“In what may be a symbolic legal win, a federal appeals court on Thursday blocked the sale of an older line of Samsung smartphones found by a San Jose jury last year to have copied key technology in Apple’s iPhones,” Howard Mintz reports for The Mercury News.”The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, in a divided 2-1 ruling, backed a permanent injunction sought by Apple that would force Samsung to remove the copied features from the devices or take them off the shelves.”
“In the second trial between the two companies, an eight-member jury in 2014 determined that Samsung violated two Apple patents, including its popular slide-to-unlock feature on iPhones, and awarded Apple nearly $120 million in damages,” Mintz reports. “That came after a first trial in 2012 that ultimately resulted in Apple claiming more than $500 million in damages for Samsung’s patent violations on even older smartphones and tablets, a verdict that was upheld earlier this year by the Federal Circuit (Samsung plans to soon appeal that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court).”
“The appeals court found that Apple’s request for an injunction that requires Samsung to remove technology considered important to iPhone consumers was fair, observing, ‘The right to exclude competitors from using one’s property rights is important,'” Mintz reports. “‘This is not a case where the public would be deprived of Samsung’s products,’ the appeals court ruled. ‘Apple does not seek to enjoin the sale of lifesaving drugs, but to prevent Samsung from profiting from the unauthorized use of infringing features in its cellphones and tablets. Apple established that Samsung believed these features were important and copied them.'”
“Several tech companies, including Google, had sided with Samsung in the case, arguing against such injunctions,” Mintz reports. “Samsung vowed to ask the Federal Circuit, a Washington, D.C.-based court that hears the nation’s patent appeals, to rehear the case with its full roster of judges. ‘We want to reassure our millions of loyal customers that all of our flagship smartphones, which are wanted and loved by American consumers, will remain for sale and available for customer service support in the U.S.,’ Samsung said in a statement.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If consumers love Samsung’s smartphones so much, why is the Korean chaebol laying off tens of thousands of their employees?
The fact of the matter is that ignorant consumers once flocked to settle for Samsung phones because they looked like (trade dress infringement) and sort of worked like (patent infringement) Apple iPhones.
People have woken up: If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.
Apple’s products came first, then Samsung’s:
For good measure, here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:
And, here’s what cellphones looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:
People who buy Android phones and tablets reward thieves.
SEE ALSO:
Samsung to petition Supreme Court to hear appeal in iPhone patent infringement case – August 19, 2015
Samsung denied rehearing in appeal over Apple iPhone patent infringement – August 14, 2015
Google, Facebook, Dell, HP, others take Samsung’s side in Apple patent fight – July 21, 2015
U.S. federal court rules anyone can copy the iPhone’s design – May 18, 2015
Up to 40 percent of Apple’s $930 million verdict against Samsung must be reconsidered – May 18, 2015
US appeals court reverses part of Apple’s $930 million verdict vs. Samsung – May 18, 2015
Before iPhone, Google’s plan was a Java button phone, Android docs reveal – April 14, 2014
How Google reacted when Steve Jobs revealed the revolutionary iPhone – December 19, 2013
What phones looked like before and after Apple’s revolutionary iPhone transformed the industry – February 8, 2012
Apple to ITC: Android started at Apple while Andy Rubin worked for us – September 2, 2011
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “JWW,” and “Tayster” for the heads up.]
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooom!!!
BUSTED!!! Guilty POS slavish copying Scum Samsung! 😛
More of a “smack” then a “BOOOOOM” at this point, and at this rate. By the time Samsung is ever forced to comply with any court finding in these patent cases all of the involved devices will be antiques.
Our judicial systems are clearly not up to administering justice in the fast paced high tech world.
true, but it sets a precedent for the next time, which should go faster.
“Smack” has been delivered loud and clear in the marketplace.
Samsung is getting beat on the low end by Asian competitors and in high end smart phones by Apple (who takes ‘the lion’s share’ of profits.)
i wonder how you would feel if you worked really hard for a long time to create something unique and then others, who had not invested any effort, simply copied your work and made a lot of money off of it.
I’d like an example of a great company that rose above it.
Apple.
Great companies don’t do it (copy). At least, not in the slavish, infringing sense of the word.
But thanks for calling Apple great, because Apple is clearly rising above the challenge of companies (Google, Samsung, etc.) profiting from Apple’s R&D efforts.
We do not forget, and are slow to forgive past evils and wrongdoing. Microsoft. Adobe. Google. Samsung. We will continue to avoid your products, because reducing your revenues and profits is the only penalty that seems to have any impact on the actions of your senior management. Karma is on Apple’s side, and the payback is going to be long and devastating.
What was Adobe’s sin against Apple? Trying to promote their Flash platform? That’s hardly an attack against Apple. Adobe has worked with Apple for decades, so IDK why you’d include them with the likes of MS and Samsung.
Adobe’s sin was this:
1. Adobe created Postscript.
2. Apple recognized the potential and partnered with Adobe to direct the Mac into a digital print production platform, bringing out the first postscript laser printer in 1985.
3. This put Adobe (and the Mac) on the map and secured the Adobe’s future.
4. Next, Microsoft is invited to write a word processor and spreadsheet program for the Mac. They do so, creating Excel in the process. They also got ahold of the Mac OS source code. Which they proceeded to use to engineer a competitive GUI OS copy called Windows.
5. Apple is betrayed by Bill Gates, who they thought was a partner.
6. Adobe doesn’t care about Microsoft’s business practice, or the damage to Apple. They see lots of PC boxes and go on to produce Windows versions of their products. If that had been all they did I think most people would have accepted that as simply good business. But…
7. That’s not all they did. They put all their development effort into Windows and basically turned their back on the Mac users that had made them a huge company and put them at the pinnacle of digital publishing.
8. When OS X was introduced, Adobe refused to update their flagship programs to run natively.
So, a lot of old time Mac users felt spurned by a company that they had been pouring money into for 10 years before Windows came on the scene. At which point Adobe treated Mac user like yesterday’s news, selling then yesterday’s programs while Windows got the new stuff first.
As for Flash: Flash was a desktop technology that found a place on the web. Unfortunately it had too many performance and security issues to be a “good” web citizen. I think the facts are pretty clear at this point that Adobe just couldn’t write a mobile version of Flash. That Steve called it out was just Steve saying what most technologists already knew: it was time for Flash to be EOL’d.
Excellent post. A couple of things:
a) Adobe did what was good for Adobe, and the market by expanding, and then focusing, into Windows. Mac users rightfully felt like second class citizens, and their disappointment, and contempt for Adobe, is understandable. Still, it was inevitable. Mac was an isolated island in a sea of Wintel.
b) Software EOL is decided by the providers, and users of a technology, not by a hardware manufacturer.
You are so incredibly dumb, that I have to think it’s all an act.
Thank you for your view Dr. Android. (Seems just a little self-serving through.) Hopefully you won’t have to test that theory yourself with an original patent that’s tromped on all over by infringers working with impunity and a criminal sense of “anyone could think of that, but didn’t” entitlement. (Oh and your competitors knowing the courts will take their sweet time to do anything about it, as you run out of cash for legal costs.)
“‘We want to reassure our millions of loyal customers that all of our flagship smartphones . . . will remain for sale and available for customer”
It wold also be nice if the money stolen from banks would remain available for people.
“The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals . . . backed a permanent injunction”
In other news, the same courts announced that IBM could no longer make select models of typewriters that infringed on patents from others.
For the younger crowd here, use a dictionary to lookup the word typewriter.