Judge Lucy Koh has almost halved the $1 billion in damages the jury awarded to Apple. “Koh found two main errors in the way the jury calculated the damages awarded to Apple. They used Samsung’s profits to determine the amount the company owed for infringing some of Apple’s utility patents – a practice only appropriate when calculating damages owed when design patents have been infringed. They also erred when calculating the time period Apple should be awarded damages for. Koh explains that Apple was only due damages for product sales that occurred after Cupertino informed Samsung of its belief that the violations were taking place.” It’s almost as if the bunch of random people in this jury had no clue what they were doing in what is possibly the most complex patent trial in history.
We would all be better off if we got rid of software and hardware patents.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem likely any time soon.
Good news for Samsung though; could use the money to spend on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/22/samsung-copy-paste…
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/4035064/samsung-wallet-app-apple-…
Do you mean software and design patents? Hardware patents are kinda important.
Can anyone explain to me why it was the jury’s job to decide the level of damages that should be awarded? I would have thought it was their job to decide whether or not Samsung had infringed each of Apple’s patents in turn, and then the judge’s job to work out the exact damages, if any. That how it works in criminal courts, after all.
Samsung and Apple had an opportunity to opt for a bench trial, they decided to forego that and have a jury trial instead.
The Judge still has a fair amount of discretion, as evidenced here.
I don’t think juries should calculate damages or even render verdicts in patent cases. This is just too complex. The jury instructions were hundreds of pages long. I don’t think people quite grasp the complexity that both sides introduced into this trial.
They’re dealing with a lot, and did the best they can. If they made mistakes then the judge will take care of that.
I bet Steve’s rolling in his grave right now. Poor Apple, didn’t get as much as they’d probably like through their cheap patent-trolling tactics. Maybe if they would stop blowing their money in the courtrooms over ridiculous patents and actually earn it through real innovation and quality products it wouldn’t matter so much. I bet they’re gonna be crying all the way home tonight.
This can still end rather badly from Samsung. This second case widens the scope of products implicated which could increase the amount of damages Apple gets. Given Samsung’s past courtroom performance, I’m not entirely convinced this is a slam dunk for Samsung.
I caution you, and others on this website, from reading too much into it, considering that last time, a considerable number of people here got the entire trial wrong. Samsung is the severe underdog here, they have a definite uphill battle.
Edited 2013-03-02 00:45 UTC
I’m not predicting the trial will go one way or another; I am mocking Apple’s cheap tactics of using lawsuits to get $$$, and getting a cut from their original expected amount. After all–is money from Samsung not the whole point they are suing? So-called “damages,” as they like to put it? The fact that so far they have seen the amount of profit in damages drop by half is on its own ironic, and worth laughing over.
They deserve it. Really, they deserve to be fined themselves and have the case thrown out for abusing the system and being pricks… and then locked out from doing it again through patent reform. But of course that’s not going to happen any time soon. The least that can be done is gain amusement at their reduction of potential profit in their crummy patent lawsuits.
My point was that the reduction may not actually end up being a reduction. People get too hung up on procedural stuff and draw the wrong conclusions.
I think ultimately Apple will end up with a figure hovering around $1B. Remember that Apple has also appealed the triple damages aspect of this trial and has tried to get an exclusion order.
This is far from the last shot fired. Its like getting excited when Samsung got jury instructions striken. Its I guess nice at the moment, but you need to look at the bigger picture.
Edit: And yes, its about the money, but in a different way. Apple doesnt’ need a billion dollars. They have 100 billion dollars. What they do need is the stigma and cloud of uncertainty that will arise over Android, and the import bans. Monetary compensation is secondary to all that.
This is a complex, multi trial, multi year, game of chess between two of the biggest companies in the world. Apple will lose some, Samsung will lose some, but its how it affects the larger picture that matters.
Apple is systematically trying to shut out Android, and damage the Samsung brand by associating them with being a copier, AND make it so OEMs think twice about licensing Android.
Edited 2013-03-02 00:59 UTC
True, you are right. I just see this as sort of entertainment. Like a boxing match or something. You grab the popcorn and start watching. The person you hate who you want to lose has a swift, painful low-blow dealt to him early on… you laugh. But of course the battle goes on, it can twist and turn. Both end up getting slammed around. That doesn’t mean you can’t have amusement with what does happen, as it happens. That’s all.
Of course, by the time this is all finally over, you get to look back at the whole thing and measure the damage done with each strike, with a much better idea of the relative damage of each strike based on the entire battle and finale.
They can’t use iOS. Anyone knows any other good mobile OS to install? Because now it’s like Apple and all others, just like MacOS and Windows in the old days.
Well… WebOS might as well be dead, and two up-and-coming alternatives to Android and iOS–Firefox OS and Ubuntu–are in development. I’m not too happy with the current state of cell phone/tablet computer OSes myself, it’s very disappointing and irritating. Whether the newcomers by Mozilla and Canonical can get anywhere or not (or end up actually being any good) is another question.
I’d like to see some real competition, on the market instead of in the U.S. judiciary branch… hurt Apple the way the economy is supposed to work, not by buying yourself crooked wins in a “who can get the better lawyers” battle.
http://www.windowsphone.com/
Maybe you don’t think it’s “good”, but it’s broadly licensed and, most importantly, it’s original. With the death of WebOS and Blackberry Classic, Windows Phone is the only major mobile platform that doesn’t take significant cues (to put it mildly) from iPhone 2007.
But why should OEMs expect to be able to just slap together some generic parts, install someone else’s software, and ship it? Why should software even be broadly licensed? Aren’t OEMs more likely to bring real value to the table (or die off in the face of real competition) if they’re forced to be creative and to do some actual engineering?
Most handset makers are still accustomed to 2006 when every phone was a carbon copy of six others and software was an afterthought. Do that now, and Apple’s lawyers come knocking. I don’t consider the old way competition, and it sure as hell wasn’t innovation.
Of course there are tangible short-term benefits to a ubiquitous generic platform, but big picture, it leads to nothing but price wars and stagnation. Can anyone say with a straight face that the 1995~2006 Windows monopoly was a good time for innovation in personal computing? The ubiquity of Windows was a disincentive for Microsoft to fix its bugs and reform its designs, and for OEMs to consider alternatives. While Android is currently improving rapidly, its ubiquity is a disincentive for Google to fight the fragmentation problem that means most users will never see any of those improvements, and it effectively killed off Symbian, Bada, Tizen, and WebOS by being the easy alternative to originality. If Android had killed off iPhone too, Google would probably be just as content resting on Android 2.x as its hardware and carrier partners seem to be.
So why should OEMs, or consumers for that matter, feel so comfortable with or entitled to a major broadly-licensed platform, especially one that lifts major elements from another product?
> But why should OEMs expect to be able to just slap together some generic parts, install someone else’s software, and ship it? Why should software even be broadly licensed? Aren’t OEMs more likely to bring real value to the table (or die off in the face of real competition) if they’re forced to be creative and to do some actual engineering?
Just a reminder, it is shitposting even if you’re being ironic.
As you said about WebOS, Tizen and Bada: they tried and failed.
That’s certainly not what I said about them. Bada and Tizen didn’t try and therefore didn’t fail; they were scrapped because Samsung has no interest in giving up free and easy Android, and will almost certainly just end up making a deeper fork of it instead (like Amazon), while Tizen had the additional albatross around its neck of its other parent, Intel, having no mobile presence to leverage. No one needed Bada or Tizen or any number of similar projects-that-could-have-been because Android, full stop.
As for WebOS, it was constantly underfunded and lashed to the sinking ship of Palm, which was still trying to turn a profit on Windows Mobile post-iPhone (there may be a whole other argument why you shouldn’t bet your company on an outside product in that story alone). WebOS was unfinished and constantly on the verge of doom (hey, the Verge! It’s all right here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-inside-story… ). Palm was ultimately betrayed by Verizon, because Droid. And Palm was bought by HP instead of by someone who was serious about having their own mobile platform, again, because Android. Of course it’s not Android’s fault HP ended up being such a deathtrap (it’s Apotheker’s), but it’s Android’s fault no one serious about making phones was in the market for their very own OS to power them.
To bring it back around to the article topic, if Apple and Sun had had the patent power to nuke Android as we know it before it could get entrenched, there might have been room in the market for some actual diversity to grow. The entire industry would be seeing a lot more innovation and a lot fewer lawsuits if tech companies would take actual risks and diversify instead of “competing” with generic hardware running generic software and determining the winner by who can spend the most on marketing, make the prettiest shell, and charge the least for the device, in that order. (So, soooo, soooooooo not conducive to innovation.)
So they failed even before they would failed anyway.
And nobody needs them.
And nobody fund them.
If Android wouldn’t show up, Apple would have all of the hi-end phone cells market now. I don’t believe that lots phone OSes with close to zero support from software companies would even stand a chance. They would be simply annihilated by patents lawsuits and fighting with each other.
We have diversity within Android and it’s all we can have. It’s not single big monolithic platform, so it fits various purposes and various customers. From the highest heights SGS2 to the lowest lows Spica (both from Samsung by the way). From tablets to BB-style cells. They are generally compatible and can easily share data. It’s not something we can have from locking-in on every step independent vendors.
Yet in spite of all the news about this trial, It really hasn’t hurt Samsung one bit.
Edited 2013-03-02 11:15 UTC
Keep telling that to yourself. These lawsuits are in their very nascent stages. This is all just legal boilerplate until the exclusion orders are extended.
Once Apple gets concrete excusion orders in a number of high end countries with some hard patents, then Samsung will feel the crunch. These import bans will be easily applicable to the 10 or 20 new phones that Samsung releases a month and will effectively shut Samsung out of segments of the market.
Samsung could put an end to this entire thing right now by taking a royalty bearing license from Apple (a rare olive branch that they don’t offer everyone). I think they’ll be more inclined to now that their SEP strategy has been neutered (they previously were holding out in an effort to avoid having to negotiate away their own patents, but that went no where). In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple and Samsung come to an agreement before the year is out.
Fixed it for you.
No, not really. Seriously, what’s 0.5 billion to Apple? The equivalent percentage of the company’s income that would buy most of us a damn candy bar? It’s just a bit of pocket change to them when you consider their actual profits. Which, by the way, are so damn high there’s really no reason for them to go so far as to sue… it’s as if Samsung stole their candy bar and left them without their junk food for a work day. Oh, the horror! How dare they!?! So… let’s sue for some supposed “damages.” Whatever…
Uh, do you know what “crying all the way to the bank” mean?
Oops… I must have misread that as you having typed “laughing all the way to the bank.” The phrase laughing all the way to the bank seems far more common than crying all the way to the bank, which is what I think caused the confusion. On the other hand, crying is usually used more similarly to the way I originally put it…
Edited 2013-03-03 09:44 UTC
I had a lot more sympathy for Samsung before they, unwittingly, attempted to block an accessibility function of iOS (a rather important one for me) via a patent:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21552733
They didn’t target it deliberately but that, in a way, makes it worse. They don’t care about who their actions may hurt. Fortunately this one was stopped at least in Germany, but that’s going too far. I don’t like Apple’s tactics, but they’ve never stooped so low as this. Samsung would leave those of us who require these features with no option save Android and Talkback, unfortunately, isn’t even close to being as stable or reliable as iOS’s Voiceover.
So you’re blaming Samsung for Apple’s theft of their intellectual property? You’d think that such an “innovative” company could have come up with something original on their own, instead of just being thieves.
By “they”, I take it you mean Apple? According to the article that you linked, Apple was aware that the functionality was covered by a Samsung patent – yet they still implemented it, AND refused license the patent to boot. If that’s not willful infringement, then what is?
False equivalence. Seeking a ban on the infringing products appears to be Samsung’s last resort, as opposed to the way Apple does things. Maybe you’d be happier if Samsung had outright refused to license the patent from the get-go, and instead tried to force them to remove the functionality entirely?
In other words, Apple is at fault for refusing to license a patent that they clearly infringe on – potentially screwing over disabled customers in the process. Glad I could help clear that up for you.
Apple’s alleged theft. Subject to review — hence the case has been suspended. Its in the article.
According to thinly veiled conjecture from Samsung. Of course they’re going to say Apple refused to take a license, that’s what every plaintiff says, otherwise you’d have no reason to be in court.
If they implemented it and truly refused a license (which to me is out of character for Apple, they’ve historically been willing to license patents and play game) then they likely believe the patent is invalid, and have made the determination that its worth paying the legal costs associated with trying to get it invalidated.
If it gets invalidated that’s one less fang Samsung has, and Apple’s strategy starts to make a lot more sense.
FYI: Samsung employs this same strategy with Apple when it comes to their design patents / trademark infringment claims.
Apple could also be trying to use this and other pending litigation to negotiate a license on their terms which is perfectly fine, as the courts are the ultimate arbiters of this kind of thing.
I find it interesting you can glean so many internal details from such a limited point of view. I think these kind of things come out during discovery, and before that, its a little silly to start guessing what the internal discussions looked like.
A jury found Samsung guilty of willful infringement, so far only Samsung (and possibly you) find Apple guilty of willful infringement. Just so we’re clear.
I think there’s grandstanding on both sides here — this is just another pawn, albeit one that probably hurts Samsung from a PR standpoint more than it helps — but its just political posturing on the side of both companies.
These cases have to be looked at within the context of all the larger pending litigation to get an idea for the true motives of either company.
I think you missed the point, the entirety of my post was a parody of the exaggerated, handwaving rhetoric that iFanboys have been spewing endlessly ever since Apple ramped up their patent-terrorism strategy of “competing” with Android. Swap Samsung and Android in my post, and it’s indistinguishable from most of the comments by posted by our local Apple Defense Brigade in the past 2-3 years.
If there is a point to my post, it’s this: how can those “critisms” apply to Samsung, but not to Apple? Not that I expect the iFanboys to genuinely consider that question – if they were capable of intellectual honesty & consistency in the first place, then they wouldn’t be fanboys.
Thom said:
It’s almost as if the bunch of random people in this jury had no clue what they were doing in what is possibly the most complex patent trial in history.
“Almost?” The reality is that probably not a single person on the jury had a clue about the legal aspects of this case. They found Samsung guilty because it’s a foreign company, and Apple is as American as apple pie. The jury didn’t understand what the case was really about, and couldn’t care less. All Apple had to do was wave the flag, and the jury ate it up.
My great hope is that Samsung returns the favor to Apple in a Korean court. Tit for tat is the only thing that patent trolls like Apple and Microsoft understand.
Edited 2013-03-03 01:34 UTC
The suggestion that an American jury employed what amounts to legal protectionism to render a verdict is ludicrous and offensive.
What more likely happened is that they fudged some details on the jury instructions (and mind you — none that would’ve changed the game or the conclusion radically, it just makes a lot of damages need to be recalculated).
FYI: The Judge in this case didn’t say “half of these damages are inherently wrong”, she said half of these damages need to be recalculated based off of an incorrect application of jury instructions.
I’d like to see how you do sitting on such a high profile jury, with a complex case, and spawling instructions that span a ton of pages. This isn’t easy stuff, and the blame should frankly be put on both companies for bloating the process and confusing the Jury, and likely the Judge for not putting her foot down in a more concrete manner.
Make no mistake about it though, both companies asked for a Jury trial. Samsung hoped they could use the complexity angle to their advantage the same way Apple did. One prevailed, one didn’t.
I dont think the Jury acted with malice, and I don’t think a new damages trial will come to a wildly different conclusion.
Apple is well regarded in the US but so is Samsung. Almost irrationally so.
What about appealing the claim on prior art again? The jury dismissed it with completely bogus reasoning which doesn’t make any sense.
They can present the evidence again during pre-trial discovery. Hope they’re not a month late this time.
Samsung needs better lawyers. The ones they had for this trial are incompetent. Anyone who even took a cursory look at the discovery phase new that Apple had this one in the bag (And many of us echoed that sentiment, to great downvoting)
No, they cannot. The new trial is only on the award for the infringements. The infringements stand.
Oops. You’re right. My bad.