Sale of Galaxy Nexus Banned in the US 696
New submitter busyqth writes "After the injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 earlier in the week, A U.S. district court judge has now also granted an injunction against the sale of Google's flagship ICS phone, the Galaxy Nexus. Is Steve Jobs laughing in the great beyond? Is this the beginning of the end for Android?"
Two blows to Samsung in one week, and now the FTC is investigating Google for misuse of Motorola Mobility patents in relation to RAND standards.
The rest of the world does not care (Score:5, Insightful)
Well - pity for those in the US, they wont get the new stuff now...
Fortunately the rest of the world can enjoy all those things that are forbidden in the US. Seems the US is no longer the place to get your new stuff.
Now I am the last one to say anything about the quality or something, but at least the rest of the rest of the world has a free choice.
So, before you start developing a new product ... (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . you need to engage your legal department, if you are big enough to have one, to verify that the product won't get bogged down in long, drawn-out, legal battles.
It used to be that the work in the lab was most important. Now work in the legal department is more important than R&D.
Sad.
Is this the beginning of the end for Android? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Is this the beginning of the end for Android?"
No, it's the beginning of the end for Apple.
Support your local underdogs (Score:5, Insightful)
Stuff like this makes me want to buy a Samsung device right now, simply out of spite for these agressive, bullshit patent practices that limit competition and my choices as a consumer.
Also, I have this built-in genetic disposition of always wanting to support the underdog.
Re:The rest of the world does not care (Score:3, Insightful)
it's really sad to see what capitalism is doing to a country that had such high goals when i was first created. now it seems mostly you will get incarcerated, sued, beaten up or criminalized for things that are perfectly normal in the rest of the free world.
i think it's really cynical of american polititians to even use the word "freedom" in their campaigns since it has basically lost all meaning due to the entanglement of business, military and politics.
Is this the beginning of the end for Android? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but it is somewhere in the middle of the end of the USA as a technological leader.
Fuck Apple! (Score:3, Insightful)
NutJobs ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And the war is on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? It's fine to copy elements from other devices. It's fine to make look-alike and work-alike devices of other successful devices. That's how progress is made in high tech.
And Apple itself copied most of the iPhone design elements, and much of its functionality from other companies, including key features like desktop sync, MP3 sync, app stores, launchers, and many more. If such copying weren't allowed, there would be no iPhone.
What makes Apple's behavior so wrong and destructive is that they copy liberally from others and then turn around and try to monopolize the market with bad patents.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether their they look similar or whether Samsung copied Apple's design ideas is completely irrelevant. There's no general protection against "copying ideas".
It's well established that "look and feel" are not protected by copyright (see Apple vs. Microsoft), so they've turned instead to these doubtful patents to stifle competition. Even if these trivial patents are in fact valid (and having one held invalid takes years and millions of dollars and relatively onerous standards of evidence), they're arguably an abuse of the system originally designed to protect other sorts of inventions.
Re:Support your local underdogs (Score:1, Insightful)
Stuff like this makes me want to buy a Samsung device right now, simply out of spite for these agressive, bullshit patent practices that limit competition and my choices as a consumer.
Why? You want to support a company that abuses their FRAND patent obligations in an effort to stifle competition.
Seriously, it boggles my mind that people are so utterly blinded by their hatred of Apple that they fail to recognize that Samsung (and Motorola) are utterly abusing their FRAND patent obligations in an effort to stifle competition in the mobile market in the absolute worst possible way imaginable.
But, hey, you feel free to paint Apple as the villain here and rally support for the true villains. That koolaid must taste real good.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:0, Insightful)
How many iPad look-alike, work-alike were there before the iPad? How many - after? Exactly!
Samsung used to have nice phones that had rather distinctive look and feel. And I don't believe Samsung was in the tablet market. After iPhone and iPad came out - suddenly pretty much all Samsung devices started to look-alike and feel-alike - down to power supply units, packaging and even icons used (including the ones used to design Samsung stores).
You can hate Apple all you like - this doesn't change the fact that instead of innovating, Samsung's design department turned into a copycat department.
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Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:4, Insightful)
I once worked on some high-quality, German engineered washing machines. It was discovered that, rather than spend hundreds of thousands on R&D, LG Electronics bought one of these units, disassembled it and copied it feature-for-feature albeit with minor design modifications.
The result? A washer that boasted the same features, yet "walked" across the floor during the spin cycle.
There were no legal breaches by LG in cleanrooming like that. I guess Samsung just pushed the envelope a bit far in the aesthetics department.
Re:Support your local underdogs (Score:5, Insightful)
the injunction against the Galaxy is precisely that: an injunction. the underlying patent case has not yet been decided before the court. approving the injunction means that the suing party has, at first glance, met their evidentiary burden to move forward with the case. but the case itself still must be decided, and such cases can take up to a year or more to work themselves out. meanwhile, Apple can enjoy the "fruits" of reduced competition. don't kid yourself: that doesn't benefit anyone but Apple.
and with how specious software patents can be, we should ALL be wary of lawsuits whose primary effect is to stifle competitors not in the market, but out of it. doesn't matter if it's Apple, Samsung, Google, or any other party; this sort of lawsuit stinks any way you look at it.
this is not a win for Apple. this is not a win for Samsung/Google. worst of all, though, this is not a win for the consumer.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:4, Insightful)
So you've never used it then?
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the decision was based on, "Apple's claim to the patent to search multiple sources, which Apple says is the basis of Siri. [...] Judge Koh said 'Apple has articulated a plausible theory of irreparable harm [because] of long-term loss of market share and losses of downstream sales."
On the surface of it, it sounds awfully stupid to me. If I'm remembering correctly, "searching multiple sources" by voice query existed in Android devices first, no?
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/breaking-judge-grants-apple-an-injunction-against-the-galaxy-nexus/ [arstechnica.com]
Apple *IS* a patent troll (Score:4, Insightful)
This sentence isn't true: "A patent troll is a non-practicing entity"
A patent troll is abuses the incompetent system within USPTO to gain financial advantage, sure they mostly don't make things (why bother when its easy money), but some do, and Microsoft and Apple both make things AND are patent trolls.
So in Apple's case they patented research of others that they used in the iPod Touch, and claimed to have invented it:
http://www.businessinsider.com/and-boy-have-we-patented-it-2010-3
I think they just saw Han's work, myself, rather than go back and copy the CERN work from the 70's which covered the same slide, pinch etc. gestures.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
You can't really blame them, the USPTO has showed it will issue patents to anyone for things that aren't inventions, to people who didn't invent them, and for things that are obvious (and in some cases industry common practice at the time), and of course there will be roaches that come out and feed on this feeding opportunity.
"Defending your patents doesn't make you a patent troll. "
Once you get your USPTO issued joke patents, defending them with a straight face IS PATENT TROLLING. The art is to not laugh when you tell the judge how you invented these things.
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Re:Support your local underdogs (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an Apple hater. All I know is that if I wanted to by a Samsung in the U.S. right now, I couldn't, thanks to Apple. And Apple did the same thing in Germany some time ago. Truly, I don't know alot about the legal background on these patent wars. But it seems to me that Apple, amongst other companies, is bringing these fights to a new level which wasn't there before, and that that isn't a good thing for me. Did TV, car, microwave, or wearing glasses manufacturers get sued and their products barred from the market on the whim of a competitor in the past? Not that I'm aware of.
I don't have any kind of smartphone yet, and in fact I was still weighing my options. I was leaning towards an Android device because I could code my own apps for it in Java, but alot of people are telling me how Apple is better, so I was still pretty much undecided. The fact that Apple is now twisting the market in its favor doesn't make me happy.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the flipside of that argument could be: if they don't know enough about the iPad to tell the difference, how do they/we really know they wanted an "iPad" instead of "a tablet" anyway?
They could just be using iPad as the only name they know of for a new fangled flat computer. And even then - if "iPad" is the only name they know of to ask for in the store or the only name to look for on the box, why weren't they sold one?
If similar looks are really such an issue, wouldn't these people who just grab something in the store (without asking for an iPad or looking for "iPad" on the box) be in danger of accidentally walking out with an electronic picture frame or something? Should the judge get involved there too?
This is all moot though - from the sound of things it was Siri search patents rather than looks that are behind the injunction.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? That's how technology goes: good design costs, so you start with good enough, and iterate to good. It's worth noting that the OpenMoko phone, ab open source phone, also very similar to the iPhone, was under development and probably would have come out before the iPhone if they'd had more money. Trade secret protection is not a defense against independent development, and rumors don't change that.
The fact is that the market was primed for devices like the iPhone and iPad when they came out. The parts had gotten cheap enough. The iPhone is a great product, and the iPad is a great product, but neither product was a surprise, and neither product gives Apple the rights to a monopoly on that form factor.
Re:Boycott Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
That's because he's a zealot and you can't do anything about it. It's like arguing with ayatollahs about the existence of god.
I'm talking about normal people, who are not strongly biased towards one company or another. Just explaining why going with Apple is a bad idea usually does the trick.
Re:Boycott Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
But, yes, I know what you mean. I've tried to persuade people to look at everything on offer and decide what they like the most; if that's the iPhone, great, but at least consider your options. But Apple's marketing is so successful that they're not going out to get a phone, they're going out to get an iPhone, because that's what you get when you want a smartphone. Credit where credit's due I guess, but I wish people wouldn't swallow it up so wholeheartedly.
Re:Support your local underdogs (Score:5, Insightful)
You switched to an Android device because Apple stops supporting technology after _THREE_ years??? Are you joking?
Say whatever you want about Apple but they support their tech a HELL of a lot longer than Android manufacturers who often aren't utilizing the latest version of Android the day the device hits the shelves, let along a couple months later and most certainly not after _THREE YEARS_.
And before anyone points it out, I realize that's not Google's fault - it's the manufacturers - but to state you switched from an iOS device to an Android device because of "lack of support" is absolutely laughable.
Re:Um, No (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why you believe Apple can be placated with some design tweaks and different features. Do you work for Apple or something? You're literally the only person posting on this story taking Apples side. I work for Google and I've seen how my colleagues have consistently worked long hours to innovate and create new features. The Galaxy Nexus is an amazing phone. It's thin, and light, and doesn't even have any hardware buttons on the front at all - yet Apple still are not happy. If you can't see why you're blind.
Apples goal is not to get competitors to "design around" their patents. This has happened several times already, the Samsung Galaxy 3 has even been called out by tech review sites for having a "lawyer approved design" (it's not rectangular, it does not have slide to unlock, etc). Apple keep coming, with newer and even more stupid patents, because their goal is not individuality, it is the utter destruction of all competitors. Steve Jobs himself said that in words so clear nobody can re-interpret them.
What's more, it's very hard to make an Android phone that doesn't share design elements with the iPhone these days, because Apple has copied Android many times in the past few years, for example, its notifications tray is identical to the design that first shipped in Android 1.0, and inferior to the one shipping in Jellybean. Android 1.0 also shipped with a universal search box and pluggable API for it, it shipped with suspend/resume multi-tasking that is extremely similar to the (very unique) design Android came up with, and so on.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first time I saw an iPhone, i bet the bloke who was with me that Apple had bought Mizi Research's Prizm Linux stack. http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Korean-Linux-smartphone-stack-achieves-new-release/ [linuxfordevices.com]
I lost the bet of course.
But to anyone who was involved with mobile devices at the time, the precursors of Apple's designs were clear; they took bits from PalmOS Cobalt, Prizm, Maemo and others.
As far as the physical design of the phone goes, it's all about fashion. Before about 2006, smartphones were all silver or grey, had a curved lower "chin" where the button cluster lived and still-curved but flatter top. By late 2006 though, most phones marketed as stylish (LG Prada, Samsung Chocolate & F700 etc) were dark or black, becoming much more squared off and had minimalist button designs.
I think Apple did well, they designed an iconic phone with components like processors and capacitive screens that were just becoming available at reasonable prices. However, I have no doubt if the iPhone hadn't been released, there would still be dozens of similar looking phones on the market, because that's where fashion and technology was taking them.
Apple's been clever to ride that fashion, but that doesn't mean they're entitled to a free ride.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't give a flying fuck whether Apple is a patent troll or not.
Apple is using a broken system to prevent competition. Frankly so are Samsung, Motorola, Nokia and other portable device manufacturers.
The patent system is broken. It needs fixing. It's inhibiting innovation, constraining consumer choice and damaging the economy.
Apple are merely the poster childs for everything that's bad with it.
Re:Is this the beginning of the end for Android? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who can't innovate, litigate. Seems like that would be Apple.
Re:Silver Lining is tarnished (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple was ordered to post a bond of $95 million [arstechnica.com] to enact the injunction, which would be used to pay Samsung damages if the decision is later reversed.
But who will reimburse the consumers for the damages we suffer from having these devices temporarily off the market, if the decision is later reversed?
Re:Silver Lining (Score:5, Insightful)
At which point Samsung will have $95M but will have to re-start their advertising campaign, essentially re-launch the product, and target a market that has just bought a bunch of competing products - among which iDevices from which Apple stands to gain a lot more through e.g. app store purchases, third party products such as docks that use licensed tech, etc..
And that's assuming that by the time the decision lands the device is even relevant enough in the market to be relaunched. It may be better to launch a new product instead.
Which Apple would then seek an injunction against.
$95M - I'd love to have it, but I'm guessing Samsung are not particularly impressed.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll go one further and say patent abolition is the only way to stop it.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:1, Insightful)
Who cares? It's fine to copy elements from other devices. It's fine to make look-alike and work-alike devices of other successful devices. That's how progress is made in high tech.
Actually, progress is made by doing new things. Copying stuff from others as close as possible is stagnation.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not sure about Armageddon, but Google has money and this is a solid, concrete example of patents as a true hinderance to the advancement of the economy.
In this case maybe we play the fucked up short-term game to get a needed long-term change.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the absurdity of the similarity claims and the who's done it first angle... this phrase from TFA should be enough to draw some conclusions:
Koh granted the injunction after Apple argued that the Galaxy Nexus phone caused it irreparable harm due to long-term market-share loss and "losses of downstream sales," according to The Next Web.
This is simply anti-capitalism stated on a single sentence. Basically, from what I grasp, the idea is "we need to avoid that competitor's action because we would lose money if competition were to happen".
I intended to throw a joke to mock the US for this kind of reasoning in the legal system, but the situation is actually kinda depressing and worrying when one assess where the current trends are taking the entire country. Although I'm not from the US, it makes me pause just thinking about the long term consequences of these changes.
Maybe someone smarter than me could figure out what we'll have in the future, since capitalism might join socialism in the History books.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like the file date is 2000 and the issue date is in 2005. Am I looking in the wrong place?
The funny thing is, none of the actual heavy lifting in this patent appears to be theirs. It's all in the cited patents held by other companies. All they appear to have said here was, "we're patenting the idea of putting a textbox in Mac OS to do this stuff everyone else already invented and patented".
I'm a little amazed that such a thing can be considered a valid invention. It reads like, "Well John over here invented the car, but I'm going to patent the idea of painting it blue as if that's an invention".
But I'm not an attorney... I guess we'll see how it all shakes out.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents are inherently anti-competitive. In fact, limiting competition is their entire function.
(I almost said "their entire purpose," but then corrected myself: the "purpose" of patents is to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." Whether patents' purpose and function jive with each other is another issue entirely...)
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at what happened to the companies Apple copied their major technologies from: Xerox, Palm, Diamond, Psion, Nokia, AT&T, etc. They are largely history. So are many of the small apps developers that innovated in the mobile space only to get copied by Apple. Those are the people who actually spent lots of money and effort on innovation, they just didn't manage to compete against Apple's design and marketing juggernaut.
So, don't pretend that these patents and lawsuits Apple keeps winning are rewarding the innovators. The innovators have already gone out of business. What Apple's patents are rewarding is a ruthless company that "shamelessly steals" (a direct Steve Jobs quote) other people's great ideas and doesn't invest a dime in research itself. And shameless stealing is not something we want to reward.
Re:Patent trolling is the new iWhite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Progress in technology is made by copying what is successful and then improving on it. Forcing companies to start from scratch and break convention and compatibility in everything hinders progress.
And copying is exactly how the iPhone improved on what was there before: Apple largely cloned Palm's functionality and UI, reused their OS that was derived from Mach and Smalltalk, and added a smattering of Nokia and Symbian into the mix.
Re:i propose iOS protest day, block safari (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:2, Insightful)
Bingo. I'm with you. Patents are evil by NATURE. The CONCEPT is wrong; not just the implementation. Reform is meaningless blather. As soon as you let scum sucking corporations claim ownership of THOUGHT, real free enterprise and human and societal rights are all down the toilet. The people of 200 odd years ago, who could only think in terms of the invention of the cotton gin when they considered the value and fairness of patents, could not have seen in their wildest dreams the legal cesspool which would eventually result from runaway patents, but today WE can and we should kick them the hell out of our system.
The US Constitution only ALLOWS patents; it doesn't MANDATE them. Congress "shall have Power". The corollary is that Congress may choose NOT to exercise this particular power. It can and should undo this morrass by revoking ALL patents NOW, disbanding the patent office, and never issuing any further patents.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:4, Insightful)
That's kind of the point. The entire purpose of patents is to protect inventions made by someone which would not have been released to the public otherwise. If the patented invention could be invented by someone else anyway, the patent is purely a money making exercise, and not in the public good.
Nitpick (Score:0, Insightful)
I am in full agreement with you about the absurdity and injustice of this, but capitalism doesn't mean what you think it means.
Using ownership of one resource to leverage increased power over others is exactly what capitalism is all about: the power of capital.
It's not a political or economic philosophy - it's an economic phenomenon that isn't going to go away, because it's a direct outcome of human nature.
So to limit the damage it can do to our liberty, we really need to limit the extent to which certain classes of thing can be owned. Algorithms, abstract ideas, and other products of the human mind for example.
We've already rejected the ownership of entire human beings, so this shouldn't be too controversial, right?
Also, you possibly meant *communism* was left in the history books. Socialism is alive and well, and not particularly harmful in moderation. Letting the state take care of certain things by general consent is no bad thing as long as you have a working democracy to make sure the officials of the state don't start skipping the "general consent" part.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:4, Insightful)
There are other things to consider. Would you be happy, as a CEO, to work your butt off 24/7 for years to invent something great, and just when it catches up and start making real money, see Google make the *very exact same thing* (with a different logo) on a much much much larger scale (because they're so much bigger) and make you go back into mothingness?
I guess not.
Patents are here for a reason, and that reason is perfectly valid. Of course, the process can be perfected. For example, I think patents should be adapted to the field they apply to. For instance, software patents should last 5 years max.
But remove patents altogether and all hell will break lose.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
If this gets upheld, Apple will be able to get an injunction on every Android phone because this is a core OS feature. I'd say that affects consumers. Plus, it seems like there's a pretty good chance that Google could find some patent between theirs and Motorola's that applies to the iPhone, which could lead to a counter ban. Maybe (hopefully) it won't get that far, but this is the patent armageddon that people have been worrying about with all these lawsuits.
On the contrary, this is exactly what needs to happen. Google should search their patents and find every single one that could apply to every single Apple device. Once they've built their case they should, without a seconds warning, nuke Apple with everything. Seek injunctions against Apple's entire business. Once granted, bring them to the table to sort all this stupidity out.
It's either that or everyone but Apple suffers a death of a thousand cuts.
Apple has long since passed the worst of MSFT's evil.
Re:STFU, apple copied IBM keyboards (Score:3, Insightful)
They copied ascii.
Your posts in this thread reveal more about your irrational prejudice than Apple's patent-troll behavior, especially when you start enumerating the adoption of open standards as copying.
Re:Well they are both rectangular (Score:5, Insightful)
if I was Samsung I wouldn't sell them so much as a screw.
You'd shoot yourself in the foot for banning your biggest customer. Hopefully, that's not *your* revenue stream we're talking about, so that you can easily say you wouldn't sell them a screw.
Hint: If Sammy drops Apple as a customer, they'd need a major restructuring and they'd also need something to do with the 100 plants they have serving Apple.
Famous last words of Walmart suppliers before they go out of business replaced by in store brand.