European Commission Opens Investigation into Samsung's Patent Threats Against Apple

I know this is gonna get downrated but Samsung are being jerks. They think they can just copy stuff and get away with it because they supply or used to supply Apple with their parts...

That is like me letting someone else copy my paintings because they sell me their paint...

Grow up Samsung you cannot win.. it is too logically against you.

Do something on your own for once Samsung. Such an immoral company.

Have fun downrating people who cannot see logically.

The best outcome, I fear, may be unlikely: Samsung stops the lazy, blatant copying and focuses instead on creating truly great, original, innovative touch-platform designs! Wouldn’t that be nice to see?

Apple is stifling innovation by not going after these copycats even harder! :)

Samsung appears to be violating Article 102 TFEU.

Samsung even copies Apple's lawsuits and still can't manage to do anything right. What a pitiful uncreative company....

It appears to be backfiring on Samsung at the moment. I wonder how long before it backfires on apple?

This isn't anti competition. This is anti plagiarism.

No, it started as anti-plagiarism (actually trade dress violations but close enough). Then Samsung turned it into an anti-competitive argument, by trying to sue Apple for violations of FRAND technology.

To me this is just a huge sign of how weak Samsung's case really is. Within an hour of these 3G cases becoming public knowledge many people in the know where expressing confusion as to how Samsung was planning to use FRAND patents in this way without getting into trouble. Therefore, either Samsung's lawyers are idiots or this was just an absolutely desperate grab at anything that Samsung could use to try and get out of Apple's case concerning their trade dress violations (which according to Apple's filing seem to be numerous and pretty blatant).

Too many people seem to want to turn this into an Apple versus Android fight, but in reality it didn't start that way. Samsung made changes to Android to make their version look way too similar to iOS and that doesn't even start to address the packaging and industrial design itself. Other companies have somehow managed to use Android without making it look like iOS, so it was a decision that Samsung made that had nothing to do with using Android.

As for the physical appearance, that is likely the weakest argument of Apple concerning trade dress. After all it is a radius cornered rectangle with a black bezel, but simply take a look at the new Motorola Xoom to see that it is actually possible to make a tablet that doesn't physically mimic the iPad. Honestly, I like the look of the new Xoom with its chamfered corners. Good work Motorola on some actual design innovation.

Which was what precisely?
Samsung 100% steals Apple's designs and products, Apple forces them to stop.
What part of that are you weeping over for Samsung?

Samsung have copied Apple for years and have been getting away with it.

The cost of using Android on your hardware is going to get very expensive in the future, they are already paying Microsoft in excess of $15 per handset installed with android and Nokia $7 per handset.

A quick look at all phones released in 2007 alongside the iPhone just displays how advanced iPhone and iOS was.

I’d be curious to see what shape Android was in then… bearing in mind Google they hired two Apple engineers that had early sight of IOS way before iPhone was released.

Google is the devil and Samsung are one of their minions

I know this is gonna get downrated but Samsung are being jerks. They think they can just copy stuff and get away with it because they supply or used to supply Apple with their parts...

That is like me letting someone else copy my paintings because they sell me their paint...

Grow up Samsung you cannot win.. it is too logically against you.

Do something on your own for once Samsung. Such an immoral company.

Have fun downrating people who cannot see logically.

Well said, btw I up rate every anti-Samsung post I see!

I hope Apple will get back in quadruple what it did to Samsung

Which was what precisely?
Samsung 100% steals Apple's designs and products, Apple forces them to stop.
What part of that are you weeping over for Samsung?

Well done, standard procedure from the EU commission when someone may be doing anti competitive practices.

Time will tell if it goes further or it is dismissed like a lot of them

Threads like this make me realize how circular life is on a Mac forum, specially when it comes to all this patent garbage that's been going around as of late.

I mean it's not like we haven't discussed the issue 15 times already. But there's always someone new popping up, saying some company copied Apple, then say innovative over and over again like the word's being retired next year, and they want to get full use out of it beforehand.

Want to know the plain and simple truth of it all, people? Why Android and iOS are so similar? Well, to be fair, Google probably were inspired by some bits and pieces here and there. But did they outright copy Apple? Not really. Anyone that's used Android for more than 5 minutes (I've used it for roughly half an hour, which makes me CERT-O-FIED), knows that there are quite a few differences between the two.

Yeah. They both have icons you stab your finger at. They both also display these icons on a screen. Sometimes, these icons are arrayed in a grid. But do these similarities point towards outright copying. No. See, they both have their genesis in old stylus driven PDA UIs. This is why they're both so similar.

IT'S AS SIMPLE AS THAT!

Want a breakdown of the situation? Well, here's what's been summed up a thousand times before in a thousand other threads.

1. There is so much prior art, it's obvious that iOS wasn't developed in a vacuum.

2. You don't know anything about patents. Most of the patents being disputed are over deep level APIs that don't pertain to anything you'd care about.

3. Some don't, obviously. These are the patents that have already been successfully defended by Apple.

4. A preliminary injunction does not correlate to guilt. The key word is preliminary here, people.

5. You probably don't know much about patents. Your expertise begins and ends at patent related news headlines. So chances are good that...

6. If you've used the phrase "Well, if X innovated more...", you're probably an idiot.

7. If you say "X copied Apple", I will punch you. In the arm. Hard. It will leave a small bruise that would be a firm reminder of your shame if you weren't so damn stupid.

Okay. More patent BS. I think after this thread, I'm gonna ignore them from here on out. There are more interesting discussions going on here to pay attention to.

edit: And yeah, this thread is more Samsung related than it is Android related. Truthfully, the same arguments pertain to both. I mean they're so similar the exact same things could be said for either one of them. I just went with Google because by this point, all patent threads are a haze of talking heads to me.