Apple gets partial win on appeal in Samsung patent case

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO, May 18 (Reuters) - Apple Inc was handed a mixed ruling by a U.S. appeals court in the latest twist in a blockbuster intellectual property battle with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, as a prior patent infringement verdict was upheld but a trademark finding that the iPhone's appearance could be protected was thrown out.

That means up to 40 percent of a $930 million verdict which had been won by Apple must be reconsidered.

In the highly anticipated ruling stemming from the global smartphone wars, the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. upheld patent infringement violations including one which protects the shape and color of its iPhone as well as the damages awarded for those violations.

"This is a victory for design and those who respect it," Apple said in a statement on Monday. A Samsung representative declined immediately comment.

Your purpose now in your last few post is pure ad hominem attack.

I went back and read my last few posts and that was certainly not my intention. The only “attacks” I made were meant as light hearted responses to your repeated “Appeals to Authority” where you attempted over power the conversation by posing as far more qualified and intelligent than I am, which may or may not be true.

You have repeatedly called the my PPC-6700 a “toy” which in retrospect I freely admit is a label that could be appropriate for all of the devices we both enjoy discussing. I do find it amusing that if one looks back at the advertising and promotion of these two products, the PPC-6700 was initially marketed as a business tool and was offered by Sprint only to business customers in October of 2005. It was not made available to non-business accounts until two months later. Contrast that to iPhone marketing and ads in 2007. “The iPhone is now in stock and ready to go. And surf. And play. And of course, talk. Visit your nearby AT&T store.” A different target audience...

I have always appreciated your knowledge and expertise and tried to sprinkle a little of that appreciation throughout this latest discussion. I have been home for the past week taking care of our sick wiener-dog who had surgery during the time we were conversing, and I apologize if any of my posts went too far. I have been sick with worry this past week and our conversation did give me a break from some of that.

Apple and ATT knew their target demographic and hit them with one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the history of the world. They didn't do it by claiming that it was the most technologically advanced device ever made. They did it by saying it was "fun". So I don't think the label "toy" is inappropriate or a put down on any of these devices. Thank you for your time and consideration and all the great topics that you post. You truly are an asset to the community and I apologize again for getting under your skin.

What's been ailing your poor puppy? Having a family member down sick, one that looks to you to make it better can be wearing. We had to put down a 17 year old cat (an adoptee that my girlfriend knew had Feline AIDs when she got him) that had fallen madly in love with me when I joined the household and became "my cat" a year ago this month. In the short time that I knew Franky he wormed his way into my heart. It was painful to see him go from a 20 pound muscular cat to under 8 pounds as the FIV finally started to take him.

Our visiting vet did the deed on our dining room table as we both held on to him to let him know he was loved.

I hope your pup is feeling better now.

Thank you so much for your concern. I am so sorry about your cat! All of our kids are grown and we have grandchildren, but Princess Pocahontas has become very close to us. (She was named by the grandkids because her face resembles the Disney character.) We have had several other dogs over the years but she is the one who had been by far the most affectionate. She actually turned 6 just a couple of weeks ago. It is kind of a long story at this point, but I will try to keep it as short as I can.

Princess started acting very lethargic. When looking her over we noticed lumps under her lowest mammary glands and they got bigger over night and she felt warm to us. We assumed that it was some type of infection, but when we took her to the veterinarian hospital we have been going to for 30 years we were told by the vet that it was most likely cancer. She took biopsies and examined the samples under a microscope. The vet advised us to come back the next day for surgery in case it was an aggressive form of cancer. When I questioned her about what she had seen with the microscope she admitted she hadn’t seen anything conclusive. I wasn’t sure that her diagnosis was accurate and wanted the samples she had taken sent to a lab which the vet insisted would only add more expense and not change her recommended treatment.

We took her to another vet the next morning for a second opinion. She did a much more thorough exam than the first vet including X-rays. The second vet was a younger lady from Korea and she seemed much more intuitive. The second vet felt as we did that she had some type of infection which could be from cancer but she didn’t think it was a good idea to do surgery before giving antibiotics a chance to clear that up. So Princess started taking antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory, actually a steroid.

The following morning one of the glands in her neck swelled up to the size of a tennis ball. So we ended up taking her back in for more tests. We continued her medication. We were very relieved when her four separate fine needle aspiration biopsies from two different vets all came back negative for cancer. She still was obviously not feeling well and more large lumps formed in her glands. The vets warned us that this could still be a terminal problem.

By the time she finished her ten days of medication the lumps had mostly dissipated, and she wasn’t acting as lethargic. It was decided that the she was healthy enough at that time for surgery. Tumors were found in both ovaries, but thankfully they were benign. The glands in her neck did swell some again after her surgery.

It seems to have been mostly an endocrine problem that was possibly being aggravated by a hormone imbalance caused by the tumors in her ovaries. It has been several days since her surgery and we have now started cutting back on her pain meds and we are hopeful that she will make a full recovery. We are glad that we went for a second opinion because it seems like surgery before her infection was cleared up would have been harder and more risky for her.

Thank you so much for asking and sorry for the long explanation.

I do not have any desire at all to fight over this topic any further, but I did finally find credible directions with screenshots showing the GPS working on a vx-6700 which was a Verizon version of the HTC Apache... the same phone as the Sprint PPC-6700:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1216461

The author of this post claimed that it worked without connecting to a cell network and once running did not need a wifi signal other than for downloading data for the mapping program. By the time this was posted on the xda-developers forum the phone was obsolete.

There were others who made the similar claims years before at now long defunct phone hacking forums. The solutions all involved installing custom “.cab” files and changing settings in the registry, so it was never something for the faint of heart. The post above contains screenshots showing the author had the solution working with Google Maps.

Most persons who owned this phone like myself purchased a Bluetooth GPS receiver early on to avoid paying for Sprint’s Navigation service... so there was not a great deal of demand for a talented and knowledgeable person to spend the time to come up with a solution.

There is a great deal of conflicting information about this phone’s specifications and capabilities. People do love to argue over this type of thing. This is not uncommon especially for devices that were in production for years. Software and sometimes hardware is often changed and improved after the initial release of a device without official announcements being released by the manufacturer or service providers. There also are often undocumented features that are discovered by creative individuals as time goes on.

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