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from the winner-will-win-wonga-in-the-form-of-won dept.
A Reuters story continues with news of the on-going litigation between Apple and Samsung:
Apple and Samsung return to federal court on Tuesday for opening statements in their latest patent battle, with the iPhone maker expected to present more detailed evidence in its attempt to win a U.S. ban on sales of several Samsung smartphones.
Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been litigating around the world for nearly three years. Jurors awarded the iPhone maker about $930 million after a 2012 trial in San Jose, California, but Apple failed to persuade U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to issue a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung phones.A sales ban would be a far more serious threat to Samsung, which earned $7.7 billion in the quarter that ended in December. Samsung's mobile division, which includes smartphones, generated operating profit of 5.47 trillion won ($5.1 billion).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Tuesday April 01 2014, @09:48PM
I find it interesting how the Apple folks seem to be coveting and putting onto a golden pedestal this patent that they have called "Slide to unlock". I mean, seriously, given a screensaver/screen lock on a phone where the only real input IS THE SCREEN, how else is one supposed to unlock it? Even the android passwordy-slidey-gesturey-thing is sliding your finger around the screen to unlock it. Sort of makes more sense than sliding to open the screensaver and THEN putting in a password on a number pad - but it is still sliding to unlock.
It's almost like everyone having doors, but apple claiming that they have a patent for a thing called a "doorlock" and anyone is free to install a "doorlock" but their patent gives them exclusive right to use a "key" to "unlock" this "doorlock".... Gah!
It's all pathetic, given that phones these days are almost treated like accessories, they may as well adopt how fashion treats copyright and patents [youtube.com] and see how much good it will do consumers. Seriously though, watch that TED talk, it is really fantastic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:13PM
They'd be presented with a button on each corner of the screen and told to tap one then the other... just like the previous generation of phones did on the keypad. You know.. the most obvious way of doing it when you don't have several years of hindsight telling you slide-to-unlock is one true way.
Well lookie at that, the patent system caused an innovation. Next thing you know people will start coming out of the woodwork claiming that there's a bazillion different unlock screens in the Google Play store that are 'better than slide-to-unlock'.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by NullPtr on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:53AM
I slide to unlock my front door. How much innovation went into "do an electronic version of it"? Sounds like 2 seconds work. Was the recycle bin also covered? Does the developer of the first chess game own chess? I can understand a new, computer-only game (doom, manic miner, whatever) being worthy of protection in some way for an amount of time, but slide to unlock? How was that not laughed out of court?
(Score: 1) by BasilBrush on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:26AM
There were a decade of smartphones before the iPhone. And at least 5 years of touch screen smartphones. If it was so obvious why did none of them do it before Apple?
And why since Apple did is has it suddenly become so irreplaceable for the copiers like Google and Samsung?
It's easy to claim obviousness after someone's already demonstrated it. It's rather more difficult to be the first to actually do it.