Apple v. Samsung: Surprises in Latest Court Documents
wired.com
wired.com
1. Apple’s early vision for the iPad [...] were extraordinarily chunky and included a kick-stand
2. Google told Samsung that its devices looked “too similar” to Apple’s iPad. Google demanded “distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad for the P3.”
3. Apple made 23 to 32 percent on gross margins for iPads sold between April 2010 and March 2012.
4. The iPhone design was inspired by a Sony designer talking about "portable electronic devices that lacked buttons and other ‘excessive ornamentation,’ fit in the hand, were ‘square with a screen’ and had ‘corners [which] have been rounded out"
5. Apple researches consumer sentiment on existing products in order to optimize future designs.
Apparently, Apple argues that FRAND patents should be effectively free, estimating that Samsung's standards patents are worth less than 1¢ per device. Whereas, Apple thinks its design patents are worth $24 per device, and their utility patents are another $3 on top of that. Were that to hold, it would eliminate Samsung's profit margin. So, it's hard not to read this as Apple trying to cage viable competitors entirely out of the market through legal maneuvering.
As part of the standards process Samsung has committed to licensing these patterns under Fair, Reasonably and Non-Discrimartory terms, which means they can't ask Apple for a different rate than they give say Motorola or HTC. Because Apple's Design patents are not FRAND they are under no obligation to give anything to Samsung.
Because Samsung's patents are standards essential you can't build a cellphone without needing them (hence the FRAND licensing), while its certainly possible to build a cellphone that doesn't violate Apple's design patents (RIM, Nokia et al don't seem to be getting sued for example). This doesn't mean that Apple is right for suing companies for violating them, but what Samsung is doing is far far worse.
I don't know if the Samsung patents are groundbreaking or not. It could be that there were other similar options the standards committee could have selected but with Samsung in the room the choice with the Samsung patent was made so all implementers need a license.
Big companies often want to get their technology into the standard as that enables them to get a small per unit license fee across large numbers of devices. I know that was the case when I worked at Sony. If Samsung didn't want to make that patent FRAND they could have made it clear during standardisation and I'm sure it would have been left out. If patents in this area don't get into standards they are effectively worthless.
Remember that the a group of competitors sitting in a room discussing future terms of business is either a standards committee or an illegal cartel. The difference is the rules under which they operate to give others access to the market which include the FRAND commitments.
Apple should never have been granted a patent for slide-to-unlock, that's a trivial consequence of using a touchscreen UI.
If the Apple patent is shown to be invalid they won't get anything and Samsung won't have to work around it but whatever the situation there is no value in comparing prices between FRAND and non FRAND patents.
I don't recall any of the tech giants including Google and Samsung campaigning to get rid of whole categories of patents of for other major reforms. I would like patent reform but The law as it exists should be enforced.
Edit: Note that in this and my earlier post I am not commenting on the validity of either sides patents or what exactly the damages or license fees for either should be BUT that there is little value making a comparison between FRAND committed prices and those for any non FRAND prices.
They had enough physical buttons to make button unlock a viable option.
When you have only a touchscreen, the gestures available to you are taps and swipes. Taps easily happen accidentally, so some composition of swipes to unlock is the main obvious remaining option.
Those saying this is a major critical feature (I'm not)that reduces hardware costs and improves product design are really making the case that it is a good patent, novel and useful.
Either the designers didn't think about this approach or thought it wasn't the best solution. If anyone produced such a solution or documented it the patent should be invalidated for prior art.
My initial reaction to the patent was probably that is a bit trivial but better than many that get granted and that there should be plenty of workarounds. The slide to unlock definitely seems obvious once you have seen it but I'm not sure it is so obvious before you have seen it (it's quite hard to unwind your mind to a state of unknowing). You certainly need to asking the right questions: how can we remove all the buttons, how do you prevent it waking too easily.
There is no need for touchscreen phones to go completely buttonless. That is a design choice not an essential feature to exist in the market.
Apple launched into a rampage trying to sue every other viable competitor out of the market for supposed infringement. In defending themselves from these attacks, Apple's victims are responding aggressively with their FRAND patents and whatever else they have (and even then, they're asking for a tiny fraction of what Apple is). Put simply, if you engage in the kind of anti-competitive and bullying behavior that Apple does, and subsidize your own profit margins on the backs of everyone else, then you shouldn't be surprised when everyone else starts swinging back.
Qualcomm already licensed the patents in its chips that they sold to Apple, but then Samsung wanted more because it was Apple. That itself is violating the "non-discriminatory" part of FRAND. How is this Apple's fault?
Also, how do you feel about Samsung asking for 2.4% of the chip price for a single patent when there are so, so many patents that go into making a device like the iPhone? Is that fair?
Edit: Forget about the source, I found some very easily (Google "samsung frand qualcomm"). But still, I think it's quite discriminatory to demand from Apple 2.4% for each patent, especially when these patents are seen as standards for cellphones.
That is the normal case with patents, exclusive rights. When you step into a standards body and offer your technology you give up those rights unless you specifically and clearly declare that you aren't doing so (in which case other options will be chosen by the standards body).
So there are other ways to look at it. Is it fair that Samsung pushed it's technology into a standard and then holds other implementers to ransom or asks them to give up their legal rights to enter the market?
As I say elsewhere I'm not picking sides on the validity of particular patents or what damages or even FRAND license fees should be but I do think it is important that FRAND commitments are given weight and enforced.
For me forced cross licenses and percentages of finished product price are both discriminatory and not FRAND. Even percentage of chip price I have my doubts about as it discourages integration of chips with its hardware and power advantages. This doesn't mean that it must be less than 1c or even $1 but some mechanism to be fair to all patent holders while not pricing the standard out of use needs to be found.
Companies who like to get patent royalties from competitors,
like Apple and Microsoft, and who use patents aggressively,
have noticed that if everyone who was in the mobile phone
business before they were sues them over their patents, they
won't be able to make a phone anyone can afford, so they want
to get the courts to force folks like Samsung and Motorola to
accept less than a penny per handset for their standards
patents, while still charging the regular price for their own
later-issued patents.
Apple's patents are on such basic and obvious product aspects that it's nearly impossible to bring a viable product to market without running afoul. Would Apple's patents be overturned on reexamination? Almost certainly, but only after a long and protracted legal battle. Meanwhile, all it takes for Apple to kneecap their competitors is one injunction delaying the launch of a flagship product, or caging them out of peak holiday shopping season (which Apple did to Samsung last year).
Also the rates that Samsung is asking aren't consistent with other licensees as Samsung is tying the rate to the device rather than the baseband processor that uses the patent. Asking for $25 royalty on a $10 component is unreasonable, especially when said component requires a 100 other standards essential patents to function.
Does a patented oil pump cost more if fitted to a BMW verses a Ford Escort ?
2.4% of $650-$850 (Retail range of Unlocked iPhone 4S) is around $16-$20 per device. Quad-band 3G UMTS modems retail as low as $13 in lots of 1000. That's a full modem not just the UMTS chipset. And trust me Apple is not buying chipsets retail or in lots of 1000.
sources: http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/07/apple-seeks-25-billion-in...
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/571149685/Low_peice_OEM_7_...
I think Samsung can raise invalidity issues in the case before the judge/jury. If Apples patents are deemed invalid then they will get nothing.
The Apple patents that I'm aware of are fairly basic but can be worked around. E.g. by stopping scrolling dead at the end of the range and requiring something other than a swipe to unlock.
FRAND is a commitment made in standardisation to prevent the standards group from being an illegal cartel. That commitment should be kept. But a single company making a patented feature desirable would not trigger antitrust concerns in the general case so they wouldn't have needed to make an FRAND commitment. The potential exception would be for the Microsoft FAT patent because FAR is effectively a standard and while not created by a group of companies Microsoft was a monopolist. This is a rare case when I think FRAND may be appropriate rule for MS to adopt even if not legally require.
Yes the patent system is currently ridiculous and needs to grant far fewer but that is a complaint against the system which I would like to see reformed but you have to play by the rules in force. As I've said in a few posts I don't remember any tech giants (even Google and Samsung) campaigning against the patent system or even software patents. If the rules as they exist are enforced maybe that will change and the big players will want to change the system.
Legally the court will decide but that doesn't mean that we can't have views or that either company is necessarily behaving legally (if you steal something you aren't behaving legally until convicted). For my perspective I am assuming all patents valid (if they are invalidated the license fees are no problem as they will be zero).
Samsung is in my view breaching promises made to the world including me and threatening the whole standardisation process. At the very least everyone needs to understand just how weak FRAND commitments are and adjust their behaviour accordingly. If allowed to stand Samsung's view of FRAND could do massive global harm as it will mean even more desperate fights to keep patented technologies out of standards where the patents are owned by companies not trusted to 'do the right thing' which could lead towards standardisation deadlock. It could also lead to all sorts of other companies all trying to extract all the value of standards making them unaffordable in many use cases.
Compared to this I really can't see anything unfair at all in what Apple is doing. Saying if you want to use this unnecessary feature you have to pay us a lot of money sounds fair to me, you can freely choose not to use it (damages/back licenses before the patents are confirmed by a court should probably be lower). The damages claims are just claims I don't expect to be fully granted but that is just the system isn't it, claim the moon on a stick expecting to get half a stick at the end.
And yes, it's absolutely fair (about the subsidizing). That's how the market voted and that's how the carriers decided to do business. Majority rules here. If you don't like it, then vote with your wallet. Go to T-Mobile.
As a sidenote, I'm currently using a Samsung Galaxy S III on T-Mobile. But I still think what Samsung is doing with FRAND patents is wrong.
Not sticking to the FRAND terms it agreed to is a pretty bad move on Samsung's part. I believe the EU not happy about this development and is already looking into this so the move could blow up in Samsung's face.
Link: http://allthingsd.com/20120726/documents-in-apple-v-samsung-...
Now, of course one can say that the consumer should have paid more attention to the branding, but I think that's missing the point. It seems that for a few (?) people the Galaxy tab looked similar enough to the iPad to cause confusion and that the big box retailer conveyed the message to Samsung.
For example, I've had someone call my original Eee Transformer an iPad. And here we're talking of a device that's a different color (brown), different texture (smooth vs. crosshatched), different shape (16:10 vs. 4:3), and much thicker. Oh, and of course attached to a keyboard...
In those cases, people won't buy a product and return it. Although they refer to a vacuum cleaner as a "Hoover", they go in knowing fully well that they are buying a product that does what a "Hoover" does, i.e. pick up dust. Here people didn't go in wanting an iPad-esque product and buying a product in the same category, but rather they mistook it to be the iPad. Pardon me if this seems a little circuitous, having trouble with words today :)
I really don't appreciate this linguistic trend in the tech community to turn verbs into nouns in a non-standard, ad hoc way when perfectly fine nouns exist. I (unfortunately) hear it with "ask" fairly frequently at work, and it makes me feel like Jules from Pulp Fiction ("Use 'ask' as a noun again, I dare you...")
Can anyone shed some linguistic light on this trend?
Which is slightly different from “revelation”, though I agree with you that “revelation” is better word in this context.
Just thought I'd share this in case you're still reading the thread... I can't even reply to your hellbanned comments alas.
If anything, I would say this place is a little too full of apple fanboys, not the other way around. Get a grip on reality.