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muontrack
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Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:30 am

I did some preliminary searching on the forums and couldn't find anything on this topic (which I believe is important). Apple has, again, stomped hard on its competition. I own a GT 10.1 myself...words cannot express my frustration. The greatest irony comes from the horse's mouth: "...we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas" - Apple spokeswoman.

I've been an avid TR reader for a few years now, and I tend to lurk silently over the great content here. The article might be old news to everyone, but I was compelled to share.
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:44 am

The answer is simple: Don't buy products from companies that wield our messed up patent system as a blunt instrument, and do whatever you can to educate others about the issue.

If this thread is any indication, it sounds like you're already doing your part. Assuming, of course, that you don't have a house full of Apple products in addition to your GT 10.1... :wink:
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:52 am

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ludi
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 2:20 am

Some points/counterpoints:

1. This is an injunction against the Tab, but not the Tab2, which is already on the market.

2. The injunction may be overturned on appeal, and in any case, Samsung hasn't exactly been topping the sales charts, so the financial impact until then is probably very low.

3. Apple's original request in December 2011 was denied by the same judge while this one was granted, and Apple has just won similar preliminary injunctions in Germany and Australia, so whatever the alleged findings of fact are, they're probably pretty strong (I haven't read the court's opinion, and I'm having trouble finding the patent ATM or I would definitely read it).

4. The Tab isn't just a tablet the way the iPad is just a tablet, they pretty much replicated the entire front bezel design and color scheme, which is pretty impressive considering that the Tab has a matte black rear surface relative to the iPad's continuous silver finish, and thus the only evident reason for the silver trim ring on the Tab is...it looks iPad-ish. My HP Touchpad is a tablet with a black bezel and still manages to look nothing like an iPad.

All of that said, I am of the notion that design patents on trivial appearance differences need to die in a blue fire. For design differences that enable a non-obvious change in appearance or function, I have no objection; but a design difference that traces back to a GUI layout of child-safe colored icons and a piece of painted plastic that could have been manufactured on a whim by any of a hundred different factories in Shenzhen, that's starting to get obnoxious.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 2:44 am

Apple is trying to prevent the "PC Clone" massacre that happened back in late 1980s that practically killed their marketshare.

They know it is only a matter of time before the "iPad clones" will begin to overtake the whole iPad craze. It is already happening to iPhone in the smartphone arena.
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Chrispy_
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 8:50 am

US Patent system: Irrelevant outside the US.
Its a shame your politicians are so slow to fix such a useless and regularly abused tool. It actually works today in a way that is almost tangential to the original intent, doing far more harm than it could ever hope to nullify with valid patent cases.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:53 am

Chrispy_ wrote:
US Patent system: Irrelevant outside the US.
Its a shame your politicians are so slow to fix such a useless and regularly abused tool. It actually works today in a way that is almost tangential to the original intent, doing far more harm than it could ever hope to nullify with valid patent cases.

Are the German and Australian patent systems irrelevant too?
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:04 am

Outside of their countries, yes.
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kumori
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:21 am

Samsung really is the worst offender when it comes to blatant mimicking of Apple's design in the mobile arena. Not just the Galaxy 10.1, but also Galaxy SII which, outside the U.S., had the button configuration and design that made it look as much like the iPhone as possible.

Rather than mimicking Apple, I wish that more manufactures would come up with their own designs.
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 1:26 pm

Chrispy_ wrote:
US Patent system: Irrelevant outside the US.

You wish. There are systems in place that attempt to harmonize major portions of the various western patent and trademarking systems as part of broader international law and trade agreements, so the ripple effect once the cases finish moving through the courts could be broader than you anticipate.

Anyway, these preliminary injunctions are exactly that: preliminary, not final. It's also worth noting that the claimant often has to put up collateral security when the preliminary injunction is granted, which then compensates the defendant if the injunction is overturned on appeal.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 2:36 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Outside of their countries, yes.

Then all patents are irrelevant, which makes his post the epitome of pointless.
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 2:51 pm

Chrispy_ wrote:
US Patent system: Irrelevant outside the US.
That's not true. I don't know where I read this, but many countries around the world base their patent systems on the U.S. patent system and U.S. court rulings on patents due to the U.S. global market / financial / trade importance.
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 3:26 pm

They've also got an injunction on the Galaxy Nexus, and probably the Samsung Galaxy SIII soon enough.

The USPTO is archaic when applied to software (which is what most of this litigation is about). At least one US judge (the one who through out the Apple vs Moto case a while ago) thinks that perhaps patents shouldn't apply to software
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:31 pm

flip-mode wrote:
Chrispy_ wrote:
US Patent system: Irrelevant outside the US.
That's not true. I don't know where I read this, but many countries around the world base their patent systems on the U.S. patent system and U.S. court rulings on patents due to the U.S. global market / financial / trade importance.


There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of products on store shelves throughout Europe that violate Apple patents, because Apple patents things like a touch swipe, basic shapes like wedges and rectangles, and all kinds of stupid sh*t that we've seen over here long before Apple was resurrected from the grave by Steve "RDF" Jobs. In short, stuff gets done over here without the legal squabling over irrelevant crap that blights everything in the US. This may be an antagonistic statement but deep down you know it's true and resent it as much as the next guy. Just dig up stats on profession breakdown per capita by country and you'll go boggle-eyed when you see just what percentage of Americans earn a living via the legal system in some way; It's orders of magnitude higher than everywhere elseon the planet. (I was taught this at secondary school, by the way as an example during an economics class. We even study the reasons why Asia ignores US patents and copies stuff.)

I think the main thing you don't realise is that U.S. global market / financial /trade importance isn't of much value over here in Europe. The dollar is devalued, the US is a long, expensive way to ship stuff, and with the possible exception of Apple, relatively little from the US makes its way over to our European markets; Fashion, automotive, technology, culture and food markets in Europe are almost completely devoid of American competition over here. About the only thing we really see from the US is a few big-budget TV shows.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:38 pm

cynan wrote:
At least one US judge (the one who through out the Apple vs Moto case a while ago) thinks that perhaps patents shouldn't apply to software


Judge Posner is hugely influential so this might actually signal a coming change in patent law.
 
ludi
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Thu Jul 12, 2012 2:10 am

Chrispy_ wrote:
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of products on store shelves throughout Europe that violate Apple patents, because Apple patents things like a touch swipe, basic shapes like wedges and rectangles, and all kinds of stupid **** that we've seen over here long before Apple was resurrected from the grave by Steve "RDF" Jobs. In short, stuff gets done over here without the legal squabling over irrelevant crap that blights everything in the US. This may be an antagonistic statement but deep down you know it's true and resent it as much as the next guy. Just dig up stats on profession breakdown per capita by country and you'll go boggle-eyed when you see just what percentage of Americans earn a living via the legal system in some way; It's orders of magnitude higher than everywhere elseon the planet.

That's an awfully sloppy view of intellectual property law. First, strong intellectual property protections are a set of trade-offs, not a universal bane. Much of the EU-member countries and Japan are synchronized or operate very similarly to the US system in terms of what can be protected and how; they mostly just differ around the margins of what can or cannot be protected, and vary somewhat on methods of enforcement. IIRC you're in the UK, and if so you may be a bit behind on what the Continent & Friends are actually doing, but as noted above Apple won similar injunctions on this same product in both Germany and Australia, which suggests the design-copying claims are (a) protected in more countries than just this one and (b) have some merit.

In terms of business law, we find it equally strange that the UK has such generous provisions to the claimant for libel and slander, and that bankruptcy proceedings are extremely generous to the debtor and nearly always involve liquidation, but we have no need to describe that as a "blight" upon the UK; it's just a different way of doing business and it has its own set of tradeoffs.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Thu Jul 12, 2012 5:36 am

I spend half my time in the UK, and the rest on the continent, though largely France.

Let us be crystal clear though, I am not saying I endorse or approve of the blatant ignorance of US patents by the rest of the world, nor do I claim that anywhere in Europe doesn't have its own legislative stupidity. My point is that there should be a middle ground; US patents (in particular, those from Apple) are ignored because they're so unrealistic and greedy. Sometimes they have merit, but Apple 'cry wolf' and attempt to secure ridiculous patents so often that absolutely nobody outside of the US cares anymore. The merest hint of prior art (eg wedge-shape laptop, swipe lock, rectangular touchscreen interface) is enough to go ahead with production regardless of the patent and everyone knows it will fall apart if used in any courts in Europe. Apple's only successful lawsuits are based on utterly trivial details that involve easy-to-correct software workarounds. The best they've managed so far is a temporary ban of one sub-product from one of the dozen suppliers in only one or two countries; 99% of trade goes on unaffected and if people can't get it because Apple don't want them to have it, it makes it only more desirable - "It must be better than Apple if Apple are trying to ban it".
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ludi
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:08 am

To be clear, in a past life I performed teardowns of laptops and other high-tech electronica to assemble evidence of infringement and also read a lot of patents, and as a result, I'm not a fan of software and business process patents at all. I would like to see those eliminated entirely -- not because all uses thereof are invalid, but because they're too easy to abuse and I can't think of a way to reform them that is less costly than elimination. I also think design patents could use a fair bit more scrutiny and restrictions. However that does have the tradeoff of moving the debate from the courts, where any man can have his day, to a regulator who can be somewhat unaccountable and arbitrary.

On the other hand, a lot of Apple's "ridiculous" patents are the same defensive patenting that everyone else finds necessary in the present IP climate, and AFAICT Apple has not been one of the trolls. They have generally kept their hand close and low and mostly used it to defend attacks from others, whether legal challenges or blatant design copying, knowing that success in the mobile communications space was going to attract a lot of attention from established players with 10 or 15 years of previous experience (and active intellectual property). That's just good business strategy.

I'm having a lot of trouble working up any sympathy for Samsung in this particular case. They have design experience spanning multiple industries and a great depth of resources, both internal and by alliance. Yet instead of coming up with something original the world might want to buy they've copied Apple designs pretty blatantly on multiple products, right down to distinctive buttons and trim pieces. That's a classic example of a behavior the patenting system was intended to defend against, and a bit of a mild spanking might get them properly refocused.
Last edited by ludi on Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:11 am

Someone posted on the front page yesterday that Apple has filed 60% of patent lawsuits about mobile technology.

That sounds like patent trolling to me.
 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:15 am

BobbinThreadbare wrote:
Someone posted on the front page yesterday that Apple has filed 60% of patent lawsuits about mobile technology.

Sure, and 114% of people believe random statistics they're quoted on the Internet.

In fact that 60% does sound plausible, but IIRC that same person was challenged to provide a source that discriminated between patent lawsuits Apple was involved with versus lawsuits Apple had initiated, and never came up with anything. In any case even if Apple had initiated all of them that's not evidence of trolling without more context to clarify how and why the challenges were raised. Apple has one of the most successful industrial design aesthetics in the history of ever, and other players have been frantically tripping over themselves to copy it.
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muontrack
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Sat Jul 14, 2012 7:48 pm

 
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Sun Jul 15, 2012 7:55 pm

The saga will always continue. Apple plays really really dirty; people who believe otherwise are ignorant, in the true sense of the word.
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Re: Samsung GT 10.1 Banned in US

Sun Jul 15, 2012 8:38 pm

I'd just like to thank ludi for taking the road less travelled here and objectively looking at this issue; avoiding the (usually) ill-informed Apple bashing routine. Well presented arguments.
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