U.S. jury clears Apple of infringing wireless tech patents

Apple wins Wireless Transmission Patent Infringement Lawsuit against Canadian Patent Troll firm in the Rocket Docket in Tyler, Texas — PING!

Apple Wins Rocket Docket
Infringement Law Suit Ping!

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Curious how is this different than Apple suing Samsung over rounded corners? Honest question.

You’ll have to be rich enough to pay lawyers their big fees for the answer to that one ... LOL ...

Funny. I know some people won’t see me as asking this in a serious honest discussion topic way, but I honestly am scratching my head over the difference.

My guess is because Apple actually produces something so it’s seen as “OK” to sue over rounded corners. But a company that just buys patents than sues to enforce them is seen as trolling.

Wouldn’t both be wrong? I mean either the patent is legit and needs to be defended or it needs to be scrapped.

Oh, no! Here we go again.

I have always wondered why both prosecutors and defense attorneys select people with no knowledge of the case even in the most remote way for criminal or civil cases.

IF that is still the case then how in the world can an ignorant jury make decisions about patent law?

My wife, for example, was not chosen for a jury because I was a technical writer and she had absolutely no idea what I was doing! There is something rotten in Denmark! ROFL

Another mind-boggling curiosity in our ‘justice system’. ;-)

Note to Swordmaker: These comments are in no way intended to find fault with Apple, OK? These comments are about the justice system and the justice system only. ;-)

Curious how is this different than Apple suing Samsung over rounded corners? Honest question.

Apple was granted a DESIGN PATENT, in which "rounded corners" were part of the descriptive specification, not actually themselves patented, but merely part of the patent which is required for the patent to be valid.

A design patent is completely different from a Utility Patent. It is more akin to a TradeMark. . . and Trade Dress. It is intended to protect the look and feel of a product from other products made to deliberately confuse the public by looking like an iconic product. Merely adding minor changes or changes in or adding labeling does not protect the infringer from charges of infringement. The law is quite specific on that. It IS the overall look and feel, not size, not labels, but look and feel that are being protected with a design patent. Design patents are what are used by companies which have a distinctive look for their products. . . i.e. the Golden Arches of McDonalds.

They differ from a Logo, which would be TradeMark-able to be used on a sign, but not for the design of a building style. For a building it would be a Design Patent. Another example would be the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile. Design Patents are also awarded for distinctive designs for Consumer products that would not be copyrighted.

Apple was suing for both Design Patents and Utility Patents and won on both. . . for a total of over $900 million. Samsung purchased some additional patents because most of their patents they could have used in trial were SEPs and couldn't be used, and sued on picayune things. . . and won one minor infringement for $19 million against Apple on their countersuit with their purchased patents. Four years later, Samsung is still Appealing the judgement.

Samsung ran a concentrated FUD campaign during the trial, attempting to get public sympathy for their position, in which they used identical talking points in every press release they sent out, falsely claiming that Apple had patented "Rectangles" with "rounded corners". At the same time as the trial, Samsung was PAYING pundits to spread their talking points, that Apple was merely suing because they had "'patented' rectangles and rounded corners". . . when those were factually part of the descriptive language a DESIGN PATENT REQUIRES must have, along with drawings, to fully describe what the design is all about. The pundits never bothered to tell their readers the truth about the patent. . . and the differences between utility patents and design patents.

However, what Apple was suing Samsung about was they were making their phones look and function as much as possible like the iPhone. . . and Apple had "smoking gun" evidence in the form of a 125 page memo from Samsung's top management to their design department about what their third Android phone, the first Galaxy model, HAD to include with each and every point in that memo referencing the iPhone, with drawings and photos saying things "we want it to look like this" and "it has to include this" and "it has to do this". Apple was suing Samsung for making a phone that was so identical to the iPhone that it even shared almost identical packaging (it was exactly the same size and color), a charging brick that differed only in color, and even the advertising was so similar you could set them side-by-side and have difficulty distinguishing one from the other.

Here is a satirical photo array, with tongue firmly in cheek of Samsung's products of the period, showing the irony of Samsung's claim that they are "not copying Apple's products":

The 30 pin connector used on the original iPhone and iPad were patented by Apple. . . but there is Samsung copying them pin for pin and exact dimensions. . . everything except color and the length of the cable relief. Apple was forced by Judge Koh to drop that claim along with many others from the lawsuit to "stream line" the lawsuit to make it easier on her to try. She required Apple to drop the dozens of infringement claims to just six. This is justice?

The patents brought against Apple in the suit in this thread were Standards Essential Utility Patents (SEPs) once held by Nokia under Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing rules, which required that they be licensed to all Cellular Phone manufacturers pay similar but separately negotiated FRAND license fees to use. If a the license holder refuses to license the SEP patents at a FRAND rate, the manufacturer, under the standard setting agency rules is free to use the SE patents until a court sets a FRAND rate. They cannot be held to be infringing the patent under the contract BOTH signed.

Here we have a third party who has acquired these patents from Microsoft who acquired them from Nokia, who has decided they are NOT BOUND by the FRAND contract. . . and wants to do what is called a Patent Hold-Up, demanding far more than FRAND rates from Apple. Apple, relying on the contract from the Standards Agency under which these patents were registered as ESSENTIAL, went ahead and used them. . . and waited for the courts to enforce the contract. ONLY IN THE UNITED STATES can a SEP patent holder bring an infringement lawsuit due to a recent erroneous ruling. . . perhaps the jury's decision in this case is the beginning of the reversal of that ruling.

When Samsung and Motorola attempted the same thing in Europe's Courts three years ago, they were slapped down. . . and Samsung was brought under severe investigation by the Europe's equivalent of our Federal Trade Commission with the power to fine them ALL of their World Wide Profits for one year for Restraint of Trade—they were talking about a $16-20 BILLION Euro fine!—for bringing Standard Essential Patents as infringing patents in a German Court despite the contracts they had signed with the Standards Setting organizations. Samsung barely squeaked by on that one, paying a far smaller fine and promising to never bring such a case again in Europe. . . but they continued their similar cases in the US. Motorola saw what was happening to Samsung and withdrew all of their SEP lawsuits cases.

Note to Swordmaker: These comments are in no way intended to find fault with Apple, OK? These comments are about the justice system and the justice system only. ;-)

Actually, in general, I agree with you. The Apple v. Samsung case in Santa Clara California actually had some tech people on it. Being in that area, it was hard to exclude them, although Samsung desperately tried to do so. I think in that instance, even though Judge Lucy Koh is a South Korean American who made some very questionable rulings favoring Samsung, they made a correct conclusion that Samsung infringed Apple's patents and awarded Apple 1.4 Billion, which Koh reduced judicially to just over $900 million, claiming the jury erred in their damages calculations.

When Koh grabbed the next Apple v. Samsung case (volunteered to try it in her court) she again made rulings that were beneficial to Samsung and although Apple won the case, the Jury's monetary award that should have been much higher, was very small because of her rulings and instructions, and exclusion of Apple's economic experts. Apple is appealing to the Ninth Circus Court of Clowns. We shall see what they come in with.

Then there was the eBook farce of a trial by judge only. . . Where Judge Cote announced before the trial began that she had already made her decision and proceeded to exclude Apple's expert witnesses and allow the Government's not-so-expert witness to get away with the most absurd statements. She even admitted that 7/8ths of her 168 page decision was written before the trial started. . . and found Apple guilty of collusion in price fixing of ebook pricing and monopolistic practices. . . despite at the time of the "offenses" Apple had between ZERO and 10% of the ebook market and the true Monopolist Amazon had 90% of the market and WAS fixing prices. That case just finished the oral arguments on appeal and the three judge panel was VERY critical of the government's position, case, and of Judge Cote's judicial decisions and grasp of the law.

despite at the time of the "offenses" Apple had between ZERO and 10% of the ebook market and the true Monopolist Amazon had 90% of the market and WAS fixing prices.

I'll give you that point. And that's one thing I always said was unfair with monopoly laws. For example, Microsoft was tried and convicted based on behavior BEFORE they were deemed a monopoly by the courts.

The system should first have to rule you are now considered a monopoly and you need to act accordingly. Because I can personally try to fix book prices for those that use my device and tie in software to my OS that I just created and it's perfectly legal. But when I get to be the major player in the market it *may* not be legal. So there should be a process that says...he big corporation you're now a monopoloy. And that's the ONLY thing that can be done to a company at first...any actions that occurred before then our perfectly legal, but actions after that ruling are subject to lawsuit.

You are wrong there. That monopolist behavior is what brings a business into court for the court to rule that the business is a monopoly. . . and then punished for those practices that made them a monopoly. There are some well established understandings of market levels at which monopoly rules should start being applied. A company such as Amazon, which dominates certain markets such as e-books, where it had a 90% monopoly of that market, was just such a condition. . . and Amazon was using its position to dictate market terms, which by definition met every condition of monopolistic practices. . . and should have had the Justice Department come down on Amazon like a ton of proverbial bricks.

However, they did not, instead claiming they did a non-existent, never seen investigation clearing them of any wrong doing, as they chased every competitor out of the market through predatory pricing of the most important segment of the market.

If, what you want is done, by the time the monopolist is pulled into court to be adjudicated a convicted monopolist, all the damage is done. That was the case with Micorosft. The practices of a monopolist always precede the court case.

Think of it this way: We never convict a murderer for pre-murder. It is always post-ex-facto of the murder, after the murder has been committed. That is the very nature of crime. We cannot convict someone of committing it until they have committed it.

Judge Judith Cote is about to be handed her empty head on her ruling that Apple was a monopolist on the ebook case—merely because they offered to use the agency method of retailing ebooks—and further needed an appointed Anti-Trust Monitor at Apple's headquarters to avoid any other monopoly practices. She appointed her live-in male friend at $1200 an hour who knew absolutely nothing about anti-trust law, who then decided he had to hire another lawyer at $1000 an hour, who DID know anti-trust law, to advise him in how to do his job, all on Apple's dime!

That’s exactly why I think the law is screwed up. It is not fair.