Tech giants, farmers voice support for Samsung in Apple patent spat

Samsung's got some new friends in its legal battle against Apple -- including farmers, African American small businesses and an electronics retailer.

Legal experts, nonprofit organizations and technology companies have filed amicus or "friend of the court" briefs in support of Samsung, urging the US Supreme Court to consider the patent-infringement case. They want the nation's highest court to better define design patents and limit the damages that can be awarded. And they're using Apple v. Samsung as the case that hopefully gets the federal government to enact patent reforms, preventing so-called patent trolls from cashing in on intellectual property.

"This is a very important subject, and...it matters tremendously to our millions of customers," Lee Cheng, chief legal officer of online electronics retailer Newegg, said in an interview. His company submitted a brief along with Dell, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP, Vizio and software maker Pegasystems that said if the US doesn't change its patent laws, it ultimately will result in less choice and higher cost for consumers.

Google, the EFF, some farmers, and the Black Chamber of Commerce have all filed Amicus briefs supporting Samsung's theft of Apple's patents and copyrights and are asking the US Supreme Court to set aside over a century of settled Patent law to allow Samsung to get off the hook for stealing it, as determined by a jury, and two appeals. They all say it is unfair that Samsung should have to pay Apple for their intellectual ideas they used without permission. -- PING!

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Apple v. Samsung Appeal at the Supreme Court Amicus Briefs
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Actually, the issue is exorbitant damage awards for infringement, not whether infringement of a patent is in and of itself something that should go unpunished.

No, Rasputin, they want the crime of Patent infringement to be equivalent to a traffic ticket. . . a minor infraction. The law in the past has been that the willful infringer loses ALL profits from his infringement, regardless how minor, because the punishment is deemed to be necessarily harsh to discourage it. Judges are even granted the power to TREBLE the damages if they deem the willfulness egregious. If it is anything less, say made a minor infraction, then it will be practiced as a means of doing business (which happens to be Samsung's business model, a pattern they have repeated over and over again, copy patented products and wait until they get slapped on the wrist and move on to another), a mere cost, and there would be NO BENEFIT in granting patents at all.

Patents and copyrights are the one statutory type thing enumerated in our Constitutions for good reason. Making light of them by devolving the penalties downward is NOT a good idea.

You’re right but for a long time patents haven’t been this clear cut. It’s been a long time practice for tech and bio companies to file for vague patents then sue anyone who comes close.

There also isn’t a bright line between how close you can’t get to a patented tech without being burned. Customers are constantly screaming a tech companies to get what their competitors have...”apple has this, why doesn’t my galaxy S whatever”.

Just the other day I tried to tap to share a website with someone only for them to look at me crazy. Didn’t know only Windows and Android phones had that.

My point is, tech companies know that as soon as a product is released, the first thing their competitors do is take it apart to first, look for new tech for them to copy, and two, look for patent violations. They don’t want to break the law but they do want to skirt it as close as possible...tech development is more often evolutionary then revolutionary so going off in a completely new direction is impossible for every new phone generation.

And you want to break them for this? No, it should be weighed on the severity of the infraction. You know how this lawsuit started...it was over the freakin shape of the Galaxy 4 and some of the colors it used! So yes, it should only be a slap on the wrist.

Just the other day I tried to tap to share a website with someone only for them to look at me crazy. Didn't know only Windows and Android phones had that. . .

My point is, tech companies know that as soon as a product is released, the first thing their competitors do is take it apart to first, look for new tech for them to copy, and two, look for patent violations. They don't want to break the law but they do want to skirt it as close as possible. . . tech development is more often evolutionary then revolutionary so going off in a completely new direction is impossible for every new phone generation.

Apple's iOS has had that for years. . . long before the Windows phone and Android. You can choose to use either Messaging, email, Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other means of sharing. It's that little box with an arrow icon at the bottom of the iPhone's Safari window or in the upper right hand corner of the menu bar of the iPad's Safari window. Tap, and a plethora of sharing means pops up.

In the case in question, Samsung did not try to avoid infringing Apple's iPhones but to try to deliberately copy every feature of the iPhone as much as possible. One of the featured pieces of evidence in the case was a 132 page internal memo from Samsung top management to their "design team" reviewing their efforts, item by item specifying that this and that had to be exactly like the iPhone's features! Here is a link where you can read the entire 132 page memo:

132-page internal document shows how Samsung set out to copy the iPhone pixel by pixel
By Zach Epstein on Aug 8, 2012 at 10:45 AM
An internal memo from February 2010 emerged in the Apple (AAPL) vs. Samsung (005930) trial on Monday that was fairly damaging to Samsung's case. In the memo, mobile boss JK Shin expressed outrage at how far Samsung's user experience had fallen behind even Apple's first iPhone, which was already three years old at that time. The difference between the iPhone's UX and Samsung's devices was like "Heaven and Earth," Shin wrote repeatedly.
One month after that memo was sent, Samsung assembled a massive 132-slide report comparing the iPhone's user interface to Samsung Galaxy interface, and it detailed hundreds of ways that Samsung devices should be more like Apple's. "In short, the evaluation report makes the case that the Galaxy (identified here as the "S1") would be better if it behaved more like the iPhone and featured a similar user interface," explained John Paczkowski and Ina Fried of AllThingsD.
The internal report was presented by Apple attorneys on Tuesday afternoon, and considering the basis of the company's case is that Samsung pivoted in 2010 and shifted its product line to "blatantly copy" Apple's iPhone and iPad, this is certainly one of the most damning pieces of evidence we've seen so far.
The document is embedded below in its entirety.

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