Apple’s ‘miracle of a device’ ruling should stir national pride; U.S. court decision was inspiring victory of common sense

75 Comments

“If you’re tired of the world ripping us off you can’t help but feel a little bit of national pride over Apple Inc.’s patent victory over Samsung Electronics Co.,” David Weidner writes for MarketWatch. “Sure, the verdict to award Apple $1.05 billion in damages and force Samsung to design its own products was due, in part, to home court advantage. The decision was handed down a courthouse in San Jose, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley no less.”

“After years of mostly getting shot down or blown off by international commissions, patent courts and global regulators, nine jurors finally stood up and said ‘enough,'” Weidner writes. “Finally, the U.S. summoned the will and the legal team to win.”

Weidner writes, “Finally, conventional wisdom and common sense won out. If you steal something, it isn’t yours. Period. And if you don’t think stealing intellectual property from U.S. companies is what’s been happening in the global marketplace, especially in electronics, then you either are a lawyer or one of the people ripping off the innovators.”

Read more in the full article here.

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75 Comments

    1. after thirty goddamned years of hearing the press run down this country, it’s about fscking time something like this is written..
      ° WE invented the telephone.
      ° WE invented the television (f “Yogi” Baird, Philo did it.)
      ° WE invented the airplane.
      ° WE invented the phonograph.
      ° WE invented the light bulb.
      ° WE invented automobile mass production.
      ° WE landed on the moon FIRST (thanks Neil.)

      and  is the current, finest example of that great American mindset that the current administration thinks so little of.

      Reply

        3. Just to take eight words and apply them: “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

          Now maybe he forgot who made the government. It was not the government of the United States until the People created the framework of our nation. Business came first and over time the people created government which then enslaved the people and business. Then our people rebelled and now, again, our politictions once again forget of a republic and claim power over the people. Public Servants as the President need to remember even the homeless on the street is whom he is subservient to. With this mindset the people will once again be slaves to the state. The people built the government and we can tear it down again, with the products we purchased for the government , ummm…. Public Servants. Our bridges, our government buildings, our roads, and our military toys.

        7. Joe, you are totally right but save your breath (text). People who want to hate will go to what ever lengths to do it. Non-rational thou it may be…

          Two of the republican party showcases for the convention for “we built it all by ourselves” fell by the wayside as research showed that they had gotten millions in government help and contracts. Yep… “we did it……. with help…… all by ourselves” is so true. Just leave out the middle part for the record. LOL

        2. “According to the Smithsonian Institution and Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),[26][27] the Wrights made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, four miles (8 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903.”

          Kitty Hawk is in the United States.

        4. That’s correct, the Wright brothers did do the first successful f
          Ight in Kitty Hawk. Are you sure as you stated earlier they invented flight. Mankind has dreamed of flying for all of time.

        6. So true… and because of Leon’s prior art, we should be able to copy the latest and greatest carbon fiber, computer controlled, fuel efficient aircraft and call it our own design. Right??? LOL

        10. Er, powered MODEL flights were fairly common before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. The plane the flew in the UK in 1848 was a 10 foot wingspan steam powered model… incapable of carrying a human. It may have been the first successful heavier than air powered craft, it was not however, man flying. And, yes, Chas, there were indeed many form of electric lights and even light bulbs before Edison invented the first practical light bulb. However, even HIS was not a successful product until Nikola Tesla, a man who Edison spurned, enabled a competing company, Westinghouse, to produce and transmit Alternating Current, which could be sent for hundreds of miles over transmission wires, instead of Edison’s preferred Direct Current, which was limited to mere miles before resistance diminished it to nothing, that the light bulb could be sold to millions of consumers, making it a viable consumer product. Edison’s system essentially required a generating plant to be located with two to three miles of the use point.

      4. Wohaa there, the first long running lightbulb predated Thomas Edison’s by a year. It was invented by an Englishman, Thomas Swan.

        I once lived near his original shop in Newcastle, UK. First home in the world to have electrical lighting.

        Newcastle is also the smallish city where Jonathan Ive did his degree. Coincidence?

        Reply

        1. Thomas Swan’s 1860 lightbulb would only last ten minutes to four minutes before burning out. It was impractical. The cost was prohibitive. He could not achieve a sufficient oxygenless vacuum in his glass envelope. Ergo he did not do much to develop it commercially until after Edison filed his patent in 1879. It is also true that Edison worked with a Swan bulb when starting his experiments to find a practical electric light. Swan’s patent was filed in 1880, and formed the Swan Electric Light company in 1881. Edison and Swan agreed that Swan would have rights in Britain, Edison in the US. Swan’s company was later merged with with Edison’s and was renamed the Swan and Edison Electric Light Company, called Ediswan. Both inventors then collaborated to improve the bulbs. Sounds pretty friendly.

        1. “As Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University, Bell was engaged in training teachers in the art of instructing deaf mutes how to speak, and experimented with the Leon Scott phonautograph in recording the vibrations of speech. This apparatus consists essentially of a thin membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light-weight stylus, which traces an undulatory line on a plate of smoked glass. The line is a graphic representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of sound in the air.[21]”

          Boston is in the United States.

        2. Troll Alert!!!
          2016 is based on as much reality as the movie 2012 was. The holes in its logic are bigger than in a God sized colander. And it has NOTHING to do with the subject of this article.

      7. Please share some examples of how explicitly the current administration disses Apple. I’m onto saying they haven’t, it’s just that statements like that piss me off, people seem to state as fact what they feel and believe. Show your work or stuff.

        Reply

        1. its not the admins who are dishing on apple, it’s their choir. The admin supporters (nyt et al) are shitting on Apple almost daily.

          I’m sure Obama likes Apple just fine- it’s his people who are pissed.

        2. Which people, once again no references or sources. I’ve yet to hear any politician, Republican or Democrat saying anything negative about Apples success. Did you hear this from your neighborhood block monitor??? C’mon people, if you’re going to make statements such as this kindly backup the info or just keep your thoughts and feeling to yourselves, it makes you look stupid.

        2. Sorry, you are wrong. My great, great, great Grandfather, Alexander G. Bell, was a resident of Boston, Massachusetts, when he invented the Telephone. Yes, he was of Scottish descent, as am I, but he did indeed live in the United States at the time he invented the first primitive telephone. The last time I studied geography, I am certain that Massachusetts was part of the United States of America… not Canada. So, we can put it back on the list.

        3. Sorry, you are wrong again. Bell lived in Boston but summered in Branford Ontario Canada.

          During one of those summers he perfected his telephone and made the famous first phone call to his assistant, Watson, on the family farm near Branford Ontario Canada.

          You can’t change history like that.

          Next thing you know you will be saying the USA won The War Of 1812.

        4. “was a resident of” sounds so official. Just means that he lived there at some time in his life. He alternated between working with the deaf in Boston and working with inventing in both the USA and Canada. He was born, raised and schooled in Scotland. He was in his mid-twenties when he moved to Canada!

          Some of the world’s pre-eminent engineers came from Scotland. Being a small country, there were obviously more opportunities in the new, countries, like the USA and Canada.

          just like few would argue that England deserves full credit for the design work of Sir Jonathan Ive, Scotland and Canada deserve full credit for the inventions of Bell.

          People invent, countries do not.

      10. America loves knock-off’s. I think we coined the word. WalMart takes product designed and produced in the USA to China to get them reproduced!

        That’s why the USA is being knocked off economically and on a global scale.

        Reply

      11. What an ignorant asshole you really are. Do they teach you anything in American schools?

        Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone – Scottish
        John Logie Baird invented the television – Scottish
        Wright Brothers invented the airplane – American
        Joseph Nicéphore Niépce invented the photograph – French
        Humphry Davy invented the light bulb – English
        Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot invented the automobile – French
        Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space – Russian

        If the moon landing actually happened then yes you can have that one.

        Reply

        5. Don’t worry. Leif only discovered Canada… well, actually Newfoundland, which is an island off the coast of Canada. Not sure if there is evidence of mainland visits.

          Then again, he encountered natives there… so someone beat Leif, too. An Asian, it would seem.

    2. Quote: If you steal something, it isn’t yours.

      Yes, but the problem is how it all began: Remember the case Apple vs. Microsoft, more then 20 Years ago? This all never would have happened if the right decisions would have been made a long time ago. Basically Microsoft made steeling legal, and for sure the ‘Don’t be evil’ or better known as Google is going the same way (Oracle vs. Google). It looks like steeling is a business model.

      Reply

  2. Yea, the other lame journalist need to read this article. Maybe, just maybe, they can feel the shame of their words supporting a verdict against Apple.

    This writer NEVER set foot in a little blue bus for school.

    Reply

  6. Except that there was no home court advantage. Take the time to interview the foreman like others have and you learn the method they applied would have given the same results regardless of nationalities of the two parties involved.

    Reply

  7. Sadly, a lot of sansung supporters are americans 🙁
    Whats wrong that you don’t fell proud of you people? Even mexican people are proud of thier narcos (the el chapo guzman) and criminals (the “zetas”).
    Why is it that not all american people are proud of their geniuses?

    Reply

  8. Actually no. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone or at, least was the first to use it in a practiacal application, he called from Nova Scotia, Canada. Also, the French no less had a practical sound recording device long before Thomas Edison. There are other examples but too tired to point them out. Ever use the Internet or an encyclopedia to help you with your research. I truely believe Apple was innovative in all these product lines, it just pains me to hear that the U.S. invented EVERYTHING. Do your homework.

    Reply

    2. ‘I truely believe Apple was innovative in all these product lines, it just pains me to hear that the U.S. invented EVERYTHING. Do your homework.’

      Truly is quite often spelled truely – truly.

      Reply

  10. But it looks like judge koh is allowing the thievery to continue. She moves the hearing to Dec. 6, for the injunction. Then on September 20 she is going to hear the thieves request for relief concerning the galaxy tablet? I have a feeling, apple will be slammed on the 20th of september.

    Reply

    1. By then everyone will be pining for the iPad mini, whicwill be just around the corner. What does the tablet offer that iPad doesn’t. 10.2 offers a stylus to lose. Oh, my iPad uses a generic stylus for which I pay $.69 each.

      Reply

  11. Having worked as an engineer for Zenith Data Systems and HeathKit in the early 80’s through the 1991 I can tell you that everything we came up with in a matter of months was soon copied as a cheap knock off. If it was a TV screen, a tuner board or power supply regulator we would see it in a month or two in a foreign TV or electronics product.
    We had all our Electronics and HAM radio gear cloned badly by Japanese, Korean companies that were then subsidized by their governments to crush our American companies. We sounded the whistle to the US Government but it did little good. Our Politicians turned a blind eye to our plight as many of them were already on the pay roll. Zenith the last US Based TV, Radio, VCR, Video camera manufacturer died a miserable death. Then guess what happened Americans no longer had a company making these product so they were no longer subsidized and of course the prices went up. What people were left with was a tv or radio that lasted a year or 2 at best. The companies that did survive just OEM’d japanese products and put their name on it to survive. (GE, Curtis Mathes)

    At Zenith we designed and Engineered a TV’s and Electronics to last 25+ years and guess what they did. All parts were fixable and replaceable while its Asian counter parts were hot glued messes of components and were destined for a landfill in a year or 2 (talk about not being green).
    I remember sitting in meetings with consultants trying to get us to use cheaper asian components to compete on price. However those components were actually designed with a designated life span. We could not do that to our customers. Yes a Zenith TV or Radio cost more. It was made from superior components and meant to last for decades. We never asked for government bailouts as it seemed un american to ask the american people to bail us out. We tried to keep things going though innovation but because we were unable to protect our innovation in TV’s Radios, Computers, Laptop computers we had no choice but to close the doors. Its a real shame and it taught me a big lesson as a young man. If your government will not protect your intellectual property and the courts wont protect your IP that a single company with limited resources has no chance of surviving.
    Kudo’s Apple in doing what seemed impossible and insurmountable.
    The Companies that did not make it.
    Zenith Electronics, RCA, Curtis Mathes, General Electric etc.
    Many of which were purchased by the Asian companies who put them out of business in the first place and now use the American companies name as a premium brand.
    Now if Apple could only find a way to build things in this country. I know they design them here but build them here would be awesome. The problem is Labor cost make it impossible so that will never happen unless we come up with a a method of manufacturing that tech using robotics to a higher degree or a more automated manufacturing methods.
    Great Job Apple, Big win you deserve it. Remember with deep pockets comes great responsibility.

    Reply

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