Apple wins ban on Samsung Galaxy devices in Netherlands - Page 2

Are you saying that as long as you have a lot of patents that it's ok to infringe on other people's patents?

Using the stats of how many things they copied though, most people would describe them as an imitator. Being an innovator doesn't diminish that fact.

How big a change has each of their respective innovations brought?

Why? They don't steal other people's IP on purpose.

As well as the small matter of actually generating more profit than anyone else:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-25/tech/31396858_1_iphone-business-profit-apple

Hey dude, where can I get an A6 chip "off the shelf", I want to rebuild the ignition system of my car.

 

Hey, found it.

Lol you're an idiot

 

You said that people shouldn't view Samsung as an imitator because they have lots of patents. They can be regarded as an imitator when they try to alter their product designs to mimic their strongest competitor regardless of what utility patents they have.

There are quite a number of things they copied and Samsung doesn't deny it, they just think what they copied shouldn't be protected:

http://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-was-iphones-biggest-fan-copied-says-apple-closing-argument-109456/
http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-designs-2011-4?op=1
http://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-opens-apple-like-store-sydney-coincidentally-almost-next-apple-retail-store-110143/

What do incremental improvements have to do with anything? They don't have to bring out a revolutionary product every year. They turned the mobile industry on its head in 2007 and again in 2010. In 5 years, they have gone from selling zero iOS devices to 400 million. Every major phone manufacturer sells full touch screen phones now and tablets without styluses with the majority running Android. Android was a system that wasn't designed for touch input until long after the iPhone hit the scene.

You can convince yourself those changes were minimal or that Apple wasn't responsible for them all you want.

They aren't in the same category. VirnetX is a patent troll that is suing far more than Apple. The Motorola thing is about taking the 'FR' out of FRAND - Google bought Motorola to fight Apple. The issue with Samsung is that they are trying to make their products look and feel like their most popular competitor. Apple isn't doing that with anyone else.

No it's not, nearly 70% is from overseas:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/8865254/US-looks-to-take-a-bite-out-Apples-54bn-overseas-profits.html

Do you think only Americans fall for Apple's marketing?

 

Oh, boy. You worded it in a way that implies there's trickery going on and that Apple is only a marketing company.

Well, yeah, it's a custom designed chip. ARM chip, no less. You do get the idea, no? If not, watch that video; that'll explain why Apple will be here for decades, nee, centuries to come. And why any company could be as successful as Apple. Which was actually the point. And yes, I do understand your point as well.

Or the same culture. In Korea it supposedly is flattering if your products are being copied. Doesn't matter if it technically is stolen.

I dunno. I've no experience with Korean culture. But it seems plausible to me anyway.

 

Actually I have argued elsewhere on AI that "copying" is a good thing. Now I am a research scientist by training, and the way I see it, the overwhelming bulk of human progress through the ages is based on copying of ideas, spreading the word, and building on those. It's only recently that the term "Intellectual Property" has been "invented" at all. I can't put a date on it, but I would hazard a guess that the concept of "IP" is less than 50 years old.

 

If you think about it at all, that's how you learn. ... that's how babies learn, that's how an enormous amount of things get developed at all. In science for example, most of the Nobel Prize laureates are quick to point out that they got to where they did by "standing on the shoulders of giants."

 

So from a fundamental philosophical perspective, copying is not only a good thing, its essential to progress.

 

You can find examples everywhere. Sport, entertainment, ... really all over.

 

Now, I work in the generics pharma industry. We make our living by "copying" patented drugs and putting them on the market at a fraction of the price that "big pharma" does. We make them available to people who could otherwise not afford them. Now because of the (completely justifiable) demands of society that drugs should be safe, effective and of high manufacturing quality, these generics have to go into the development and approval process YEARS before the patents expire, so that they can be in the starting blocks on the day a patent expires. Now I would argue that generics are damned important and good for society in general. And of course, the patent-holders use every trick in the lawyers arsenal to block, delay, prevent, the onslaught of generics in "their" market segment.  Patent litigation is "daily business" in the generics field. In fact our founder (it is a private company) used to say that if a week goes by without us getting sued, then we're not doing our job properly.

 

The point I'm trying to make is that in some situations, copying, even "theft", is actually absolutely OK ... or would you be prepared to say "NO", generics drugs are "theft" of ideas and should be banned forever, leaving "big pharma" free to charge what they like. And don't get me on to the topic of how prices are fixed for new products in the pharma field. I have first hand information and, quite honestly, it makes me go ballistic to hear some of the arguments (ALWAYS coming from the US by the way) for astronomical, completely unaffordable prices for new drugs that we KNOW are not that good. Its really appalling. 

 

So I think it's just plain silly to say that "copying" is somehow morally and ethically wrong per se. The opposite is in fact true.

 

Getting on to patents: Here things get a little more difficult. One of the BIG differences between the US and the EU with respect to patents is that ALL kinds of patents in the US are less stringently scrutinized by the USPTO than they should be. There are a hell of a lot of really bad patents out there that should never have been issued in the first place. Now ONLY companies with big pockets can fight a patent battle in the courts. In the US the costs of litigation are prohibitive for small companies, startups etc. So many of them fall victims to the patent trolls. It makes economic sense for a small company to pay up $1 million rather than fight a patent battle through to the last instance .. EVEN IF YOU ARE 100% sure you should win. Look what happened in the Apple / Samsung $1Billion dollar scrap. It turned out that the jury made insane mistakes, that relevant evidence on prior art was blocked time and time again on trivial technicalities ... and so on. That offends my sense of justice. Seriously. If a plaintif can't win straight out, with honest and exhaustive deliberation of the facts and with correctly applied legal standards in the jury ... then the system is delivering a "product" that has no right to be labelled as "just".

 

But there may be good arguments that high quality technical patents deserve some protection. This doesn't, in my view, apply to software patents AT ALL. This is a controversial subject, but that's my take on it.  (incidentally there is an interesting debate on software patents on Groklaw right now. Go there if you are interested in this.) 

 

But leaving SW patents out for the moment. Take a technical patent like capacitative touchscreens. (NO, not an Apple invention. Seems that it came from CERN in Geneva). Once the initial invention has been made (and according to the law, a patent should provide sufficient detail that a person skilled in the area should be able to build whatever the patent describes, which is almost NEVER the case these days. Bless the f'ing lawyers.). Do you really think that small incremental improvements on the first patent should receive the SAME protection as the initial patent itself ?. Take the theoretical case of a touchscreen patent for a device 1cm thick and a resolution of 1000x1000. Is a resolution of 1050x1050 worthy of protection ? Or a thickness of 0.9 cm ?? and if yes, where is the cutoff ?

 

Now I don't want to get bogged down in silly arguments. These are just examples that suggest that the way patents of all kinds work at the moment, is actually a legally devised perversion of the original concept of what a patent is, how it should be scrutinized, and what it's purpose is. And to give you a hint: the purpose is NOT to block progress, but to promote progress. The purpose is NOT to allow "patent ambush", but to prevent it. the list goes on.

 

So, copying is a good thing :-)

HaHa. When I was a kid, NOBODY thought that Pan Am would go bust. Just NOBODY. And where, may I ask is the Pan Am Terminal on JFK Airport today ??

 

And if the US was a company they would already have gone bust several times. Greece came within a hair of going bankrupt this week. Why ?? -- Fantasy economics. Reality distortion field strength in Athens. And in the great depression america essentially went bankrupt. .. or Germany in the Hyperinflation of the Weimar republic. Have you ever seen a billion-dollar banknote ... where the value of the banknote is LESS than the value of the paper it's printed on. You had to use a wheelbarrow to take enough banknotes to the baker to buy a loaf of bread. (I have been told by people who lived through that).

 

So get real. Apple will not exist in 200 years.  And if the NAME exists, it will probably be a trademark of a company in Shanghai. LMAO :-)

That's what some people believe, the whole sentence was the question.

I think there's a very important condition though and that is copying with the intention of improving what was copied. If you just do it to make a profit at the expense of the original, what justification is there for it?

If a company is working on some R&D and get it completed and you go in and steal the plans and take it to market, that's not progress. You are just depriving the talent from the profit they've worked hard for.

The point about education and bringing people up to speed in order that they can potentially go beyond that has some parallels in that you could say that Google changing their OS from the mess it was before into what it is now was necessary to give them the opportunity to go beyond it in a direction Apple might not go by themselves. This was the case with the notification center for example and multi-tasking to an extent.

But it can't be a free-for-all because there are far more people who want to steal to drain profits than people who genuinely have the drive to improve things. Think of it like quality control on progress.

The cutoff has to be similar to a brand. Samsung has a logo and it is unique. They've decide they want a blue circle and Univers Condensed font and everybody says that's fine that's your identity. Apple has decided they want a black rectangle with a silver band round it, a particular icon style, a set of UI behaviours and everybody says 'no, we want to do that too'.

If you infringe on a brand, you dilute the brand. Samsung is trying to be 90% as good as Apple at 90% of the price so that customers can say 'why pay Apple's rip-off prices when you can save $50 and get The Next Best Thing'.

If they want to do their own thing, fine. If they just want people to see them as the Apple of the Android world, that's not fine and is totally contrary to the progress you are describing.

Yes I think you have a good point regarding brand dilution. That's not something that I would like to restrict to Samsung vs Apple in particular. I think that is a generic point. The problem is of course at the level of detail. But in principle you are correct.

 

In fact I was trying to pitch the discussion at a more fundamental level rather than getting bogged down in relation to particular litigants. I don't know ANYTHING about chrome-os. Doesn''t interest me because I am personally (ie for private purposes) totally anti-cloud anyway. But that's another topic.

 

For the same reason I don't like to speculate on the INTENTIONS of Samsung. I have been around long enough to understand that litgation parties ALWAYS take extreme positions. "Slavishly Copying" for example is pure polemic. Theatrical performance. I can't recall an example from Samsung offhand, but I am sure that there are plenty. The point is that in a litigation context the parties always go for the max because you can easily climb down, but climbing back up from an assertion or demand you didn't make in the beginning is practically impossible. That is just litigation tactics. No more, no less. I ALWAYS take that with a bucketfull of salt. Maybe its just a personal preference, but facts and the law mean more to me than posturing for the court of public opinion.

 

But I was trying to focus somewhat on what I see as a critical point with respect to ALL utility patents. They are NOT equal in terms of the protection they deserve for real invention vs incremental refinements. Actually in the Pharma industry this is a long established issue in patenting. Patent a molecule and every imaginable permutation,variation and derivation in the hope you've blocked any possible competition for generations. Unfortunately its a bit harder in pharmaceuticals because nobody has really figured out the relationship between structure at the molecular level and function or effectiveness. But that's a theme that we don't want to raise here I believe.

Hell no. I have 3 kids that do, and (surprise) not one of them is american. I get to check out the latest shiniest device at close range but don't need to stand in line in the rain to do it :-). BTW, there is no apple store that I know of anywhere near where I live.  Often enough I have to put up the cash or loan to finance the deal :-). I mean REALLY ! I have laughed till it hurt to watch the kids texting to each other while the're sitting next to each other on the sofa. 

 

Well, regarding VirnetX. It looks like a troll, it walks like a troll, but I'm not 100% sure it IS a troll because they do seem to have a development history.

 

With Motorola. I disagree with your characterization. Seems to me that its not a matter of taking the FR out of FRAND, but more of deciding whether FR=Fair and Reasonable or FR = FREE and doing that AFTER the fact. I am quite familiar with the briefs, the filings and the arguments on that litigation. As I pointed out elsewhere ... there is a lot of posturing and theatricals in the assertions and statements of the parties both inside and outside the courtroom.

 

I think there's a fundamental ethical problem with Apple saying that "your frand means I don't have to even TALK about paying" ... and at the same time saying  "my rounded corners and rectangular shape" is non-negotiable design genius that warrants you being banned from the market or saddled with absurd and highly discriminatory license fees. (or swipe to unlock and a number of other insanely trivial patents)  Unlike many in AI, I just don't buy that sh*t.

I think you're being sarcastic, but there are a number of people on here that genuinely think this way. My problem with it is the basic idea that this country made the right choice and the others were wrong. In each case the courts have provided a basis of determination. I've read through some of them. It's interesting for a little while. I like reading, but eventually I lose interest in the subject matter as it gets a bit repetitive.

I am more concerned about the network spyware built into all Samsung and many Dell printers made by Samsung that was revealed today.

Who else in the USA are they plotting to rip off like they did Apple?

Just because the USA took South Korea under their protective wing in the Korean War and still maintains an expensive protective military presence between North and South Korea doesn't give Samsung carte blanch to stab the USA in the back, does it?

Let Samsung now pay for those protective services or else let the USA cut South Korea loose and see what happens to Samsung mighty factories and investments.

Why should the rich and poor in the USA suffer when the burden can be shifted to South Korea? Illegal profits then can be used to offset the growing US fiscal deficit.

 

Link?

 

 

(South) Korea has been copying for centuries.

Except in the case of Microsoft, where they hinder the pace of innovation by first copying and then eliminating the competition. But I understand your opinion, but I don't think it's ok for a pharmaceutical company to copy the work of others. On the one hand; they spent so much money and time on creating a drug one would think they would protect that investment. On the other hand, on could think that the world is better served if that knowledge is shared. Why not have others dip in the costs of creating the drug? I think the whole world is better of if we learn to work together, instead of all this 'scavenging' that is going on. It's all me, me, me. Maybe I should study Kabbalah more.

HaHa. When I was a kid, NOBODY thought that Pan Am would go bust. Just NOBODY. And where, may I ask is the Pan Am Terminal on JFK Airport today ??[/quote]

Well, that construction company Kongo Gumi that started in the year 579 went out of business 'just the other day', in 2006. So they've been around for like, 1400 years, so it's not totally out of the question. There are many more examples like that. Wikipedia, albeit with a footnote: "89.4% of the companies with more than 100 years of history are businesses employing fewer than 300 people"

Not personally, but colleagues of mine have when they travelled to Zambia, where they indeed needed large pockets just to buy a loaf of bread (12.000 kwacha equaled $1 back in 1998 I believe).


The /s was indeed in 'a country' as I'm from The Netherlands. But I was serious on the rubber band issue; Apple might have stolen that from a seesaw, but if they did it first in software, patented it, and found out Samsung uses the same technique I think that should not be allowed.

No speculation required:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-internal-document-mimicry/

Is there a way to apply a strict set of rules to cover the entire spectrum of developments? It's very difficult to assess what's important.

Before people could fly, an aeroplane wing shape would have seemed like a trivial design. Something being complex doesn't make it more important. How many people use a betamax video recorder these days vs rubber-banding?

What about a simple cap for a burst oil well vs a complex machine to extract oil from water?

While it would seem that only allowing protection of complex designs is the more ethical route taking money out of the equation entirely, it doesn't fulfill the purpose of protecting the designs in the first place and drawing a line between complex and trivial is impossible. Do you measure it in man hours?

The system that exists right now isn't working. Copyright isn't protecting well enough and patents are protecting too much. The solution has to be something in the middle but we just end up with further reaching copyright that won't be enforced properly, the same as it is now and it will be abused. The ultimate solution lies elsewhere:

Holmes: The Borgias Pearl, with the blood of 5 more victims on it.
Watson: Anyhow, Conover was one of them.
Holmes: What's Conover? No more than a symbol of the greed and cruelty and lust for power that have set men at each other's throats down through the centuries and the struggle will go on Watson. For a pearl, kingdom, perhaps even world dominion 'til the greed and cruelty are burned out of every last one of us. And when that time comes, perhaps even the pearl will be washed clean again.

The laws we have are just there to clean up the mess people leave through their dishonesty and laws are written by people with the same flaws. Like everything in evolution, given enough time, they'll find a balance somewhere. Perhaps when we all run out of new ideas. I can't imagine how many Spider-Man reboots there will have been by then.

Apple offered to pay, just not what Motorola is asking for. This isn't just Apple again either:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/06/29/civil.investigative.demands.issued.to.google.apple.microsoft/

It is interesting how you condemn Apple for exercising trivial patents but would side with VirnetX or Motorola for doing the same. Shouldn't you look at them all the same way? A lot of people take the stance of 'what goes around, comes around' but Apple didn't start this behaviour, they were drawn into it. Google were later to the party but they've been drawn into it too.

"I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want." - Steve Jobs

 

 

This is the first time I've heard about this case so I read some news about this. I think this one infringement will not affect the sales of Samsung. I think this case is just a waste of time and money. And paying a penalty of $129,000 every single day to Apple is a bit too much for me.

This is not uncommon. And for the world's largest technology company by revenues since 2009 they can afford it. Not that it would ever come to that.