Japanese Court Rules Apple Does Not Infringe on Samsung Patents

Darn American companies and their biased American courts!

Blaming the system is Verdict 101 :confused: Every company releases similar statements - Apple included - when the courts aren't in their favor.

Yes, but my point is that this is not really face saving. Maybe once, but how many losses can be blamed on a system. That is why I was suggesting that it is time to go away from 101 and graduate to 301 -- the art mediation, negotiation and compromise. If the two wanted, they could make a deal an solve all the silliness. The bigger problem is that with each loss, Samsung loses leverage for negotiation, so the long they wait, the worse off their terms will be in any eventual deal.

No surprise at all. Apple isn't Samsung afterall.

I didn't realize this was like a sports match.

You must be new here.

Agreed. And even harder when those patents refer to items not used heavily in marketing as differentiators.

Exactly. Both Judge Koh and the appellate court judges noted the lack of advertising.

-- Neither company thought the features were primary

They also noted that neither company had ever even included any of the features in their buyer surveys, at least not until they needed evidence for the trial.

In other words, the features weren't even on Apple's own top list of reasons why people buy their devices.

-- Apple's expert's patent value survey had ridiculous results

Something I haven't seen reported on much, was the survey that an Apple-hired expert came up with, which was supposed to be Apple's evidence as to the extreme value of their patents.

It was criticized by the judges for lacking balance in its questions, and for not including alternative feature methods.

His survey came to the conclusion that people would pay up to $422 EXTRA for the features used on a $199 smartphone.

No, I'm not kidding. You can't make this stuff up. But it gets better.

The appellate court judges pointed out that his survey had used visual manipulation methods which he himself had written a paper on back in 2004 as being misleading. Oops!

--

In the end, Apple could not prove any loss of profits due to those features.

I can imagine $40 per device would be a big winner for Apple and a very large annoyance for Samsung :p

Even Mueller at Foss Patents... who is usually pro-Apple... has said himself, and quoted other experts, that the $40 claim just makes Apple look ridiculous. As he put it not long ago (http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/03/at-upcoming-trial-apple-wants-samsung.html):

"$40 per unit. For five software patents. Give me a break. Reality distortion would be a total understatement for this."

A request like that can backfire, too, if a judge decides that what's good for the goose, is good for the gander... and that Apple should pay more for others' patents.

Recently a similar thing happened (http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/03/ongoing-against-willfulness.html) when Apple claimed that they could've easily programmed around a patent used in Facetime for just a few million dollars, and therefore should not have to pay a lot to use it.

After they lost the case, they flip-flopped and claimed that not using it would be incredibly disruptive and cost much more. The judge was not amused and increased the royalty rate he had already decided on, because it was clear that Apple suddenly considered the patents to be worth more.

Sometimes Apple's lawyers are their own worst enemy.

I didn't realize this was like a sports match.

If only both companies exhibited that level of maturity and sophistication. It's much more like a kindergarden sandpit squabble.

It all depends on if they blatantly copied the feature, or if they accidentally infringed. There is a marked difference between the two, and the latter happens far more often than most people around here think.

Those who have followed this may remember the over 100 page comparative design analysis of the Samsung interface and iOS including suggested changes for Samsungs UI to become more iOS like.

You implied that it was accidental in the prior post. I reminded you about documents showing that it was anything but accidental, and now you are making a different point.

I addressed you and the subject directly, but I'll go ahead and say it again.

Looking at what the competition is doing isn't definitive proof that you're copying. It's simply "look at what they're doing better than us. How can we improve".

That design document wasn't as much of a smoking gun as you think it was.

No need. The iPod market share is a good example of what happens when competitors didn't copy.

That's a good indication, I agree. My reply to kdarling was just meant to point out that it's something that may be hard to prove, and is a very weak method to show that these feautures doesn't have value. Let's look at this from a different angle, if the features had no value, why did Samsung feel the need to copy the features to begin with.