

Groklaw on the Apple v. Samsung jury verdict - grellas
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120824175815101

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bane
Best summary to date (from the bottom of the post in case you missed it)

 _And Dan Gillmor puts it like this, in The Guardian: A home-town jury has
given Apple the world, or at least the United States, in its campaign to
control the smart phone and tablet markets. Samsung, which decisively lost the
highest-profile case to date in Apple's sue-everywhere strategy against the
Android operating system, will surely appeal the verdict handed down the San
Jose, California, federal court on Friday afternoon. And even if Samsung
ultimately has to pay the $1bn judgement, the company can afford it.

But we're likely to see a ban on many mobile devices from Samsung and other
manufacturers in the wake of this case, as an emboldened Apple tries to create
an unprecedented monopoly. If so, the ultimate loser will be competition in
the technology marketplace, with even more power accruing to a company that
already has too much....

Crucially, the jury found none of Apple's patents invalid, despite substantial
evidence that others anticipated many of the innovations that Apple put
together when it released its first iPhone. This is a shame, because Apple's
abuse of our out-of-control patent system has given Apple its chief ammunition
in its global campaign to destroy Google's Android operating system, which
Samsung (and many others) adopted for its smart phones._

~~~
craigvn
The other big winner, Windows Phone.

~~~
antninja
And the default Android. It's Samsung's UI layer that looks too much like the
iPhone.

~~~
bdisraeli
Both the Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus which use the default android UI were
found infringing as well.

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thoughtsimple
I think this shows Groklaw's weakness. The collected hatred for US patent law
blinded PJ and the other reporters from seeing how this trial was really
shaping up. I thought it was pretty clear that Apple was winning handily but
reading Groklaw's coverage would have given the opposite impression. Hindsight
is 20/20 but I never had much doubt that Apple would win this case and I was
generally surprised at the slant from Groklaw.

~~~
y2kenny
Not really. My reading of Groklaw told me that Apple will win for sure but
Samsung will have plenty of grounds to appeal. Today's verdict was not a
surprise at all.

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olalonde
> So the irony is, on the same day, a South Korean court ruled that a South
> Korean company did not copy the US company Apple and a US court ruled that a
> South Korean company did copy the US company Apple.

That's the takeaway here. I'm very skeptical the jury was truly impartial in
this case.

~~~
nmridul
[http://allthingsd.com/20120731/samsung-goes-public-with-
excl...](http://allthingsd.com/20120731/samsung-goes-public-with-excluded-
evidence-to-undercut-apples-design-claims/)

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thomasf1
I´m personally quite conflicted in this case:

Apple has a point that Samsung was copying them. Pure, simple, stupid copying,
not using elements of it and turning it into something new and great.

On the other side, the ways of protection with patents of tiny bits of it is
silly and broken. They are trivial and regard the overall design and should
not be allowed.

Famously the Mac itself is based upon the work of Xerox Parc. To the credit of
Apple and Steve Jobs they put in a lot of work, made many concepts useable and
re-developed the mouse to actually make a consumer product out of it.

For me the morale right or wrong is the following:

 __* make it your own: While heavily using concepts existing prior, you´ll re-
combine them into something way better than the thing you copy: That´s ok for
me, it has creative value.

 __* copy: You simply dumbly copy things line-by-line without even
understanding the basic concepts of why something is great and throw it on the
market at a lower prive: That´s wrong and ripping of the creative work of
others. Samsung to me falls quite clearly into the copy category. I doubt that
they have a deep understanding of UX design and the subtleties what actually
made the iPhone great and delighted the users.

It´s essentially all in the mostly miss-understood Picasso phrase "Good
artists copy, great artists steal.". Although the phrase confusing most people
more than it helps.

 __* moral compass of creatives

It´s got the basics though that has guided the moral compass of creatives: If
you take inspiration from me and turn it into something mind-blowing, it´s ok.
I´m flattered to be a part of it. If you just plain copy my stuff to make
money with it, it´s not ok.

 __* Legal System

The Jury system in the US is actually well suited deciding complex moral
questions and too much fine print hinders more than it heps, which was evident
in this case.

To me, instead of a patent office there should be a central online register to
archive jury-understandable photos and descriptions or ideally videos of the
stuff you do simply to have a validated reference of when you thought of it.

And then patent/IP Law may simply should read soething like this: It is ok to
base any creative work on the work of others as long as the result is
something new and great in it´s own right.

It´s not ok to copy the work of others without significantly improving it
simply for making money.

Done. Plain Language.

Everything else, the moral right or wrong would be left to a Jury with
guidance from a Judge.

Which they basically did in the Apple case. All that patent BS aside, I guess
they descided on the basic morale question and started the paperwork.

(That guess is based on the time it took them to come to the verdict. When
actually reading all the paperwork produced they would have been there years.)

What´s your take?

~~~
heja2009
I really like your proposal and as you said, it is perfectly in line with
creative ethics. However it would not work for the part of innovation that is
further away from end-products and their appearance. Sometimes it is worth a
lot to produce something cheaper by improving the production process. And that
may mainly just mean lower prices. By the way it seems to me that the hugely
increased role of design - such as UX design - is now also reflected in
shifting the economic battles from hardcore technology to something more
"superficial". And I'm using that word neutrally.

~~~
thomasf1
Yea, I´m coming from the creative side... And great companies always had
attention for detail (or for more more "superficial" stuff if you want to put
it that way). The success of that companies (Apple being one of them) clearly
inspired other companies to try harder.

What do you do? I guess more research? If there is something like that in
software...

And how would you approach the patent system?

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cpg
Quoting ...

"Let's give Apple millions," seems to be the attitude.

Like handing a bully reigns of the school yard. Not great for the valley and
technology, it seems.

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keithpeter
"The foreman told a court representative that the jurors had reached a
decision without needing the instructions."

Is this stuff getting too complex for lay juries?

In the UK, there have been serious fraud cases that have collapsed simply
through jury attrition and lack of capability to understand the evidence.

~~~
Karunamon
Wasn't the whole point of having a lay jury that Samsung's copying was so
blatant (they did take the piss on a few of their designs...) that an average
person could confuse one of their devices for an iPhone?

That said, I am not defending in any way this patent law fucktardery that's
gotten us to where they are today.

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hollerith
A sad day.

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ChuckMcM
The point by point of this version is quite useful to see how the verdict
went.

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jim_kaiser
Samsung is one of the least creative companies that ever existed and in my
view a low quality high volume manufacturer. I hate it when companies make no
effort to be good and just produce mediocre products with higher profit
margins. It's no surprise that they copied Apple's UX because they definitely
cannot produce something on their own. They deserve to be punished for being a
player who simply tries to make money off others ideas, using their
distribution muscle and market hold specifically in Asia. Guilty!

~~~
robertskmiles
Except my Samsung Galaxy S II is lighter and thinner than an iPhone 4, with
the same camera, a bigger screen, twice the RAM, and more of the features I
want. And I can develop for it myself without having to go through a middle-
man. Original or not, they're very good phones.

~~~
jim_kaiser
Wow.. a lil bit surprised at the down votes. Guess, I should make it clear,
it's more of a personal opinion. Anyways, I have never been a fan of these
kind of hardware specs when they don't map out to any real difference in
usage. I have never been a fan of apple and their closed eco-system and have
only recently started using apple products as I develop for the iPad. But I do
feel they make products of superior quality.

About the S II, I know there are a lot of fans of it. I have used my friends S
II for a bit, but didn't really find anything exceptional about it. Note, I
had not even used a iPhone at the time, still don't own one. But, Samsung's
product definitely didn't hit the spot. For one, Samsung's font always look
crappy. Even their desktop software to manage the phone looks like its
developed by university students. Anyways, thats just my personal opinion.

Samsung is just evil, a well-oiled business machine. So, I dunno why people
are trying to defend it. Take for example, the fact that only their flagship
models get upgrades to the new android versions and the rest are forced to buy
a new phone to keep up.

I know that they are a major OEM in regards to phone components. And have the
capability to produce high quality components. But when they sacrifice all
that and use inferior materials in their own products to generate higher
profits, it's not something I could agree with.

I agree that I do have some bias against Samsung, but that is because of what
I have known about them from friends who worked there and the general
impression they have in the software industry here in India.

