“I have sometimes, maybe even quite often, but not always agreed with Apple. And I have disagreed with Apple on more occasions than parts of the Android and open source communities have acknowledged,” Florian Müller writes for FOSS Patents. “Now that I have obtained the public transcript (which you can find at the end of this post) of a January 23 hearing held by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on Apple and Samsung’s motions to toss each other’s damages theories, I face the first situation in which I don’t merely disagree with Apple but am rather wondering whether it has lost its mind.”
“Apple’s damages theory for the trial that will begin in less than three weeks (on March 31) is an objective insanity, and I say so even though Judge Koh allowed Apple to present it to the jury,” Müller writes. “A damages expert will argue on Apple’s behalf that, if the parties had acted reasonably and rationally in a hypothetical negotiation, Samsung would have agreed to pay $40 — forty dollars! — per phone or tablet sold as a total royalty for the five patents-in-suit, which relate to (but don’t even fully monopolize) the phone number tapping feature, unified search, data synchronization, slide-to-unlock, and autocomplete. The theory is that Samsung would simply have raised its prices accordingly.”
“I can understand that Apple, almost three years after having filed its first lawsuit against Samsung, is disappointed with the fact that it has no enforceable remedies in place in the United States,” Müller writes. “But seeking out-of-this-world damages based on bizarre theories of what a hypothetical negotiation would result in is not the answer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Since “justice” is never served and Samsung continues to rip-off Apple’s IP left and right, why not just ask for the moon? What difference does it make when justice delayed is justice denied?
Samsung has reaped billions upon billions of dollars already off of Apple’s IP. Apple will never see anything close to it returned even if this stupid, interminable “legal process” ever ends. In our opinion, Apple should have asked for $400 per device. At least that way, they’d be somewhat closer to recouping all that has been stolen from them by the despicable Samsung.
It’s now March 2014. Samsung has been ripping off Apple’s iPhone for six years. Years. Not months. Six years in tech time is an eternity. What has this joke of “justice system” done to deliver justice to Apple? Zilch. So, at this point, Florian, seriously, WTF is the difference what Apple asks for?
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Surely, unless both parties agree a figure (which they haven’t) and it goes to a jury, all numbers are hypothetical?
Brilliant rant, MDN. I would add to that, that a proper serving of Justice would be an Import Ban of all Samsung mobile devices.
Samsung makes lots of crap. All their shit should be banned.
A ban is not appropriate when money damages can compensate Apple. The only question for the jury is how much.
There is not enough money in Samsung’s coffers to properly compensate Apple for the theft of revolutionary IP, which if not stolen would have given Apple 90% of all markets. Samsung and Google are thieves, plain and simple, and our legal system is aiding and abetting them.
I saw Foss Patents hand-wringing over this, but he’s digging for traffic today. The number is high, but they’re asking for a big number because they know whatever number they ask for, it will be decimated by Koh.
Yeah, she’ll come back with 4¢ per device or some such nonsense.
Perhaps she expects the jurists to laugh Apple out of court.. Sad to see Apple dropping down to the tactics used by Samsung lawyers when they don’t have to..
Shoot for the stars, and you may still land on the moon. That’s still a lot higher up than the Earth.
“..I don’t merely disagree with Apple but am rather wondering whether it has lost its mind.” So tell me Florian, you never wondered if sansumg lost its mind when they started copying every single device and feature of apple products? You never wonder if sansung lost its mind when they even pull a exact replica (in black) of the iphone’s charger?
I think the one who lost its mind was you, or maybe you didn’t and instead you gain some money from samsung to talk crap against apple.
Hehe…he’s usually anti-Samsung in a very subtle way and he has information that backs up what he posts. Like I said, he’s probably just fishing for traffic since there hasn’t been anything exciting to report patent-wise in a while.
good point.
His problem is he is being reasonable, thinking that a jury would either agree with Apple or agree with Samsung. In reality the jury will make its own determination on what it believes is a proper damages award.
What Florian doesn’t take into consideration is that, if the jury doesn’t fully buy Apple’s theory but believes Samsung is guilty (more guilty than Samsung admits), then the jury starts evaluating expert testimony for damages. However, the jury’s bookends for the award are what Apple and Samsung state is appropriate. So if Apple asks for what it really thinks it will/should receive, then it will almost certainly receive less.
The thing to remember is that some of these patents are critically important (data synchronization), some are not (slide to unlock). But they’re being considered as a group, so Apple must ask for high amounts for each patent so that one does not undermine another.
The problem with Apple asking for such an arguably ludicrous price is that the jury will see Apple as ‘greedy’ and award something lower than they would have should Apple have proposed a more ‘reasonable’ price. With this piece now in the news stream from where I stand the ethical gap has narrowed and the jury may not be as favorable to Apple or as antagonistic towards Samsung. I think this is one of the dumbest moves made by Apple legal ever. The Apple white seems grayer today.
Let’s suppose that while you are gone for the weekend, some stranger moves into your house. You go to court to have them evicted. Instead of giving you back your house, the court decides that if the squatter pays you a “reasonable” (market) price for your house that you should be satisfied. Is that OK with you?
The analogy you choose to employ is not really the case since Apple is not prevented from using the IP in contention. So for argurment’s sake we’ll say the squatter is allowed to make a copy of my house layout down to the dust on the picture frames then said squatter changes many of the features (functional and otherwise) of said house (mostly internal). Now you have 2 houses that seem outwardly similar to each other, some internal features may resemble that of the orginal. Now if both the squatter and I put our houses on the market to the same group of people, there is no way to prove that my house lost any sale because the squatter’s house looked like mine. This is the crux of the difficulty in putting a price on damages since you don’t know whether or not any particular piece or small group of pieces played in making the sale.
No, let’s say you paid Frank Lloyd Wright to design your house, which the guy who owned the vacant lot next door then copied, but with cheaper materials. You paid Wright $500K to design the house and it’s on the market for $2.5M. The guy next door who copied your house’s design has his on the market for $1.5M. Now how do you feel?
I would be laughing at anyone who bought the house based on looks alone. Of course that person may have bought it simply because it was cheaper and functionally may work differently. But since it is a house next to mine that is apparently just as beautiful it would probably raise my property value..
Have you ever heard of comps in real estate? Id an identical house sitting next to yours sells for 50% of what you are asking it’s not a good thing.
Just wheel out the “The Steve Jobs iPhone Patent” #7,479,949 and have done with it.
You guys haven’t read Florians reports the last years, he is like 95-98% of the time siding (as he should objectively speaking) with Apple when it comes to Samsung.
Not even Apple is expecting to get anywhere near 40 USD a piece, this is more of a joke-like statement that Apple is giving to the judicial system and Florian is just pointing that out in his own fashion..
Actually I do follow Florian and feel that he seems to side with Samsung way too much. Like a lawyer who does not care about justice, only the game playing that is the law.
Samsung wins a judge giving samsung an injunction against Apple for SEP patents and Florian says, yea law. But Apple fights for 2-3 years and multi trials and still is getting NO money or injunctions against Samsung. Fair????? no but its legal cause justice is not involved.
OK, I am ranting. Florian is good at reporting court actions, fair about guessing their outcomes, and not an Apple fan, he actually likes samsung/ android items and cannot see what the big deal is over Apple and its patents (most of them) .
So I give him a 50%. Legal but not justice or fair.
Apple and Steve said over and over, it’s not about the money so that figure means absolutely nothing. It’s not even a negotiating tactic, it’s a diversion.
There is a much different games going on here folks.
I used to feel FM was objective and insightful. But lately I don’t feel that way. First, these are privately held Apple patents, not SEP or FRAND patents. Second, an owner of IP is not required to license the property to anyone. If Apple does not want Samsung to license these patents, that is Apple’s prerogative. And if Apple assigns a high value to their patents, that is Apple’s choice. The factors of production can determine their own value. It is a seller’s market. Third, for all the pain and costs of having to defend their patents in a court of law, Apple is entitled to recover a premium. Lastly, litigation is a strategic “game” of negotiation, so this may well be an opening position.
In the past, FM would have been the one to point out the bullshit assertion of “xenophobia in American courts” played by Judge Koh in her last JMOL. But he totally missed that. In fact, he sided with Judge Koh — but he failed to identify the bullshit Moore paper used to “support” Koh’s claim.
Exactly!
And as for the “xenophobia in American courts”, bringing frivolous lawsuits is part of the bullying and intimidation that is standard practice in the Asian business world. The fact that those frivolous complaints are dismissed by American juries i not evidence of racial bias. It’s evidence of a cultural tendency to abuse the system.
When you consider that Microsoft collects $8 per android device, Apple’s requests sounds just about right. Since “journalists” just peddle narratives now, I am sure that is “news” to him.
the number is high because Apple wants Samsung to not use these patents at all. Samsung is by no means entitled to use any of these patents, no matter how they pretend to be. These are no SEPs.
Maybe Apple shareholders should launch a class action against SameSong. The existence of the Galaxy line has cut into the growth of Apple and the advance of the stock price through the use of IP that rightfully belongs to Apple.
Yes. And also launch a class-action lawsuit against Amazon e-books for antitrust behavior.