Motorola, Samsung smash Apple's touchscreen patent claim Apple has lost two patent lawsuits against Samsung and Motorola over touchscreen technology, ending the iPhone maker's victorious summer of litigation. A court in Mannheim, Germany, decided that Sammy and Google-owned Moto are in the clear after Apple claimed the pair infringed its broad "touch event" patent. The technology at …
This is the coming of The Apocalypse for Apple. They've started the Android "Jihad" and now it's coming back to haunt them my friends. I am finding it difficult not to go to the toilet these days as I patiently await the successful Appeal of Samsung in Apple v Samsung "II". That's "2" for our American brothers. Allah Akbah. I am so excited by this prospect I have taken to wearing incontinence pads underneath my high explosive vest and underpants. I am looking forward to the day when the Apple Infidel will be cut down by this weapon of its own making and I will will have 72 virgins.
MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction
This was the concept that kept the US and USSR from blowing each other to bits during the Cold War - if you attack me, you will be destroyed as well. I think Apple is about to face what happens when you violate those principals in the patent arena...
$60 Billion in Cash, means that Juries could find against them for willful infringement and award in the billions without worrying at all that it is too much.
Apple should care about the public backlash too. Even if they keep winning on very Obvious patents, they will just push the masses to rise up against them, in the form of boycotts and Patent reform, both which would hurt them dearly.
Ahhh, but you missed the obvious. They aren't winning with those really obvious patents. Even the German courts have started ruling against Apple after a year of insanity rubber stamping everything. The Germans may have finally noticed that every other EU court has ruled against Apple on the same patents.
...and the Samsung rule 50 appeal should be scaring the jury from that case a LOT. The whole 1st section is redacted but unmistakably about jury corruption. What the foreman swore to do in court is exactly what he didn't do in the jury room. It's been pointed out if it was a UK court he could face jail time. The yanks will probably go easier on him, but the jury ruling will die. Maybe not in Koh's court but it's manifestly unsupportable.
There aren't going to be triple damages on $1bil whatever happens. If the award survives at all it was so badly constructed only a few percent of it is even eligible for tripling.
Apple got a lot of PR from their 'win' and got to perpetuate the import ban but that's about all they'll end up with. And the PR wasn't all good PR.
Unfortunately under that rule they would both walk out free.
It's the same rule that stopped Homer joining the No Homers Club.
First up, I like Apple kit, but this whole patent thing is stupid beyond belief.
Patents are for thing that do things, not designs. Designs are protected by copyright.
Corners and this "scroll bounce" thing are design elements and should be covered by copyright and not a patent.
The patents for multi-touch should cover how the technology works eg how you detect the multiple touches and how they are presented to the OS not what you do with them in the UI.
The sooner all sides involved and the various patent offices start rejecting applications for how something looks the better.
Patents should protect people that invent, not design. You can not invent a corner, a bounce, or a colour.
This is why you can not patent a business process in the UK.
/Rant
"The touch-event patent is the same one that a UK court cleared phone-maker HTC of infringing, and also declared invalid anyway ....."
Then Apple were acting under false pretences when they tried to sue for infringement in the first place (since they knew not only that the patent was not infringed, but the patent did not even exist in the first place). If this is not a criminal offence (and it damn well should be) then Google and Samsung should countersue Apple.
No. What? How? How did you even infer that?
The court decided that a patent that had been granted was actually invalid. It was still active up till that point and Apple had (past tense) tried to sue for infringement. Doesn't appear too complicated to me. Could be wrong though...
You get a patent in each country, and each country has it's own rules. Just because the UK says it's invalid does not mean that it's invalid under German rules. Having it ruled invalid in one country can certainly help you in another as you can point to the reasons the first court accepted but the second court does not have to accept it.
Mannheim Steamroller, cheerful music for Samsung, et ea, and tears of MAD sad angst for Apple...
Oh, and for the record:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/09/22/dssf_Mannheim_Court_Finds_Samsung_Did_Not_Violate_an_Apple_Patent/
I wanted to throw in the Mannheim Steamroller barb days ago but figured the rabid would go nuclear all over me with a vengeance....
given that it has not been ratified by the judge and is by no means certain. See:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120923233451725
With this interesting titbit about the foreman primarily responsible for persuading the rest of the jurors.
"And what we see is the foreman being asked if he is chosen for a jury whether he will set aside all he knew of patent law from his own experience and just follow the court's instructions and judge based solely on evidence admitted at trial. He answers yes. That, of course, is exactly what he did not do, judging from interviews he and another juror gave to the media."
Serious question here: how can something like "over scroll bounce" be patented? Last time I looked, admittedly this was UK patent law, it wasn't even possible to patent software - you had to rephrase it as a 'device' - let alone patenting an animation effect.
Putting all of the "the patent system is broken" arguments to one side, has something changed in the past five to ten years that means little bits of artistic fluff now count as an invention that can be patented?
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