US ITC to review Apple patent complaint against Samsung

A U.S. trade panel that specializes in patent disputes will review a potentially key decision in the patent fight between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc over smartphones and tablets.
The panel, the International Trade Commission, also sent part of the dispute back to judge, who ruled in October that Samsung, the world's top maker of smartphones, infringed four Apple patents but did not violate two others.
The full commission said on Wednesday it would review the judge's decision, and asked the agency judge to take a second look at portions of two patents where he had found that Samsung infringed.
One of the patents in question allows the use of a headset with the smartphone while the other allows the device to show an image on a screen with a second, translucent image over it.
Apple had filed a complaint in mid-2011, accusing Samsung of infringing its patents in making its Captivate, Transform and Fascinate smartphones, as well as the Galaxy Tablet.
Apple is waging war on several fronts against Google, whose Android software powers many of Samsung's devices. The battles between Apple and Samsung have taken place in some 10 countries as they vie for market share in the booming mobile industry.
The case at the International Trade Commission is No. 337-796.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Samsung abused dominant position to deny Apple: European Commission

Samsung abused dominant position to deny Apple: European Commission

The European Commission charged Samsung Electronics on Friday with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
The Commission sent a "statement of objections" to the South Korean group, with its preliminary view that Samsung was not acting fairly.
"Intellectual property rights are an important cornerstone of the single market. However, such rights should not be misused when they are essential to implement industry standards, which bring huge benefits to businesses and consumers alike," Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in statement.
Apple and Samsung, the world's top two smartphone makers, are locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The filing of competition objections is the latest step in the Commission's investigation. After notifying Samsung in writing, the company will have a chance to reply and request a hearing before regulators.
If the Commission then concludes that the firm has violated the rules, it could impose a fine of up to 10 percent of the electronics firm's total annual turnover.
Technology companies are increasingly turning to the European Commission as the European Union's competition authority, to resolve their disputes. The Commission is also investigating Google and Microsoft.
In the case of Samsung, its standard-essential patents (SEPs) relate to the EU's 3G UMTS standard. When this was adopted in Europe, Samsung committed to license the patents fairly to competitors, the Commission said.
However, it began seeking an injunction in 2011 in various EU member states against Apple's use of these patents. The Commission opened its investigation in January 2012.
Samsung said it was studying the Commission's statement. It said it would cooperate fully and "firmly defend ourselves against any misconceived allegations".
"Samsung is confident that, in due course, the Commission will conclude that we have acted in compliance with European Union competition laws."
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Apple wants sales of Samsung devices banned again

Apple wants sales of Samsung devices banned again

Tech giant Apple Inc, battling Samsung Electronics Co over patents in several countries, argued on Thursday that a U.S. appeals court should reconsider its decision to overturn a pretrial sales ban on Samsung for infringement.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in October overturned a pretrial sales ban ordered by a lower court in California. The order was to stop sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.
Apple argued that this was inappropriate and asked for an "en banc review," which means that a larger panel of judges would reconsider the decision made by the three-judge panel in October.
The fight is over a single patent one that allows the smartphone to search multiple data storage locations at once. For example, the smartphone could search the device's memory as well as the Internet with a single query.
Apple argued that the sales ban should be reinstated because it uses the patent in question and competes with Samsung. The three-judge panel had said that consumers did not buy Samsung phones primarily because of the patent, and thus, a sales ban was inappropriate.
It has become increasingly difficult for companies to win sales bans related to patent infringement in recent years. Such sales injunctions have been a key for companies trying to increase their leverage in courtroom patent fights.
Apple, in a different patent lawsuit, scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung in August when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.
The Nexus phone was not included in that trial, but is part of a tandem case Apple filed against Samsung earlier this year.
The case in the Federal Circuit is Apple Inc vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 12-1507.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected Apple's request for a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung's newer Galaxy products. Koh cited the Federal Circuit's Nexus ruling as binding legal precedent in her order.
In a separate court filing on Thursday, Apple said it intended to appeal Koh's ruling.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Apple's 'pinch-to-zoom' patent deemed invalid

A filing Wednesday in a high-stakes legal battle between Samsung and Apple revealed that a "pinch-to-zoom" patent central to the case has been deemed invalid.
The patent was a centerpiece of a trial that ended in August with a jury ordering Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages for illegally copying iPhone and iPad features for its flagship Galaxy S smartphones.
Samsung provided US District Judge Lucy Koh a copy of a US Patent and Trademark Office preliminary determination that, upon review, the Apple pinch-to-zoom technology wasn't original enough to merit a patent.
Samsung hoped the filing would bolster its argument for a new trial or to have the damages award slashed.
Since the verdict, US patent officials tentatively invalidated an Apple patent on technology that gives a "rubber-band" springing effect when a finger tugs at the edge of a touch-screen smartphone. That patent was also at issue at trial.
Koh on Monday denied Apple's request to ban a set of Samsung smartphones from the US market based on the jury's finding that the South Korean firm was guilty of infringing on six of the Cupertino, California-company's patents.
Even though Apple was victorious in the patent case, the iPhone and iPad maker failed to prove that the technology at issue was the driving factor in people's buying decisions, Koh reasoned in the ruling.
Samsung the world's top mobile and smartphone maker has appealed the verdict.

sam4sammy :: Apple bid to get permanent ban on sales of Samsung smartphones denied

A U.S. judge on Monday denied Apple Inc's request for a permanent injunction against Samsung Electronics' smartphones, depriving the iPhone maker of key leverage in the mobile patent wars.
Apple had been awarded $1.05 billion in damages in August after a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad. The Samsung products run on the Android operating system, developed by Google.

After the jury verdict, Apple asked U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to impose a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung's newer Galaxy products.

In her order late on Monday, Koh found that Apple had not presented enough evidence to show that its patented features drove consumer demand for the entire iPhone.

"The phones at issue in this case contain a broad range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple's patents," Koh wrote.

"Though Apple does have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple," she continued, "it does not follow that entire products must be forever banned from the market because they incorporate, among their myriad features, a few narrow protected functions."

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on Koh's ruling, and a Samsung representative could not immediately be reached.

In a separate order on Monday, Koh rejected a bid by Samsung for a new trial based on an allegation that the jury foreman was improperly biased in favor of Apple.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc. vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

© Thomson Reuters 2012

Judge may trim Apple's $1 billion patent verdict

A federal judge on Thursday appeared ready to trim millions from a $1.05 billion jury verdict Apple Inc. won over Samsung Electronics this summer as she urged the top two smartphone companies to settle their myriad legal actions around the world.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said she would issue a series of ruling over the next several weeks resolving the many legal issues raised at the hearing Thursday. Samsung is seeking a new trial or a reduction of the verdict that resulted from a lawsuit Apple filed in 2011. Apple, on the other hand, urged the judge to add millions more to the award and permanently ban the U.S. sales of eight Samsung smartphone models a jury in August said illegally used Apple technology.

Koh gave no indication on how she would rule on the sales ban request nor by what amount she would cut from the $1 billion award. Samsung was demanding that she cut the award by more than half, but Koh gave no hint that she sided with that argument or Apple's separate argument for an increase in the award.

Apple filed a second lawsuit earlier this year, alleging that Samsung's newer products are unfairly using Apple's technology. That's set for trial in 2014. In addition, the two companies are locked in legal battles in several other countries.

"I think it's time for global peace," Koh said at an end of a nearly four-hour hearing in San Jose.

Lawyers for each company responded by casting aspersions on the other side.

Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny claimed that Samsung "willfully" made a business decision to copy Apple's iPad and iPhone, and he called the jury's $1.05 billion award a "slap in the wrist." McElhinny said Apple intended to keep on fighting Samsung in court until it changed its business ways.

In turn, Samsung lawyer Charles Verhoeven responded that Apple was attempting to "compete through the courthouse instead of the marketplace." He said Apple wants to tie up Samsung in courts around the world rather than competing with it head-on.

In the third quarter of 2012, Samsung sold 55 million smartphones to Apple's 23.6 million sales worldwide, representing 32.5 percent of the market for Samsung compared with Apple's 14 percent.

Earlier in the hearing, Koh appeared ready to rework some of the jury's damage calculations. The jurors filled out a verdict form listing the amount of damages Samsung owed Apple for 26 separate products. For instance, the jurors said Samsung owed Apple nearly $58 million for sales of its Prevail smartphone found to have used Apple's "tap-and-zoom" technology. But the type of patent violation the jury found doesn't lend itself to that big of an award for the product, Koh said, musing that it appeared that Apple could recover perhaps $8 million over the Prevail dispute.

That was just one of 26 line items Koh is reviewing when it comes to considering the jury's $1.05 billion verdict.

She is also considering Samsung's demand for the verdict to be completely wiped out and for a new trial to be held. Samsung raises a host of legal issues in arguing it was deprived of a fair trial in a courthouse a dozen miles from Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. One of it arguments is that jury foreman Velvin Hogan committed misconduct when he didn't divulge he had been sued by his former employer, Seagate Technology, in 1993. Samsung is a large investor in Seagate.

Koh showed no indication of what she thought of the argument, and most legal experts said Samsung had no chance of prevailing on that issue because it happened more than 20 years ago and Hogan wasn't specifically asked about it.

"The connection here is tenuous," said Christopher V. Carani, a Chicago patent attorney who has closely followed the case. "I would be surprised if Judge Koh accepted this argument and scrapped the jury's entire finding."

Koh's decision will help shape the ultimate result of the case, but this bitter legal battle is expected to land before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Washington, D.C.-based court that decides patent disputes, if not the U.S. Supreme Court.

Apple, Samsung set to resume billion dollar legal battle

The epic $1 billion patent fight between the world's top two smartphone makers resumes Thursday in a federal courtroom when Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Corp. again square off over rights to vital technology.
Samsung seeks to overturn an Aug. 24 jury verdict that found the Korean tech titan ripped off Apple Inc.'s designs for its iPhone and iPad. The jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1 billion after finding close to two dozen of its products used technology controlled by Apple.

Apple in turn is looking to add $500 million more to the award while barring many of the older Samsung products at issue from sale in the United States.

The companies' lawyers will file into a San Jose federal court armed with a host of legal arguments including allegations that the jury foreman committed misconduct. The case is ultimately expected to land before the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington, D.C.-based court that decides patent disputes, if not the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, what U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh decides after Thursday's hearing will greatly shape the end result.

Samsung has mounted an aggressive post-trial attack on the verdict, raising a number of legal issues that allege the South Korean company was treated unfairly in a federal courtroom a dozen miles from Apple's Cupertino headquarters. Samsung alleges that some of Apple's patents shouldn't have been awarded in the first place and that the jury made mistakes in calculating the damage award.

Samsung also accuses jury foreman Velvin Hogan of concealing that his former employer, Seagate Technologies, had a filed a lawsuit against him. Samsung is a large investor in Seagate.

"Mr. Hogan's failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore," Samsung said in its October request for a new trial.

Hogan didn't return a call placed to his San Jose home Wednesday. In opposing Samsung's argument, Apple argued that Samsung should have discovered the 1993 lawsuit before Hogan was seated as a juror and made its objection then. Apple said Samsung knew that Hogan declared bankruptcy in 1993 and had it reviewed that case it would have discovered the Seagate lawsuit.

Apple argues it is unfair to raise the Seagate lawsuit now that the jury ruled against Samsung.

Experts monitoring the trial largely side with Apple on the juror misconduct issue specifically and speculate that the judge will keep most of the unanimous verdict intact.

"Samsung is hoping to set aside the verdict entirely, accusing the jury foreman of lying to get on the jury," said Edward Naughton, a patent attorney who is following the case closely. "This argument isn't likely to succeed, but Samsung may convince the court to whittle down the jury verdict a bit."