“A U.S. appeals court on Friday overturned a $120 million jury verdict against Samsung,” Andrew Chung reports for Reuters.
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., said Samsung Electronics Co Ltd did not infringe Apple’s “quick links” patent, and that two other patents covering the iPhone’s slide-to-unlock and auto-correct features were invalid. The court also said Apple was liable for infringing one of Samsung’s patents,” Chung reports. “Apple and Samsung have been battling over mobile device technology patents for years. Apple has mostly prevailed, and in December Samsung paid Apple $548.2 million stemming from a separate patent case, which Samsung has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“The ruling reverses a May 2014 verdict from a federal court in San Jose, California ordering Samsung to pay $119.6 million for using Apple’s patented technology without permission,” Chung reports. “Infringement of the quick links feature, which allows the device to recognize data on the touchscreen, such as a phone number, and link to it to make a call, accounted for nearly $99 million of the damages.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whatever. Apple has already won this war in dominating fashion.
What happens when a company like Apple enters a market an totally disrupts it? Either the law is applied justly or the entire industry that faces annihilation bands together to steal Apple’s IP while working protect each other (buying patents for defense, filing amicus briefs, denial, running PR campaigns, buying advertising to create complicit media outlets, clouding the issue with specious claims, hatching legal maneuvers to draw out the process, etc.). This is what happened with the Mac. This is what happened with the iPhone. And, get ready, this is what will likely happen if Apple enters the vehicle market, too.
The main reason why Samsung et al. were able to sell 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) in much the same way as how Microsoft et al. profited wildly from upside-down and backwards fake Macs at the end of the 20th century. Google, Samsung, HTC, Xiaomi, et al. are the Microsofts, HPs, Dells, and eMachines of the new century.
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.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “JayinDC” for the heads up.]