Apple Scores First Victory in Samsung Court Fight with a Head-Scratching Ruling

[dgstorm]

As many of you may know (and some of you might be actively trying to avoid), Apple and Samsung are back in the court-room to settle the appeals process of their huge patent fight. It's going to be a knock-down, drag-out brawl between the two tech titans, and the first battle victory went to Apple. Apple's battlefield goal is $2 billion in damages and $40 per device in royalties from Samsung for infringing on five patents. These patents include a couple of big ones: tap to search and slide to unlock.

The first fight in this new court drama was over an instructional video for the jury. This video was designed to explain patents and patent law by describing how patents work to protect inventors. The issue at hand is that the video itself includes several depictions of the iPhone and iPad as product examples. Samsung obviously wanted to have this particular video thrown out and replaced with one that doesn't depict Apple's products as the victim. Samsung's lawyers had this to say in their motion,

“Because Apple’s alleged innovation is a central disputed issue in this trial, it would be highly prejudicial to Samsung to show the jury — before any evidence is introduced — an official instructional video that depicts Apple products in such a context. Doing so would raise serious concerns about Samsung’s ability to obtain a ‘fair trial’ by ‘impartial’ jurors,” which is one of the most ‘fundamental’ interests that exists under the Constitution.”

In a head-scratching ruling, Judge Lucy Koh overruled Samsung's objections to the video, without citing any reasons for doing so. Many of her rulings seem to make no sense. Even the famed FOSS Patents’s blogger Florian Mueller, who normally seems to side with Apple, was surprised by Koh's ruling, and suggested it was "biased."

Luckily, Samsung has a good strategy to stay in the fight. This time, Samsung is hoping to drag Google into the battle with them. They want Google engineers, including Andy Rubin himself, to testify regarding the original creation of Android. Sammy is hoping that this testimony will provide evidence which will finally prove that that the Android mobile operating system was created independently of iOS.

Samsung is also countersuing, claiming that Cupertino stole two of its technologies for use in the iPhone and iPad. Jury selection starts next week. And here we thought the Apple v. Samsung drama was fading away...

In the first post below we have included the new patent instructional video and the old one.

Source: Engadget & BGR

 

[dgstorm]

Here are the instructional videos included with the story (the first one is the newer one and the second is the older one):

[video=youtube;ax7QHQTbKQE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ax7QHQTbKQE[/video]

[video=youtube;-q0mLrvw1Yc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q0mLrvw1Yc[/video]

 

[KZIWarrior]

According to the video (@around 2:30) an 'inventor' must add something to or otherwise enhance a product by adding something 'new' or useful to it.... just about all of the patents that Apple is filing all (e.g. slide to unlock) have been around far longer than in one form or another since long before iOS. I remember windows phones from years before the iPhone having 'slide to unlock' and other feature that Apple has since patented. I don't see why patents for software are different than for physical products. In a physical product (i.e. a manufactured product) it is the inner workings of the device that is patented not the end result so if you can achieve the same result with a completely different method you can have two products, each with their own patent that are protected (and actually you usually and up with dozens or hundreds of products that do they same thing but via different methods/mechanics all with their own patents)... So why is technology different? It should be the code that is patented not the 'idea' or end result of the code. Now if Apple can prove that Samsung/Google used part of their code, in any way that's one thing, but otherwise the whole patent issue is getting out of control...

Personally this shows a fear of competition and is an acknowledgement that Apple knows they can't actually innovate or drive the industry so they have to try to stifle those that can/do... think about how far behind we would be now if companies had been so retarded a century or more ago...

 

[New2u]

I would agree that many of her rulings as of late make little to no sense, and do in fact start to show some bias, but that's just the look from top down, that doesn't mean she doesn't have good reason for the rulings she is making. I think a little explanation on this one would help out in a huge way.

@KZIwarrior I do completely agree with you, if samsung stole code that made the slide to unlock work, then they should be held liable, but just because it has the same feel, but not the same code, this is where there are problems.