Appeals Court Bans Features From Older Samsung Phones 69
walterbyrd writes with news that Apple has finally emerged victorious in a long-standing patent case against Samsung — though it's more of a moral victory than a practical one. Samsung is no longer allowed to sell some of its older phones unless the company disables features that infringe upon Apple patents. "The market impact will likely be limited, since the lawsuit was filed in 2012 and covers products that came out that year, like the Galaxy S3. Furthermore, software updates to Samsung software mean that the patents may not be infringed anymore. For instance, Samsung's Android phones no longer use a 'slide to unlock' feature on the bottom of the phone. In dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Sharon Prost paints a sharply different picture (PDF) from the majority. 'This is not a close case,' she writes, noting that Apple's patents cover a spelling correction feature it doesn't use, and two others cover 'minor features' out of 'many thousands.'"
Don't forget people (Score:1, Interesting)
This is the court case where Samsung presented Apple blue-prints showing the entire iThing UI and hardware design was lifted from Sony, who strangely haven't sued Apple. The documents were too inconvenient and the judge ordered they be removed from the record citing they arrived too late. Yes, too late, despite rendering Apple's case moot.
Can't have those slitty eyed eastern types showing a trendy US corporation ripping off the nations that build their products, then pretending to have invented it. Ban the
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That is entirely false and without merit.
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This is the court case where Samsung presented Apple blue-prints showing the entire iThing UI and hardware design was lifted from Sony, who strangely haven't sued Apple. The documents were too inconvenient and the judge ordered they be removed from the record citing they arrived too late. Yes, too late, despite rendering Apple's case moot.
Can't have those slitty eyed eastern types showing a trendy US corporation ripping off the nations that build their products, then pretending to have invented it. Ban the gooks!
Bwahahaha. That claim was even dumber than the 2001 claim. http://fortune.com/2012/08/01/... [fortune.com]
Anyone still repeating is must be dumb as shit. Especially when he tries to hide his stupidity behind the race card (not to mention that the judge is Asian-American).
Wait what? (Score:1, Interesting)
Slide to unlock?
Pretty much every android devices use that, even Windows 10 uses that junk that, is Apple going to sue Microsoft for it?
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My Samsung has a "wormhole" that spreads open to unlock. Same thing as the slider, just in more directions. Go ahead, Apple, and try to patent this Goatse UI. The jury will not like the prior art.
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My Samsung has a "wormhole" that spreads open to unlock. Same thing as the slider, just in more directions.
I have an S5, and the funny thing is even though it can be unlocked anywhere on the screen by sliding in any direction, I still out of habit start in the lower left corner and slide right when I unlock my screen. I would be willing to bet that a lot of people remain in that habit as well.
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My LG G2 has a similar feature - you swipe from any point on the screen outward in any direction, moving your finger sufficiently enough to unlock the screen.
The G2 is 2-year-old tech, if memory serves (I bought mine new/unlocked back in April), which means the alternate setup has been around for at least that long.
Correction (Re:Wait what?) (Score:1)
Correction, it's an LG, not a Samsung. (I traded it with somebody else recently for an Apple with a faulty button, so it's not brand new.)
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Slide to unlock goes back to a feature in Windows CE back in 2005. How Apple can claim this is their's is totally beyond me.
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And on doors for hundreds of years.
Sorry, but there are real world analogs to this ... which makes this yet another moronic patent which essentially says "a system and methodology for doing something which is well understood in the real world, but with a computer".
So many of the visual metaphors used in computers are basically copies of things you do with real physical things. Granting patents on them means the concept of patents has become useless.
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Actually useless would be a step up. They are actively detrimental to competition and innovation.
Let me get this straight (Score:2)
Apple can't make a claim to the basic feature, they didn't even invent it.
So Apple can't claim it is unique, good. That makes it essentially unprotectable under pretty much all IP laws except - possibly - as a registered trademark.
But they can say samsung used a similar feature and the placement of this feature was identical.
Wait - WTF? So what they have isn't theirs - they didn't invent it - but because Samsung put something like what they had in a similar place on their device makes Samsung somehow an i
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Then there's the youtube of that oldass soft-toggles UI video with examples of binary taps, switches, etc. but also sliders. I think it might've been on
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I didn't realize doors in the 15th century were designed to prevent butt-dialing.
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Slide to unlock was prior art anyway. As in doors since, what, the 15th century?
Yeah, exactly, didn't all doors have a button labeled "Slide to unlock", which you could slide with your finger to unlock the door?
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Door deadbolts were using the concept of sliding to unlock long before Apple was.
It is categorically ludicrous to believe that Apple invented the concept.
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I've heard that Apple did pay royalties to Xerox for GUI technology. But, by most accounts they got a lousy deal.
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I've heard that Apple did pay royalties to Xerox for GUI technology. But, by most accounts they got a lousy deal.
Well, they got more money out of it than by marketing their own GUI systems.
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Xeros was shitty at computer hardware
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the 'slide to unlock' feature is some sort of amazing proprietary invention?
What's next, patenting the layout of the 0 ~ 9 dialpad?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Don't just blame the court. In some respect, they are doing their job enforcing an approved patent. The real culprit is the patent office allowing just trivia to be patented. At some level, the courts can overrule, but it is harder than enforcing.
No. That's backwards. The patent office should throw out really obvious stuff. Then, for stuff that is semi-obvious or less, the court should invalidate the patent.
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Slide to unlock goes back to a feature in Windows CE back in 2005. How Apple can claim this is their's is totally beyond me.
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It goes back further than that.... *WAY* further than that.
Try apartment deadbolts.
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... but done on a mobile device makes it different!
Apple, think different.
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I once saw a home built trailer where the tailgate was slide to unlock. That was in the '70s and on a mobile device.
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i probably should've stuck with my original line of "... but done on a computer makes it different!" :)
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What's next, patenting the layout of the 0 ~ 9 dialpad?
Given that the 0-9 dialpad layout actually WAS designed to slow people down (as was alleged with QWERTY keyboards) It might be interesting if it were blocked and phones had to go back to the adding machine layout.
The early Touch-Tone dials - using a cute one-transistor circuit to generate two tones, to save then-high semiconductor costs - only generated tones while they were pressed in. The keys had to be held long enough for the tone to have enough cy
Finally? (Score:2)
Shame, my Galaxy S3 was a far better phone (Score:4, Insightful)
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The world of law is a paradise of sloppiness (Score:2)
Yes, the slide to unlock is an amazing invention. And the word correction feature is worth $102 on a phone that costs $149.
The majority found error in the lower court's requiring that Apple must prove that the infringement was the sole cause of the lost sales. But the minority opinion points out that the lower court never stated such a requirement. According to the minority, "The words “sole” and “predominant” are not even present in the district court’s opinion."
In technical
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Professionals have a minimum standard to maintain or you get the boot *and* are liable for your mistakes. Honest or not.
Sum of the parts? (Score:1)
None of the features seem unique or original by themselves; this seems more of a case of alleged general copying. For example, slide-to-unlock just mirrors physical locks, and auto-links in memos, similar to Intellisense (per URL's, phone numbers, etc.), have been around quite a while, and would be difficult to defend on their own.
But if somebody seemingly copies the same grab-bag of features and puts it into a similar package, does that make for a general infringement?
For example, suppose a store sold a gi
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At the time all I could think of was how asinine the suit was and what a pretentious jerk Apple was being.
Now I think that Samsung was never worried either way because they could just continue business as usual and by the time the suit actually caught up (whether you agree with the ruling or not) it would already be way too late to actually affect Samsung. Brilliant, if this was the plan of some bean-counter all along.
Still the jury foreman's fault (Score:2)
The real problem in this case, evidenced from post case interviews with the jury foreman, is that despite the majority of the trial being about prior art to invalidate Apple's patents, the jury was so confused that the jury foreman (the only member of the jury with any experience with patents) persuaded the jury that it was not their job to judge the validity of the patents. His reasoning was that since the patent office had granted them they must be valid. This was based on his experience of having a ver
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This was in direct contradiction to the written instructions to the jury, and should have resulted in a mistrial, since the jury foreman brought outside evidence into the discussions.
Not a serious issue, a bit of money placed into the right hands fixes such details easily.
Immoral (Score:3)
it's more of an immoral victory than a practical one
Fixed that for Soulskill