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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

Totally, but not for Samsung. That's almost 10% of their net profit last year.

This is going to scare the shit out of every Android handset maker out there.

Which in my opinion is a good thing. Everyone should think twice before blatantly imitating the result of other people's investments and hard work.

Edit: the downvotes do not surprise me. HN has a very anti-Apple slant.

If you think your downvotes are due to an anti-apple bias, you might want to reword your banal dismissal into meaningful critique of the situation. If HN has a bias, it's towards Apple (which is completely understandable given the state of mobile adoption by startups).

Banal dismissal? Excuse me? How else would you describe what Samsung did, if not as "imitation"? Their own product engineers recommended shamelessly copying Aplle's design to make Samsung phones look identical.

My earlier suggestion upthread explained in 4 words: more light, less heat.

You should be happy that he actually took the time to respond to an un-intelligent troll like you instead of saying something simple like 'GFYS'. Now don't ask me what that means or it would be embarrassing for you.

Everyone should think twice before blatantly imitating the result of other people's investments and hard work.

Kind of sounds like what Apple does as well. I'm reminded of:

http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix.ht...

....are you reading the same HN I am?

"HN has a very anti-Apple slant."

How so?

So, even if lose their appeal, they give up a months profit and are still one of the leading smart phone manufacturers in the world. Still seems a far better outcome for Samsung than being RIM or Nokia.

Only 10% of a single year's profit. That is a bargain to become the clear number 2 in smartphones globally over several years and be one of the two companies making massive profits in the market.

Clearly HTC, Motorola and Sony did not infringe enough!

[I realise that copying may not be the only reason behind Samsungs success. They do make very nice hardware very efficiently.]

Don't get worked up, they will never pay this. This case will now spend years in appeals courts, damages will be reduced or thrown out, etc.

The only real loss here for Samsung is legal fees and the fear of an injunction on sales during the appeals process, but I don't think a Jury gets to decide that.

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