Samsung appeals to Supreme Court to bring patent law into 21st century

Re: The law is a Ass

The iPhone used commodity parts, was basically samsung chips glued to an iPod and the fingerworks GUI added to a cut down port of OS X (As MS did to get WinCE for PDAs and later phones from NT).

The original iPhone used a Samsung stock 6400 family ARM SoC.

Other people used resistive screens because "handwriting" and Annotation was a holy grail (From early Palm and Apple Newton devices). Capacitive screens existed from 1980s but ignored due to poor resolution.

Using a finger orientated GUI rather than miniaturised standard WIMP GUI with stylus was the ONLY "innovation" and not IMO patentable as it wasn't new, just not the fashion. Nothing else at all in the original iPhone was innovative, all stock parts. Apple bought their own ARM SoC designers later.

Re: The law is a Ass

It's easy to blame juries — and call them names — when verdicts don't go the way you like. The way I see it, having been on a couple of juries, the jury's lack of grounding in industrial design basics is the fault of Samsung's attorneys. And in this case, to this observer, Samsung's attorneys were prioritizing embarrassing Apple and antagonizing the judge. As to juries throwing out laws, it doesn't happen. I suppose occasionally a jury will ignore facts and law in its verdict as a protest or as an act of oppression, but the law stands.

As Samsung has sued others for patent infringement, isn't it a tad disingenuous for them to argue that there are too many patents and/or rounded corners is a patent too far? As to three infringements being ruinous, the obvious counter is to not infringe a first time.

The strongest argument is that the law's intent was to protect design that was intrinsically part of the function of the invention and therefore the US Patent Office erred in the granting of this patent. On the other hand, Apple wanted to protect its design and chose the means proscribed by law. Though we are assuming that Apple did not make a claim based on function in a patent. Every few years this court likes to swat the USPO with a "You got that wrong, but we're not going to tell you what's right."

US patent law is injecting bad incentives into the system and intellectual property laws in general have been hijacked from implementing an intent to tolerate a limited monopoly. The mess should be addressed by legislation, but I doubt any thing good will happen.

Re: The law is a Ass

"Apple copied and was influenced by everyone ELSE. Period."

Wrong. Apple has spent a lot of effort working out how to use computers. They don't just draw silly icons, etc, they actually try lots of different ideas and come up with the best ideas. That is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, they have used technologies invented elsewhere, but they have showed "this is how to use this thing in the integrated whole". Apple puts things together. Examples - the mouse - previously a technical curiosity. Floppy disks - Wozniak put these on the Apple II where others used tape.

Companies like Samsung and before them Microsoft see that, think it is simple and copy it, stealing Apple's return on investment. It is hard to protect that by patent law and maybe patent law really isn't the right thing - but it's all they have.

I know people are going to vote down this post because it exposes the ignorance of the industry, and then they are going to say that "Apple copied from Xerox", but here is the real story that I have told before:

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Douglas Englebart invented the mouse around 1963, not Xerox PARC. Jef Raskin at Apple was doing similar stuff to PARC and knew those guys. Raskin did his Ph.D in the 1960s on the graphics package that became Apple's Quickdraw. He was working at Apple doing similar stuff to the Xerox guys. It was Raskin who suggested to Jobs that he take up PARC's invitation to go and see what they were doing.

PARC invited industry players in Apple, Tektronix, and IBM to view their stuff, because they had been ordered by Xerox HQ on the East Coast to drop what they were doing - it wasn't Xerox's core business. Tektronix and IBM didn't get it. But Jobs did. And the Xerox PARC guys were amazed how Jobs got it, since Xerox, Tektronix, and IBM didn't. Some at PARC realised it was the end of the road there, so those like Alan Kay and Larry Tesler left PARC to further this technology at Apple. They went on Apple's payroll, so were rewarded for their efforts.

Apple still took considerable risks to develop this technology. The other part of the story is how PARC machines cost nearly $100,000, but Apple managed to put it in a machine selling for $10,000 (the Lisa), and then $2,000 (the Mac).

Apple also did not exactly copy the PARC interface. Pull down menus at the top of the screen were Apple's innovation.

Now Bill Gates did illegally copy Apple's stuff - particularly Quickdraw that was Raskin's.

So when people say "Well, Apple just copied off Xerox" - they really don't know what they are talking about.

Re: The law is a Ass

"Both of them are XDA copies, the only "innovation" is the capacitive screen."

A capacitive screen was not an Apple innovation, multitouch was not an Apple innovation. The first capacitive touchscreen phone was the LG Prada. There was nothing physical in the iPhone that Apple had invented.