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Judgement is in, but Samsung won’t have to face the music until December 6 in Apple patent trial

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Samsung is catching a bit of a break due to Judge Lucy Koh’s busy schedule and the number of post-trial motions being filed on both sides of the court when it comes to the Korean company’s legal battles with Apple. While Apple hoped to take advantage of a jury’s decision in their favor sooner rather than later, there won’t be any ruling on potential sales injunctions in September as originally scheduled. Instead, the next phase of the trial has been pushed back to December 6th at the earliest.

The delay gives Samsung plenty of time to implement the necessary software changes to avoid bans on their products in the US, but as we mentioned before, it will do little to get them past any hardware design related patents. On the bright side, the eight infringing devices will be all the older and a few months closer to being phased out of the marketplace regardless of any court order.

Samsung currently awaits a late September trial date to discuss the injunction on their Galaxy Tab 10.1, a hearing that seems likely to slide in their favor after the jury in the Apple trial found the tablet to not infringe on any patents.

[via DroidDog]

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28 Comments

  1. Judge knows the ruling by the jury was BS so the judge isn’t in a hurry to enforce anything.

    1. Koh is a known Apple supporter. I doubt that’s the reason

    2. LOL! What??? If anything Koh is on Apples back alley payroll program. Delays imply legitimacy where legal issues are concerned. If anything she’s just trying to make the ruling look kosher and on the up and up. There’s no way this ruling stands once it leaves Apples backyard. Still blows me away their wasn’t a change in venue from the day of the very first filing.

  2. It’ll be a cold day in apple hell before pinch & double-tap to zoom are removed from android

    1. I hope your right! The ridiculous SIRI patent needs to be fought now. These patents that Apple have are ridiculous. Computer tech is computer tech and smart phones are computers more than they are phones. It appears that our patent system doesn’t evolve as fast as technology needs it too.

      1. Nope. It’s every 20 years apparently.

    2. Not from Android based on this case alone, I don’t think. But then again, I didn’t think they would ever get rid of the feature that allowed you to tap a phone number or address and launch the phone or other app. (I don’t recall what that feature was called)

      1. That’s an optional android:autoLink attribute on TextViews, and it was only removed from HTC phones afaik…
        http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#attr_android:autoLink

        1. I hate Apple a little more every time I have to cut and paste a phone number into the dialer.

          1. Root it ;)

          2. How is this stil not over thrown, when IBM had a phone in the early nineties that demonstrated this function, along with other companies like RIM already having a patent on it?

          3. I had an old school phone like that. How is it that Apple is able to patent that?

  3. How Samsung could theoretically sidestep the hardware design patents:

    1) Add a (nice looking?) phone case to the boxes of any phones that ‘infringe’
    2) Change any official images of each phone to include said phone case. Slap a sticker with the new image on top of old images on the phones’ boxes.

    Thoughts?

    1. LOL. That’s a pretty creative solution to the visual hardware design patents.

  4. After hearing the Jury Foreman talk about the verdict in an interview with Bloomberg, I don’t think the verdict has much chance of standing as-is.
    Apple will probably ultimately still be awarded damages due to the trade dress accusations because of the damning internal Samsung emails that were shown in court, but the damages will no doubt be MUCH lower than the current verdict.

    For example: The Foreman told Bloomberg that they threw out examples of prior art on the pinch to zoom and bounce-back design patents because “Apple’s code couldn’t run on the processor of prior art”, which is completely and utterly irrelevant to a design patent and should never have even been considered. Then he went on to tell Bloomberg how he instructed the other Jury members to think of Apple’s patents as their own; which is a pretty clear attempt to bias.

    If Samsung’s lawyers aren’t completely incompetent, that interview gave them a ton of firepower to act on before the verdict becomes final.

    1. Well, Samsung’s code won’t run on an iPhone, so infringement ought to be impossible. Yes? :)

      1. Well, they’re both arm based processors, so I don’t know if that’s exactly true.

        However, that doesn’t change the fact that the hardware should not have been a factor when examining the ‘381, ‘915 and ‘163 software design patents. The only mention of hardware in those patents is “a touchscreen device”.
        The prior art shown probably should have invalidated several of Apple’s patents.

    2. Source please!

    3. I hope samsung’s lawyers aren’t incompetant enough to miss that…. please assure me that they are not that incompetant and they will use that in their defense !

  5. Apple overreached with the injunction. They could have taken their billion and FRAND licensing and done OK. As is, their PR is suffering as they’re looking like they can only succeed by keeping the other team off the field.

  6. Judge Koh’nt is probably conferring with Apple lawyers to see how much they believe they should get out of this. In return, she gets a $100 itunes gift card and an apple branded Thunderbolt cable (since no one is using tbolt – a $50 value!)

    1. I see what you did there with her name. The rest of your post, you are on your own.

    2. Nice!

  7. Breaking news! Apple has now patented the ability to sue other companies for patent infringement, even if that company hasn’t doned so!

  8. Will Apple look at suing all phone manufacturers one by one when this is all said and done? This may be a silly question but does anyone know the cost roughly of being able to license said patents from Apple versus the work involved changing software so that it doesn’t “infringe” on the patent?

  9. This is such an overblown story. All the devices in the list are no longer current so probably not being manufactured anymore. By Dec all these devices in inventory will have been cleared out. If I was so inclined I would be buying oversold Samsung stock right now.

  10. I hope you don’t invest based on your hopes of Dec 6th… someone is feeding you a very big line, and you are taking hook line and the kitchen sink.

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