“In its patent dispute with Apple, Samsung is asking the Supreme Court to take a digital-age look at an issue it last confronted in the horse-and-buggy era,” Mark Sherman reports for The Associated Press. “South Korea-based Samsung on Monday appealed a $399 million judgment for illegally copying patented aspects of the look of Apple’s iPhone, the latest round in a long-running fight between the two tech-industry giants. The last time the Supreme Court heard cases on patents covering the appearance of a product instead of the way it works was in the late 1800s, when the court battles concerned designs of spoon handles, carpets and saddles.”
“The company’s appeal raises two issues at the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower-court ruling upholding the judgment ‘overprotects and overcompensates’ Apple’s patents,” Sherman reports. “One question is how juries should value the common features for which Apple holds patents: the flat screen, the rectangular shape with rounded corners, a rim and a screen of icons. Samsung said the jury in this case had too much freedom to look at the overall appearance of the phones, rather than focus on those three elements.”
“The other issue at the Supreme Court is whether a court can order Samsung to pay Apple every penny it made from the phones at issue when the disputed features are a tiny part of the product,” Sherman reports. “The federal appeals court in Washington that hears patent cases ruled for Apple on both counts… The Supreme Court could decide early next year whether to hear the case, but arguments would not take place before the fall of 2016.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: $399 million? We thought it was $548 million? Or are they only disputing $399 million of the total $548 million? Regardless, either amount is a laughable pittance compared to the real amounts Samsung, Google, and the rest of the iPhone knockoff brigade stole from Apple.
(For clarification: Reuters reports, “Samsung Electronics Co Ltd was scheduled to pay $548.2 million to Apple Inc on Monday, according to papers filed with the a lower California federal court on Dec. 3. In its petition to the high court, Samsung said it should not have had to make as much as $399 million of that payout.”)
The main reason why Samsung et al. sold phones and tablets at all was because they made fake iPhones and iPads designed to fool the unwitting (who are now finally waking up in droves, by the way). Just like Microsoft profited wildly from making fake Macs at the end of the 20th century. Google, Samsung et al. are the Microsofts of the new century. At least the Apple IP thieves are seeing some punishment for doing so this time around, however meager it may be.
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 finally to pay Apple $548 million in damages for copying iPhone, but then try to wrest it back – December 4, 2015
Judge Lucy Koh orders Samsung to pay Apple $548 million for patent infringement – September 22, 2015
Appellate court rules judge Lucy Koh abused right of discretion by allowing Samsung to sell phones that infringed Apple patents – September 18, 2015
Serial copier Samsung slapped with permanent injunction for infringing Apple patents – September 17, 2015
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
Why do you think the Supreme Court will rule on a counterfeit case, the one you lost?
Seriously? Supreme court won’t take the case is my prediction.
In the beginning I blamed Samsung for blatantly copying Apple. Today I blame Apple for continuing to do business with Samsung.
Apple has the money and the ability to hire whomever they needed to drop Samsung as a supplier. Samsung makes a profit on every device they make parts for- which is most , if not all, or them.
It is not that easy to create a microprocessor supplier from scratch. Apple is making progress with TSMC. Meanwhile, take comfort in the fact that Samsung makes relatively little profit from its fab business in comparison to Apple’s electronic products.
Lucy Koh had reduced the number of patents allowed to be judged in court by a factor 10 or so (the outcome was 6:0).
So, Samsung should pay Apple 10 times as much. And shut up.
Exactly. Lucy Koh was too lazy to hear all the copying infringements/allegations. This allowed Samsung to claim that they only infringed on minor features. A bullshit campaign then started in the press about the case being merely about rounded corners. Samsung has a standard set of tactics, delay, delay, delay, appeal, appeal, appeal, look for vaguely similar prior art (Neonode slide to unlock, tablets in sci fi movies, what a fucking joke). Apply for patents to be invalidated for being obvious, because the glacial pace of the courts has allowed the invention to become commonplace. Samsung’s internal design documents presented in the case, showed how much of the iPhone was copied and it was largely ignored when awarding the damages, due to the vastly reduced scope of the case.
The Supreme Court has much more important things to do. SameDung is such a sore loser even after all the blatant copying they did and the courts essentially handed out a slap-on-the-wrist order. What an embarrassing and shameful company it really is. Seeing their logo anywhere makes me want to puke.
boycotting Samsung is pointless if Apple is putting Samsung products in iPhones.
I mean, I totally support Apple in this, but this would be a moral victory at best. I’d rather Apple redirected their money spent on lawsuits to developing better products. Why is there no full Siri Remote iPhone App for ATV4? Seriously! How hard can it be for Apple to write this app when they have created both pieces of hardware? I would think this would be like doing a dot-to-dot puzzle for them. Are they short on cash? Or is their focus on battling Samsung in the courts?
I don’t have a problem with Samsung’s semiconductor and display divisions that supply Apple. As far as those divisions are concerned, Apple is a very important and valuable customer and they make good products. It’s the mobile division – abetted by the conglomerate group’s top management – that I find so objectionable and shameless.
The amount of money Apple spent on the lawsuits and this money that Samsung owes Apple really isn’t much in the big scheme of things. I don’t know about the Siri Remote iPhone App for ATV4 since I don’t have it and I’m just not a TV-watching guy. I still have the ATV2 for the family and it’s good enough.
Apple has more cash than many nations. Battling SameDung in the courts is not about money but principle. Apple needs to set a precedent that they will not tolerate blatant (or “slavish” as Steve Jobs said) copying. It is more of a warning to the rest of the industry for other companies to come up with their own stuff.
Apple has already trampled SameDung in the markets over the past two years so that’s all good and I think SameDung will follow the path of BlackBerry and Nokia in several years getting crushed from the top by Apple and by the Chinese companies from the bottom. Apple’s next biggest competitors in the mobile space will be those Chinese copycats, so a legal precedent needs to be set.
All the court stuff played out a while ago and SameDung just needs to pay their penalty and move on but they’re not quitting and taking this up to the Supreme Court now. Considering how badly they’re doing now I’m sure $400~500 million is a big chunk of change to them. Apple’s *NET* profit in fiscal 2015 was $53.4 *BILLION* with over $200 billion in the bank, if you pay attention to that kind of stuff. It’s not like Apple needs another .2% of that amount to add to their coffer.
As far as the Siri Remote iPhone App you’re referring to and other recent miscues, it just seems Apple’s software side can’t keep up with the hardware side. Throwing money at it doesn’t always work. Apple needs to do a better job but they’re adding many thousands of new employees per year and that in itself must be a very difficult thing to manage.
Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like to lead and manage a company doing $234 billion in annual revenues and still growing fast. The largest company I’ve ever worked at with nearly 10,000 employees is exactly 1% of that: $2.3 billion. Apple is now at a size that most people can’t even fathom. It was only about 12~13 years ago that Apple’s annual revenue wasn’t even $5 billion. So, in that short period of time Apple has grown nearly 50-fold. This kind of growth has never happened in history and, most likely, will probably never happen again.
Totally agree, alexkhan2000. Big numbers are difficult for many to grasp. One MILLION seconds is about 12 days. One BILLION seconds is 32 years. We are talking HUGE business. And Apple makes it look easy.
By the way, Apple’s compound average annual revenue growth rate using data from your post — 5 to 234 bio in 13 years — represents 42% revenue growth per year for 13 years running (on average).
The lights are on, is anyone home? Hello analysts??
Don’t forget Apple has a very long memory. Apple is using Samsung for some parts for now, big deal. In the long run, I would not bet on Samsung doing substantial business with Apple. Unless, of course, Apple chooses to do for an ulterior motive, like driving down supply prices for themselves by playing competitors off.
SameDung’s profit model is to copy what ever IP they can steal, drag the inevitable lawsuits out as long as possible, hope they can get the patents invalidated, and make as much profit as they can while the courts slow march to justice while the technology becomes less and less valuable. Finally they are forced to pay a pittance or are ordered to stop. Rinse, repeat.
That’s true but their “luck” is finally running out because they can’t come up with anything original of their own and are getting killed in their own game by the Chinese copycats. Such poetic justice.
They don’t have the software, they don’t have content, they don’t have an ecosystem, they don’t have a brand that people care about, they don’t have an identity (except being a thief), they don’t have any ideas. The top management there only cares about more and more money and enlarging their empire – electronics (including home appliances like fridges and washer/dryers, etc.), shipbuilding, department stores, insurance and securities, theme parks, apartment complexes, buses and trucks, blah-blah-blah… There’s some serious short-man/small-penis complex going at the top of SameDung.
True, it is an Established fact that Korean men have the smallest penises among human males.
Yeah. I’ve totally boycotted Samsung products now (not an easy thing to do in Asia). Except for some legacy stuff. When it breaks down, I’ll buy anything-else-but-Samsung.
Samsung: Defining the word Asinine.
Note that the Supreme Court only agrees to hear a tiny sliver of the total cases submitted each year.
Usually they accept only cases in which there is a dichotomy of opinions between two appellate level courts to settle the disagreement, and they do not always accept all of those. They will accept cases that interest a sufficient minority of the Justices.