Jurors knew Samsung was guilty after first day of deliberations, wanted to send message with verdict - Page 3

 

Judge koh knew exactly what she was doing.

 

Maybe she was closing loopholes in the event of an appeal, the fact that at various times during the case she was seen as biased by supporters on both sides of the argument shows that in the end she did an admirable job of walking the tightrope of impartiality.

 

Samsung will have very little to base an appeal on.

22 days of profit for Samsung mobile division to be exact

 

Let me help you out here: The iPhone WAS the only smart phone in 2007 & 2008. It's the same price now, with and without competition. 

 

To blow your little ship further out of the water: RIM was a defacto standard in its time and competitors were angling to make their phones more like it. Apple created a new standard in the face of RIM's dominance. They did it not by trying to copy RIM in any way. Any of the old guard could have done the same thing Apple did... the door was wide open for anyone. But, instead they all were trying to knock off RIM with look-alike phones. Everyone; Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, whoever... were all thinking alike. Now they are mostly doing the same thing, AGAIN.

 

The competitive process is still open for anyone that has the innovation and the balls to "Think Different."

Great Victory for Apple , not because of damage award surely. 1 billion dollar is 15 days of Samsung's profit (or 22 days of Samsung Mobile division profit)  or 8 days of Apple's. However large it may seem (unless it gets tripled, in which case it would one and half month of Samsung;s profit), it is still a slap on the wrist, probably a tighter one.

 

Samsung played their game, took calculated risks, and are now the most profitable handset manufacturer after Apple, their mobile division seems set to earn more than 15 billion dollar alone current year. In larger context it appears best investment they made. Spending a billion dollar and securing tens of billions of dollars of profit each year. And now they can safely move away from Apple designs ( like S3) and still be profitable. They have earned mind share and stature enough to reap in gold aleast for few years even without any breakthrough designs and products.

It may seem like their stealing will pay off in the short haul, but this win by Apple may embolden some other manufacturers to sue Samsung for this same thing. Samsung has been especially good at cloning a lot of appliances. Maybe this successful suit will open the floodgates and begin a trend against patent infringement... especially regarding Samsung. 

 

Samsung will be under a judicial microscope, especially in the USA, and will need to be especially careful in all their future designs or face destructive import embargoes. Microsoft is still having to deal with how it operated in the '80s. Bad boys who earn a reputation carry it for decades.

I had that same experience until I got my 3gs.

You should read the review on androidpolice website, it fairly positive, but points out many simple faults that could have been corrected/redesigned.
The problem I feel is that the Asian culture does not have the right tools to create world design. Maybe it's something about western culture having such depth and breadth that makes our manufactures world beaters.
Just look at the car industry, have you ever seen a truly original gorgeous design come out of any of the Asian manufactures? Maybe one or two, but the rest seem to borrow most of the design cues from western companies.

 

Can't count the amount of Windows phones etc. that were "accidentally" dropped, only to buy another one with double the mhz and triple the ram, just to found out it was JUST as unbearable as the old one!

How many times I had to apologize to people that tried to call me, and said "call me again in 5 minutes... just have to reboot my phone". HTC... you're on my list of "never again"! Then again.. I don't need to look for an alternative any more. I have an iPhone now. My second one. Soon a third... ;)

 

The jury might have "decided" the case after one day of deliberation (note: this is not 2nd day of the 3 week trial)...

 

What some people seem to forget (not necessarily including you, talking in general now), is that the jurors have been sitting there for three full weeks listening to evidence and testimonies. They eat dinner every evening, and sleep every night. They think about the case while in the shower in the morning... They have had plenty of time to reflect over this for a very long time... 

 

The fact is that these jurors have used more of their time to listen to both parties and decide this trial, than most people giving their opinions about what the outcome should have been and how they reached their conclusion. I hardly think any of the comments on this (or any other) website has been thought through for 24 hours before being typed and the "Submit" button clicked. Not even twenty minutes. The average time from end typing to clicking submit is probably in the region of 20 seconds :)

I'm content now I understand that most of the annoying sniping at Apple and support for Samsung over this piracy Samsung has been profiting from for years is a result of paid shills that are one of the foundations of Samsung's business strategy: copy, lie, steal. They are so plain to see too, because there is no logic to their argument, they just want to persuade as many weak minded people as they can that theft is legal. 

 

If Samsung had settled, they would not now be proven cheats;

Apple was trying to settle since 2010;

Apple has licensed its mobile phone technology to Microsoft for some time;

It's got nothing to do with rounded rectangles, but everything to do with the user experience and the layout of the holes and bezel on the front face;

The fact that Samsung did not settle opens it up to punitive damages and contempt of court charges.

 

That is perhaps why Koh was telling them to settle - she was most likely aiming at Samsung, but if she had said that it could have been interpreted as bias so she had to tell both parties. Samsung has bee the intransigent one here. They are so used to getting their own way through the political influence their Chaebol has in Korea they thought they could do the same in the free world.

 

Well done jurors.

In february of 2010, Samsung had 3% of the Smart Phone business, and a Samsung executive said the following:

 

"There'll be a big change in our smartphone strategy this year," Shin Jong-kyun, head of Samsung's mobile division told reporters.

 

And what a change it was... Samsung launched the Galaxy S in June 2010! The most exact Apple iPhone copy the worlds consumers had ever seen.. :(

 

Now, Samsung has just overtaken Apple and owns 29% of the Smart Phone market. Ten times what it had pre-Galaxy S.

They shipped 42.2 M units in Q1 2012. That's up from 1.6 M units in Q1 of 2010. Just two freakin' years ago!

 

Samsung has a history, and culture, of copying the most successful player in whichever market they operate or enter into. It's a recipe for success. A calculated risk. An ethical one it is definitely not, but it seems like they don't really care...

The legal system is so overloaded that Samsung can build their brand on copies for a few years first. And even then, they can debate, discuss, use PR, discredit the company they copied from, and make so much money from their copies that it will pay for ANY lawsuit, including lawyer fees, ten times over...

 

They finally get some of the punishment they deserve, but... I don't think it will change their ways at all. Sadly.

 

The good news, though, is that in the age of the internet, blogs, tweets and Facebook, the consumer is getting more and more educated. Some, of course not all, consumers want to know what they are buying and where it comes from. At least much more so than a decade or two ago. This is good news for Apple, for the originals, and for the innovators. Just keep doing the right thing, invent and improve, make things better and better. The consumer might not get it at once. But in the end, I believe it will pay off for the likes of Apple and other innovators out there.

 

PS: I don't like Windows Mobile 7. I personally think Microsoft's last decent operating system was Windows XP (pre-bloatiness). But all in all I do respect Microsoft. They do not have a culture of blatantly copying. They invent. They reflect. They want to make the world a better place too. And for that I respect them.

Edited by glemmestad - 8/26/12 at 5:22am

The day Apple releases a "smart TV", Samsung will be trying their all to find points where they can sue Apple.

"It's a big black frame that shows moving images! It's our invention!"

Japanese car makers employ shedloads of Western designers. The Asian education system is not geared up to stimulating creativity - it is still based on rote learning. I was asked to teach some Chinese students once and was told "it's really easy, they just copy down everything you say; the hard part is getting them to think about it." I also employed a Philipino who had a British University degree (earned in 15 months at Bournemouth University as he had prior qualifications that allowed him to skip most of the 3 year course) and he was totally unable to think for himself: he needed to be instructed, you couldn't even leave him to create a comparison spreadsheet for himself. I've heard it is the same for many other Asian countries, education is fact based, not thought based. Ergo, they make good copiers, lousy thinkers.

 

That isn't to say there are no creative Asians, there are, look at Yoko Ono or Ai We the designer of Beijing's Bird's Nest Stadium and other brilliant works; but en masse, the system is not intended to stimulate thinking, but to manufacture conformity. Anyone with independent thought is sat upon hard - again, just look at Ai We's troubles with the Chinese authorities. In Korea of course, they are still at war with and feel threatened by North Korea, and the South is highly militarised and regimented in everything it does - and if the education system were to produce people with independent thought they might disagree with the government and undermine the whole Korean Nation! And historically, Korea was a bit like the Somalia of the East, a den of piracy that earned its way from pirating passing trade ships in the days of sailing. Now it seems Samsung have just brought the methods up to date - instead of stealing things, they steal ideas.

EDIT (8/26/12, 8:48am EST)

Well that recipe for success, as you know, is about to become a huge legal anchor for anyone thinking about re-heating someone else's hard work.
Edited by Quadra 610 - 8/26/12 at 5:51am

 

Except this was one ruling that went against Apple. Give up on the rounded rectangles already.

And that's exactly the injustice of the entire process.

Samsung came from no where to the #1 smart phone manufacturer in the world and are making billions in profits with their blatant copying being a large part of the reason for their success. As you mentioned, they have now built a position where they can stop making knock-offs (and as I've pointed out for weeks, the S3 shows that they're capable of making something that's not a slavish copy). Not only do they get to keep 95% of the ill-gotten profits, but they've now created a market position that will allow them to make many billions more in the future without being sued.

The judgment should have been at least 10 times as large.

Looking at post 84 this really is even less of a cost to Samsung than I assumed. Can we assume $1 billion or greater costs from all companies that could sue Samsung for infringing? I'm guess no, not even close. Long run looks like this has worked out for them. We really need more patent reform in this country and elsewhere.
Edited by SolipsismX - 8/26/12 at 6:01am

Drug patents expire...which is why we have generics.  The patent on Acetaminophen has long since expired. The drug companies are allowed a certain time to "own" the innovation.  If that were not the case, then there would be no innovation.

 

They were all different:  As for Tylenol, it was not a good example.  Many drugs were $3 or more per pill when they first came out as it require prescriptions.  Either you pay for it out of the pocket, or your health insurance company is paying it (hence why healthcare is expensive).  When the patent expired, then they made them cheaper.  Only then companies can make similar products with same ingredient.

 

As for Comcast and Time Warner, again, bad examples.  The reason they were forced to carry competitor contents is because they signed exclusive contracts with each city (so that no other cable companies are allowed in the city)  Because of their contract, they have an obligation to carry competitors' content.  Not because they were "nice guys"

 

Sarcasm works horribly on the internet. I should have learned that by now! :)

 

I've edited the original post to better highlight my opinion on this. My comparison of numbers pre/post-Galaxy S for Samsung was meant as an observation on how Samsung was using questionable ethics and horrible business practice, to make money with blatant regard for the law.

 

There is a saying that goes like this: "Fly with the crows, and expect to get shot at". Samsung, you just got shot at.

Lie!

That is done to lower the price of the drugs not to spark innovation.

 

 

How photocopying other people work is innovation?

 

 

If you want cheap phones with tech made by companies that spend money on it is another thing, but thief is thief. 

They are two unrelated things.

 

Yeah, I was wondering.   ;)

 

My mistake, then. I'll edit accordingly. 

Galaxy S III is doing so well because it's Samsung's flagship phone and they've marketed the hell out of it. Here in the USA practically every AT&T and Verizon commercial features it. During the Olympics every other commercial featured a S III as Samsung was a sponsor.

In many ways, Samsung is the winner in this trial.  It went from the low-tier of cell phone makers to the very top of the market (in numbers sold, not profits) on the basis of stolen IP.  Now it has to pay a small fraction of the profits it has made and has also avoided the billions in development costs that were borne by Apple.

 

The jury sent a message, and perhaps, its conservative calculation of damages will serve to insulate the verdict from appeal.

 

The American patent and jury systems are the huge highlight of this case.  Reaffirmed, sir!

Same here in Portugal, you almost cannot walk 100 m in Lisbon without seeing one giant poster of it ( and i am ignoring the anti Apple choir of reviewers from the TVs ). And here in Portugal people always buy in horde what is publicized em masse.

Indeed!

The western cheap-in-order-to-have-all mentality is well used by Samsung.

People want cheap phones with tech of smartPhones, with that mentality they will sell their good old mother.

Exactly. Patents are designed to give the inventor exclusive rights to a product for a given time.

Lipitor used to be $170 for a one month supply. Because it was so expensive (and because most insurance companies don't like to pay for proprietary products), my insurance only paid about $10 of that, so I was paying $160. In the year before generics came out, they sent out a 'copay' card which effectively reduced the price by $40. In the last few months, they increased the discount to $50 - but it still cost $110 out of pocket. Generics came out at around $50 - and insurance paid $35 of that for a net cost of $15.

Now, without the ability to charge very high prices, Lipitor would probably never have been commercialized. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a pharmaceutical product to market with no guarantee of success. It is the high potential profit that encourages companies to develop and market new drugs. After the patent expires, the cost comes down.

Consumer electronics are somewhat different for several reasons:
1. Patent expiration is not really an issue. The technology changes rapidly enough that by the time a patent has expired, the products based on it are probably obsolete.
2. There are plenty of alternatives. If you don't want to pay the price of a phone from one vendor which has lots of patented technologies, you can always buy a phone without those technologies from another vendor. This competition keeps prices under control. For example, the Tab isn't any cheaper than the iPad it copies.
3. The patents that are required to make the device work are almost always covered by FRAND/SEP so there is competition for basic workable devices. Patents only cover the extras.

For those of you asking why Apple hasn't sued Google, here's a discussion:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/25/will-apple-now-sue-google/

Note that Google's argument about not making money on Android is a weak argument - they can still be held liable for contributory infringement.

Mueller makes some interesting comments, though:
"Apple may also want to reassert the patents it withdrew to streamline the case and ask the judge to speed up a second suit it filed against Samsung last January that asserts four more patents -- some of which, according to Mueller, are even more powerful than the ones it just won with.
There are dozens of Apple v. Samsung cases around the world yet to be decided, not to mention pending suits against HTC and Motorola Mobility, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Google."

With even more suits against Samsung and some potentially even stronger than this one, Samsung has an incentive to settle. I could picture them agreeing to pay the damages for this suit in order to get Apple to drop the other ones. And from Apple's perspective, that's not a bad deal if it comes with an admission of guilt and an agreement to stop copying.

Yes, well, that "theory" is bogus since neither the judge nor counsel were privvy to the jury's certitude at all.

Apparently they only sold around 10 million of them last quarter, of their overall 30 million. The rest were their lower-tier phones.

Samsung is doing well because they can flood the market like a champ. The consumer satisfaction crown belongs to Apple. Apple commands over 30% of the US market with barely 3 phones. All under one roof.

It's a very simple answer, it was beyond "similar". And I'm not just addressing this to you, but to all who seems to think this verdict was unjust.

You're right. I misread the headline and reacted without truly reading the article.

It's a very simple answer, it was beyond "similar". And I'm not just addressing this to you, but to all who seems to think this verdict was unjust.

Only if one is wallowing in chickensh*t.

 

Maybe this is one of the one or two:-

 

 

Agreed and I would add, note apple history of developing their existing products. and I think the "ipad mini" was on it's way regardless of competition.

edit: already said by someone else

Cite a link please?

Also, there was no direct competition when the price of the IPhone (or iPad) was set -- Apple set the bar on the device high, and the bar on the price low -- believing that no one would directly (and illegally) copy their IP.

Really? Well the way people go on about them and all the hype you'd think they sold 3 times as many,