Samsung to pay Apple $548M in patent dispute | Hacker News Reader

Samsung to pay Apple $548M in patent dispute

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95 pointstosseraccount45 comments

It's like taking a cup of water from sea and pouring it in ocean.

That's a good idea to stop rising sea levels. If everyone just chips in and fills a bucket with ocean water and then tips it down the drain at home it will be lower in no time.

Does it hurt for Samsung at all to loose this money? Surely it it is 548M$ lost which could have been used otherwise, but in the big picture is it like a needle sting or a blast with a hammer?

Also, how is this kind of money generally paid? They just wire more than half a billion to Apple? Send it over in cash? In gold? Do they get an invoice?

Its a drop in the bucket really. Samsung's revenues run around 4 billion per quarter and you also have to keep in mind they're not like Apple where they're only in one industry - they have a ton of products across a spectrum of industries.

source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/298704/samsung-quarterly-...

Also, I just read the book "Haunted Empire" which detailed the Apple v. Samsung battle in pretty good detail, it's an excellent read: http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Empire-Apple-After-Steve/dp/00...

It's interesting that at the same time as coming to an agreement to partly settle, they're disputing whether Samsung should be reimbursed if the court reverses the partial judgement. This might be as simple as the two companies agreeing to publicly disagree on that point. My previous impression of this type of situation was that the companies involved would be more rigid about the terms of settlement. Another possibility is that neither of them can decide, and that reimbursement part is actually up to the court.

there was a partial final judgement that samsung has to pay a certain amount, and were denied not having them pay.

so the statement is.

samsung forking over certain amount to apple apple receiving a certain amount. samsung still thinks it doesnt owe a cent(especially since atleast one patent has been invalidated already and possibly a 2nd one now) and says its owed the money back if they win appeal. likely taking to supreme court (requested whole trial reviews).

apple noted it doesnt think samsung should get any money back if the courts change their mind.

a bit more info: http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/12/samsung-announces-payment...

samsung paid while still saying they are in the right, i believe they "settled" to avoid any fines and continued device blocks.

A drop in the bucket for Apple. It is more about the principle I suppose, more so than the cash.

It was the same way with Samsung. Both companies dug in and essentially went to war with each other. Most people think it was Jobs' famous, "thermonuclear" comment that set the Samsung CEO off.

Over the past decade both companies have been attempting to amass more and more patents to use against each other. Both have had limited success against each other in court. When one wins a victory, it's overturned somewhere else on appeal, or judgements are significantly reduced.

Honestly, it's a total stalemate. Apple's suing over products that have been outdated for more than a decade. Samsung has already changed their design to avoid any more of Apple's patents, making any future litigation impossible.

> Samsung has already changed their design to avoid any more of Apple's patents, making any future litigation impossible.

All the comments about the dollar value of this suit are missing this point. I would assume Apple cares much more about sending a message to Samsung and others that they feel are simply copying their innovations. And if it gets their competitors to change their behavior and differentiate themselves, then the lawsuits are probably worth Apple's investment.

>> And if it gets their competitors to change their behavior and differentiate themselves, then the lawsuits are probably worth Apple's investment.

While this is true, a lot of people have questioned if fighting all these patent battles on different fronts have allowed Android and Microsoft to catch up and pass them - stunting the companies ability to "make great products our customers want."

When you look at what they've done since Jobs has been gone, they really haven't had another groundbreaking product - all "innovations" have been incremental. Even their 6s which finally came with a larger (4.7) screen was released this year. By comparison, The Galaxy SIII and the Nexus 4 with the same size screen was released in 2012, 3 years before Apple finally went to a larger screen.

The company has been taking hits from wall street all year as well - this was a report back in August:

Apple's earnings were good. But Wall Street was disappointed that iPhone sales were a little lower than expected. Its outlook was also less bullish than what analysts were predicting.

There are concerns that Apple may be losing ground in China, an increasingly important market for the company. China accounted for more than 25% of the company's total sales in its most recent quarter.

Tech research firm Canalys reported Tuesday that Apple, which had the smartphone market share lead in China during the first quarter, slipped to third in the second quarter. Apple is now trailing Chinese tech companies Xiaomi and Huawei.

And. . .

"Can Apple find new geographies to drive growth? Probably not. Will they be able to lift the average selling price? Probably not. Are they dependent on the iPhone? Yes. There's only so much room to grow," Gillis said.

Gillis said investors want to see the company develop more products that can keep revenue and profits growing in the future.

It can't rely on the iPhone forever. The jury is out on whether the Apple Watch will ever be more than just a niche product.

The pressure to keep churning out hot new gadgets may be keeping some investors on the sidelines as well.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/04/investing/apple-stock-down-i...

Apple's not that big on principle as I recall. Remember the Xerox PARC visit, then Apple trying to sue Microsoft for stuff they stole then licensed?

Why would Samsung expend the effort to argue the seemingly obvious concept that if the verdict is overturned, the awarded damages should be returned? Apple's position appears to be standard, in claiming victory, and dismissing the possibility that any higher court will come to a different conclusion, thereby refusing to entertain that damages would _need_ to be returned.

Under what circumstances would Apple be entitled to keep monetary damages, if, in fact, a higher court reverses the current decision?

It's a settlement so in most cases this would be the end of it and there should be no higher court ruling. But in reality Samsung is still pursing an end around via the USPTO.

>on some technology and packaging patents for devices.

That's not very informative. What patents are we talking about exactly ?

Will they actually pay Apple in trucks full of coins this time?

I don’t know about other jurisdictions, but in Canada there is actually a law in place that allows the receiver of a payment to refuse more than a certain amount of the payment in coins.

A quick googling turns up this Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender

The net-net is that an armoured truck full of coins is not necessarily “legal tender” in every country.

Measuring how smartphone profits are distributed across makers should take instances of patent litigation, like this one, into account.

I wonder if this less than the total lawyer fees from nearly a decade of litigatiom?

I think this article from 2013 is telling:

The Verge: Apple paid its lawyers over $60 million to beat Samsung in court http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5182736/apple-paid-its-law...

Apple: "Samsung willfully stole our ideas and copied our products.”"

Apple has forced developers off its own iOS ecosystem by removing their app from the store then introducing its features in the next iOS upgrades. Hypocrites.

Prediction: Within 10 years Alphabet will be in a position to buy Apple.

Haha, I like this statement. BTW I'm curious. Humour me, What do you see happening in the not too distant future

Don't get me wrong, my personal take on this is not based on anything about these 2 companies except what is exposed via press releases and news.

These days it seems to happen quite often that when I read about what's happening at Google I'm genuinely amazed. And so often when I read about what's happening at Apple I'm underwhelmed or disappointed.

Not that things can't change, but my impression is the entire core culture / trajectory of Apple will take many years to change even if they decided to start today. My hunch is they won't, and will end up paying the price for it.

"Not that things can't change, but my impression is the entire core culture / trajectory of Apple will take many years to change even if they decided to start today."

You are aware they are the most valuable company in the world? I'd say they are probably hoping that trajectory doesn't change...

I totally get it. Sounds like a crazy prediction. I don't try to make predictions all the time, but am always interested in how accurate they were, and so all I can say is I've added a date on my calendar ~10 years from now and so you can rest assured that I'll learn either way whether I was right or wrong.

You miss my point, I am saying their current trajectory is to become more and more successful. They do not want to 'turn around' at all.

I think I get the point. Still doesn't change my perspective / prediction.

It's not that long since you could have made the same statement you just made about Microsoft, and that changed in just a few years.

Out of curiosity, what precisely are you amazed by? Google's ability to think of ideas and then repeatedly never make them into products?

I think you need to recall that when Apple starts up major new products, you don't get to "read about what's happening" about them. Because Apple doesn't tell anyone. And then they ship. Google is the opposite: they tell everyone a lot, and then they never ship.

Nearly all of Google's revenue comes from online ads. They are going to need to sell a LOT of online ads to catch Apple. I would not count on that happening.

Apple's culture doesn't need changing. It's working just fine.

well that should keep apple from going bankrupt for another year or two.

ridiculous though that a company that basically does nothing but buy things from other companies and puts them in a shiny box should be allowed to win and lose cases like this IMHO.

annoying we have to wait for 2021 for all the obvious patents granted during the dot com bubble to expire.

That's not the point of the cases even to win lawsuits it's to remove features from other people's products.

Apple is anything but a commodity assembler. In fact that's what distinguishes it from its competitors in most markets. Most people are upset with Apple for the opposite - choosing to create from scratch proprietary software and hardware standards instead of choosing commodity options.

Many of the ideas they assembled into the iPhone were derivative of work done by others in academia and private companies, especially the things they sued Samsung for. Maybe that's what the OP was getting at.

Well yeah, that's true in just about every industry. Everything from biotech to nuclear reactors have a technology flow like that.

I don't own any Apple products (at least not nowadays), but they are really good at recognizing what upcoming tech has potential, buying it and then packaging it in a way that makes it appealing to consumers. They may not have invented many of the things they sell, but they definitely helped to popularize a ton of things that we take for granted now.

Smartphones are a good example. They existed before the iPhone (I remember the days of ye olden Palm Treo), but they weren't something the average person really cared about or wanted until the iPhone came around. Now, I won't go so far as to say that we wouldn't have smartphones like we do now without the iPhone as I think largely that it was just about the right time that smart phones were really becoming technically feasible, but Apple still deserves credit for being the ones who were there first with the pieces put together into a product that finally made people want one. Though I also remember the strange delusion they seemed to have had with the original iPhone pre-App Store that people would be OK with just HTML "apps", but that's a different tale.

this is for their "design patents" issued in 2007.

which can basically be described as "a phone as a box with a touchscreen and no keyboard"

all they "make" is the box. they don't own the rights to any of the parts inside it (although they do have exclusive distribution rights for the versions of the components they put in the box)

OK they write their own firmware for those boxes. but none of that is actually that good. anyone using their latest kit knows their phones don't even work that good as a phone.

apple as a company won't survive past the last of Steve jobs patents expiring. which is no later than 2028.

Just so we're clear the $548 million they got is roughly equal to the profit they made in 4.5 days last quarter.

Apple designs the best mobile CPUs in the industry. They're years ahead of Qualcomm and the rest. They have some of the best hardware and software engineers on the planet.

You just have no idea what you're talking about.

Apple is one of the richest companies! what makes you think they are going bankrupt?

Sarcasm, bro.

I would think so if it was just the first line. The whole rant about patent does not indicate it is sarcasm.

apple got rich from this patent. aka the phone with only a screen patent. it expires in 2028.

if it is overturned before that they won't last that long.

downsizing is never pretty.

> company that basically does nothing but buy things from other companies and puts them in a shiny box

I think you are referring to samsung or other company building screens or other parts for apple, you have to realize that apple is the one who develops specs and ideas for these things to be built and is only using Samsung and LG for their manufacturing resources because they are leaders in actual manufacturing.

It's like praising a construction workers for building a bridge that was designed by a extremely talented engineer, all the praise for designing a functional bridge should go to the engineer who designed it. It's easy to follow instructions, it's incredibly hard to come up with something that was never done before and create specs for a construction worker (samsung factory) to actually build it.

if you want to use the construction analogy.

praising apple for making good phones is like praising Franklin D. Roosevelt for building a dam.

Equating contract manufacturing to construction work is just a tiny bit inaccurate.

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