personal decision, I’d have pushed for as little damages as possible and tried to invalidate both sides. But, like all contests, rise above your own views. Be a man, rather than whining about fairness. We all knew someone would win. If the shoe was on the other foot, you’d be wetting yourself over how right the world now was. Despite the humiliation you must feel after your self righteous bigoted twisting of every news story and all the gashing of teeth, it is a hollow victory for those of us that hated both sides of the coin and would rather have seen neither win. But, we’ll be the bigger people and won’t rub it in, even though we know you would have not been so kind to us.
You could have saved us all a boring read. You meant to say: “Tough shit”
Hahaha! If I could vote you up, I would. Not that it’s a victory. Thom was just on the wrong side of a bullshit battle. Sadly, standing in the middle wins nothing though.
“If it would take a lawyer three days to make sure he understood the terms in the form, how did the jury not need the time to do the same? “
Easy, a lawyer gets paid by the hour.
BURN.
Just answer “A” to every question, and you can be home in time to watch Springer. Even if it’s not multiple choice, just write A.
What are you, stupid?! That’s far to obvious! Eveybody knows it’s B-A-D-D-C-A, B-A-D-D-C-A, B-A-D-D-C-A,…
Amateur
Has it occured to anyone that this decision could be motivated by some sort of nationalism ?
Everybody know American image of leading economy and technology has taken some heavy hits this last decade…
Lack of confidence in the rules of Capitalism and “free-trade” ?
It has, and most likely is. Apple is constantly in the news lately viewed positively as an innovative American company, while Samsung is this Asian newcomer who is frequently ridiculed as producing knock-off products. The jurors were no doubt aware of this and as a consequence were most likely heavily biased. As evidenced by the latest released comments from the jurors, Samsung was assumed to be guilty practically from day one, thus invalidating one of the core principles of fair justice (impartiality).
Though maybe not practical in this case, it would be very interesting to see if jurors had arrived at the same conclusion had none of them been present at the court hearings themselves and instead worked from court transcripts (the information content is the same as what is said in a court room, save for the drama) and the materials identifying the parties had been anonymized (referring rather to parties “A” and “B” rather than “Apple” and “Samsung”).
Edited 2012-08-26 01:43 UTC
East Asia has been the economic and technological powerhouse of most of recorded history and was halted mostly due to external military force. East Asia is now recovering at full speed and the West simply would not be able to get them to play by their rules.
Yes, I also think that that is the case.
That’s a pile of Bravo Sierra.
Absolutely.
By the way, in last The Verge article before the verdict I did notice the following sentence, where Apple attorney McElhinny said:
Even the current patent system is a ‘product’ to be patriotically proud of! Unbelievable.
Unlikely a significant factor. I know OS News has many international (Non-US) members, so here’s a couple of things I’d like to point out:
– It is “common knowledge” (correct or not) that the vast majority of consumer electronics (especially Apple-branded items) are imported from China. Many Americans view China as our economic and political ‘enemy’.
– Samsung has been selling consumer products in the States for decades and is generally well-regarded.
Edited 2012-08-28 20:44 UTC
So, you describe a prevalent feelings & way thinking about the Asians as an ‘enemy’ (do you really think “average” folks of the kind found in a jury can differentiate between East-Asian ethnicities?) …and you use it as an argument for “unlikely”?
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/08/25/jury-members-discuss-thought-pr…
I thought about this some more, and the one good thing that MIGHT come of this, is that maybe Android hardware manufacturers might decide to just use android as is, instead of putting things like Sense, Touchwiz, and Blur (although I guess this last one probably doesn’t matter that much anymore) on it. Wouldn’t that then shift liability from hardware manufacturers to Google?
Google should offer indemnification incentives for companies that use AOSP as is, and in return these companies should put their patents in a pool. That would solve Android fragmentation problems, and could create a single united front against MS, Apple, and anyone else who tries to sue over Android.
The only possible problem would be if hardware manufacturers tried to sue each other over Android, such as HTC suing Samsung, but maybe Google could mediate in those cases?
Nexus S, which is pure Android, was found to infringe just like any of Samsung’s own phones, so I doubt that will work.
Wow! Something about that doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s because of the Pinch-to-Zoom and Bounce scrolling stupid patents (that shouldn’t have been awarded in the first place because those are neither new nor innovative).
As much as I can understand the ruling from the trade dress perspective (for some devices, Samsung really tried to look like an iPhone), just taking an interesting software interaction idea from your concurrent shouldn’t be a problem. Otherwise, I hope Google has some patent on “searching for stuff” and “notifications on a smartphone”.
Doesn’t Samsung have like no say in the UI of the Nexus S though? I mean doesn’t Samsung just build the hardware for that?
In a pair of reports from Reuters and CNET, jury foreman Velvin Hogan and juror Manuel Ilagan described what went on behind closed doors as the nine-member group deliberated the landmark verdict. Their remarks make it plain that there deliberations were rational and considered but the verdict was pretty easy to reach because the evidence was so clear cut.
In an interview on Saturday, jury foreman Velvin Hogan, 67, said Apple’s arguments about the need to protect innovation were persuasive in the jury room. He also said video testimony from senior Samsung executives made it “absolutely” clear to them that the infringement was purposeful.
We weren’t impatient,” Ilagan said. “We wanted to do the right thing, and not skip any evidence. I think we were thorough.We found for Apple because of the evidence they presented. It was clear there was infringement.”
Foreman Hogan echoed the juror’s sentiment, telling Reuters that video testimony from Samsung officials made it “absolutely” clear that the company willfully infringed on Apple’s trade dress. He went on to say Apple’s arguments for the protection of intellectual property factored largely into the jury’s decision.
We didn’t want to give carte blanche to a company, by any name, to infringe someone else’s intellectual property,” Hogan said.
As for Samsung’s claims of infringement, Ilagan said the company lost the jury when it tried to leverage two UMTS wireless patents against Apple, one of which involved the communications chip in the iPhone and iPad. Apple refuted this specific claim and pointed to a Samsung licensing deal with Intel, the maker of the iDevice chips. The agreement stated that Samsung was not allowed to sue any company to which Intel sold that particular component, a licensing safeguard known as patent exhaustion.
Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents, it’s easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products, because it was all the same,” Ilagan said. “Like the trade dress — once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flat screen with the Bezel…then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel. But we took our time. We didn’t rush. We had a debate before we made a decision. Sometimes it was getting heated.”
Jurors felt Samsung should pay significant damages in the landmark patent trial against Apple, even though they viewed Apple’s demands as too high, according to the foreman.
“We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist,” Hogan said. “We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable.”
At one point during the second day of deliberations, jurors turned off the lights in the room to settle a debate about the potential influence screen brightness might have on Apple’s graphics interface. Their verdict: Apple’s designs were unique.
“All of us feel we were fair, that we can stand by our verdict and that we have a clear conscience in that we were totally not biased one way or another,” Hogan said.
What exactly does your post add to the conversation?
Are the jurors going to come out and admit openly that they are inherently biased against Apple, because one is an American company and the other a Korean one?
Are they going to admit that they have no understanding of technology?
Trade dress patents, really? Is that what the technology world has come down to?
Only thing this has proven is that Apple and Microsoft are not able to compete on a leveled playing field.
Too bad Microsoft´s ecosystem of applications is so entrenched because of all their early illegal behavior or the world of computing would look so much different: We could have Be, we could have a real qnx-based desktop, we could have Linux making even more serious inroads on the desktop.
I am done with this pathetic debate and the iClueless fashionistas.
Edited 2012-08-26 14:43 UTC
Oh give it the hell up already! Here we are, in the middle of a conversation about Apple VS Samsung, and what do we get? A butthurt FOSS zealot screaming about “Teh ebil M$”!
Dude where have you been for the past half a fricking decade? MSFT is the new IBM, with a market that is flatline and gonna stay that way, hence why we have Ballmer throwing the Hail Mary with Win 8 “LOL I Iz A Cellphone LOL” play, yet here you are STILL whining like its 1997! Give it up Sparky, you didn’t have a product the people wanted,and on the desktop you STILL don’t, so they went elsewhere simple as that. I’ll even hand you a link from a Red hat dev that says the Linux desktop is “suckage” and “in its death throes” for you to ponder..
https://plus.google.com/109922199462633401279/posts/HgdeFDfRzNe
Now back to the ACTUAL topic…welcome to the future, the land of the lawyers. This is what happens when you have an out of control patent office that will let you patent anything! Everyone in IT knows we stand on the shoulders of giants only now we have tollbooths everywhere. I mean screens with bezels? Really? Wanna know why Asia is gonna kick the USA’s behind this is it in a nutshell, they can build on previous ideas without tapdancing through a legal minefield to do so.
Don’t kid yourself. Sure, MS did play dirty (who wouldn’t, in such position?), but they were also simply the most sensible choice out of all not-so-great ones ( http://www.osnews.com/thread?522221 ); and network effects mean that we naturally gravitated to one dominant market player.
Even though I agree on the $1bn “fine” and think that Samsung management should be smacked with a $1bn sack of money; I can’t dismiss all the subtle hints that the utility patent part of the was largely skipped over.
Fair is fair, and it seems that in the complex case the jury went for the easy part(designs and trade dress) and skipped the technical one(utility patents).
Also, technically the jury compared the effect of the utility patents, not what should be compared – how they do it.(Utility patents don’t cover what, it’s the how)
PS: Where is your disgust that they did not find, a currently banned, GTab 10.1 to infringe on iPad design?
When the iPhone debuted, it was widely criticized for having no buttons/keys. Now people think the iPhone’s design is “obvious.â€
Dan Frakes
None of my Palm or Windows Mobile devices had more than a few buttons.
Next.
Based on prior Supreme Court rulings, this will be struck down and Samsung will with certainty go all the way and nothing will ever be paid out to Apple, most likely it will be Apple paying out to all of the companies that were inventing these things long before Apple decided to “borrow”.
Apple “PR” turned out against them.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/114476892281222708332/posts/246srfbqg6G
So this stupid trial is a huge Samsung Ad-campaign sponsored by Samsung =)
Edited 2012-08-26 15:49 UTC
This case is full of fail. First, the judge tells Samsung that if they don’t like something Apple is doing (dont remember the specific thing) that they are free to file a motion. The very next day, Samsung presents the motion and the judge refuses it. Nice.
Then we have the foreman of the jury admit that they didnt read the instructions prior to coming to a verdict. Finally we have the $1Billion award. The jury says that this was to punish Samsung. Problem is that, as listed is the ignored instructions, the award can not be punitive. It is only meant to make Apple whole. And I think anyone would have a hard time arguing that Apple would have sold more iPads if not for Samsung. I think the people who were going to buy an iPad did, everyone else was never going to.
I expect the verdict to be overturned or appealed. There is clearly enough reason to do so.
By the way:
– do the jurors only need to fill their ‘questionnaire’ Yes / No / Fine amount or are they required also to later release an official motivation for their verdict?
– If the jurors have effectively ignored the instructions, are they potentially liable for something like ‘contempt of court’ ?
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2012/08/133_118242.html
It should be noted that Groklaw, Thom, other tech “savvy” geeks, are not unbiased and had a rooting objective in this matter. The jurors (if they were properly screened) did not have a rooting interest.
Therefore the jurors’ opinion would be based on objective analysis while the tech geek peanut gallery opinions are generally not.
Personally, I don’t trust jury decisions in technical matters and would prefer a panel of experts (though it would be harder to find a pool of objective experts than a pool of objective laypersons) or a group of philosopher kings.
But trashing the jurors for “inconsistencies” when they are objective and the critics are not seems wrong.
While groklaw’s authors certainly do have opinions, they at least provide unedited documentation of the entire trial, both for Apple and Samsung. That makes them a excellent source of information. In addition, the foreman seems to have been anything but unbiased. He ruled for Apple the way he would want the court to rule in his favor over his patent. He also had a lot of influence on the outcome according to other jurors. Now samsung bears some blame for not dismissing him. But they also have a right to be judged by a unbiased group, no matter how many jurors they would have to dismiss.
You believe that with all of the evidence presented in the last few days by Groklaw and other news sources which interviewed the jurors that they were not in the least bit biased? You believe they are less so than ‘experts’ in the field? You believe that they and they alone have no biases and therefore you defer to their wisdom?
Seriously?
The way I look at this is that it is sort of like protectionism. If America wants to employ protectionism to prevent competition from foreign companies then it has that right. The good thing is that the world has now changed and there are other large markets out there so competition won’t just die. For example the Chinese market is set to become the world’s largest mobile phone market. Protectionism of this sort just means that the US falls behind. That is all.
This is clearly American protectionism, and the Koreans should retaliate. Apple should never be allowed to sell a single iAnything in Korea again.