Last month, HTC and Apple reached a cross-licensing settlement that would put a 10-year kibosh on any litigation between the two. While HTC’s Peter Chou was happy enough to call the settlement “A Good Ending,” Samsung saw it as an opportunity to have injunction proceedings against them thrown out.
In one of the more visually hilarious moments in the current legal wrangling between Samsung and Apple, Samsung has submitted parts of Apple’s deal with HTC to the judge involved in the Samsung v Apple case.
Notice anything weird about it? The document is seriously worked over by some paralegal’s Sharpie.
When most people think of Apple they think of hardware. Apple’s got the iPhone, iPad, and iMac — and they also make their own software to power those devices — but one of Apple’s secret weapons is its gigantic media division.
iTunes was just updated last week, and you already know that it sells everything from books, Apps, newspapers, music, TV shows, movies and more. But did you know that iTunes would be one of the largest and most profitable media companies in the world if Apple decided to set up iTunes as a separate company?
When Samsung lost this summer’s $1.05 billion trial against Apple, we knew Samsung would try any means within their power to get the ruling overturned. And who can blame them for wanting to keep a billion dollars in their bank account?
Since the verdict was read, Samsung has learned that the jury foreman, Velvin Hogan, withheld key facts, like how he was sued by Seagate Technology and went bankrupt because of it. Seagate is partly owned by Samsung, so it could have been that Hogan had an axe to grind against them. Samsung thinks Apple knew all about Hogan, so Apple had to disclose everything they know about Hogan and when they knew it.
Samsung has once again taken the top spot for mobile market share in the United States after attracting more than a quarter of mobile subscribers. The Korean company claimed 26.3% of the market as of October 2012, but rival Apple is quickly catching up. The iPhone maker saw the highest level of growth among cellphone manufacturers, and managed to overtake LG to take second place.
Over the last year Apple has been trying to cure itself of its dependency on Samsung, but that’s been pretty hard to do. Samsung makes Apple’s RAM, some displays, and is the sole supplier of processors for Apple’s mobile devices.
There has been speculation about where Apple might go to supplement or replace Samsung, and one of the top contenders Apple might turn to is Intel. According to a new rumor Apple is already in talks with Intel about using them to replace Samsung.
Some of Apple’s lawsuits in Europe haven’t been going that well, but they’ve still been dominating Samsung in the Netherlands. A new ruling from the Dutch court has banned the sales of a few Samsung Galaxy devices after the court ruled that Samsung infringed on Apple’s patents.
Apple’s patent for scrolling through a photo gallery on a touchscreen was able to sink Samsung’s Galaxy devices, but then the court added more pain to the ruling by demanding Samsung pay Apple $129,000 per day.
Android tablets have grabbed 14 percent of tablet market share, according to new research. While Apple’s iPad is still king, with up to 55 percent of third-quarter tablet shipments, tablets running the Google Android system are gaining ground, and fast.
ABI Research found data that shows the iPad losing more of its dominant position to Android competitors, as reported on CNET today. The iPad is showing a decline of 14 percent, the lowest its been since the iPad was introduced two years ago. Samsung, Amazon, and Asus tablets were among the tablet manufacturers that account for that Android increase, with the Google operating system powering over 44 percent of all tablets shipped.
Just last week, we learned that Samsung had requested to add the iPad mini, the fourth-generation iPad, and the sixth-generation iPod touch to its ongoing patent-infringement complaint against Apple. Now the Cupertino company is hoping to extend its own case by bringing Samsung’s latest Android devices into the mix.
Apple has targeted six Samsung devices in total, including its flagship Galaxy S III, the Galaxy Note II, the Galaxy S III Mini, the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.
Apple’s decision to give Samsung Display the boot over the iPad mini may be one that comes back to haunt the Cupertino company. Its tiny tablet is expected to be a smash hit this Christmas, but Apple is said to be battling with supply constraints as one of its two display manufacturers struggles to meet the demand.
Samsung successfully had the iPhone 5 added to its patent infringement complaint against Apple earlier this month, but the Korean electronics giant hasn’t quite finished there. It’s now going after Apple’s latest iOS devices, and has requested that the iPad mini, the new fourth-generation iPad, and Apple’s latest iPod touch are also brought into the case.
Can you imagine being this poor Apple Store specialist, Mr. Sam Sung? The glowers of suspicion, the titters of ridicule he must have to endure? But he’ll show them. He’ll show them all as he conducts his job with ruthless efficiency, schooling Apple Store customer after Apple Store customer in his way of doing things. The Sam Sung Way.
Source: The Loop
Last year, Apple joined forces with Microsoft, Research in Motion, and Sony to form the “Rockstar Bidco consortium,” which outbid Google for more than 6,000 Nortel patents covering wireless and LTE technologies. Together, the consortium paid $4.5 billion for the portfolio, most of which — around $2.6 billion — came from Apple.
However, the Cupertino company has reportedly been quietly handing over more cash to secure sole ownership of select patents.
Today, both Apple and Samsung were given the go ahead to include newer devices in their continuing legal battle over mobile smartphone and tablet supremacy, raising the stakes between the two tech giants. Samsung was granted the ability to include the iPhone 5 in its lawsuit against Cupertino-based Apple.
According to the Wall Street Journal, US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal accepted Samsung’s revised request, thus allowing the company to attempt to prove infringement against Apple’s newest iPhone, a course of action the Korea-based company announced soon after its own defeat in the case against Samsung by Apple last month.
The jude also accepted Apple’s request to amend its own infringement lawsuit against Samsung to include newer products, including the Galaxy Note 10.1, the Galaxy S III, and the Jelly Bean Android Operating System.
There are two fighters left in the battle for market share dominance in the mobile space: Apple and Google. Android powers Samsung’s flagship handsets, and the Korean company continues to crush Apple in terms of sheer volume of units sold. Without Android, Samsung wouldn’t be near as successful.
But Apple is showing incredible growth, especially in emerging markets like China and Brazil. Smartphone sales are cannibalizing ‘dumb phones’ rapidly, and Apple is leading the smartphone pack with Samsung and Android.
As Apple and Samsung try to purge themselves of dependency on one another things are bound to get even more ugly over the next 12-18months. A report came out earlier this week that Samsung was planning to raise the price on Apple’s processors by 20%.
The significant price increase would mean Apple’s cash cow – the iPhone – wouldn’t have as profitable margins which would negatively effect Apple’s bottom line. However, an official at Samsung has come out today to deny the changes and says that a 20% price hike isn’t coming.
To say Samsung and Apple have a strained relationship would be quite the understatement. A once symbiotic partnership has turned into an all out war over claims of patent infringement and design copying. Their global legal battles have disgusted enough judges and consumers to spawn serious debate over the current status of our patent system and a call for reform.
Shortly before Microsoft began shipping the Surface RT tablet, the company claimed its ClearType display was superior to the third-generation iPad’s Retina display. We had our doubts, and now Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies has confirmed we were right to dismiss Microsoft’s claims.
In a display comparison between the third-generation iPad, the Surface RT, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Soneira found that Apple’s device offers significantly better color saturation and color accuracy, and sharper text.
If you’ve been following the back-and-forth over Apple’s court-mandated “apology” to Samsung in the UK, you know it’s been Cupertino at its cheekiest.
It’s also been Cupertino at its most dishonest, according to a London High Court, and they’re had enough, slamming Apple for false and misleading statements about the trial… and ordering Apple to pay all of Samsung’s legal bills on top of things.
Samsung has dealt Apple a nasty blow by increasing the price of its mobile processors — the ones built into every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — by 20%. According to a person familiar with negotiations between the two companies, Apple initially disapproved the price hike, but was forced to accept it with no replacement supplier available.
With the absence of Steve Jobs looming in the background, Tim Cook and his team faced a mountain of questions as they marched into 2012. Who would be the visionary now? Would the iPhone continue to be successful? What’s going to happen to the Mac now that the iPad has become a beast of its own?
The most important question Apple faced going into 2012 was whether they could maintain their supremacy. With competitors closing the gap, Apple doesn’t have Steve Jobs’s vision, charisma, or negotiating prowess anymore, and 2012 has been the year to prove that Apple can endure. The challenges and adversaries Apple is facing in 2012 has made this single year the most important one ever for Apple, and yet they’ve been able to come through in the clutch and blow us away with an army of incredible products and strategic moves.
Judge Lucy Koh has agreed to re-examine the role of jury foreman Velvin Hogan, who found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages earlier this year. Samsung requested a retrial back in October after it became apparent that Hogan failed to disclose details of a lawsuit against Seagate that he was involved in 20 years ago.
As part of a court ruling in the U.K. Apple has been forced to publish a public apology to Samsung on the U.K. Apple website. When Apple originally published the apology on the U.K. homepage, some clever coding pushed the apology statement below the browser window.
This morning an update to the Apple U.K. homepage has removed the coding that was hiding the apology unless a user’s browser window was extremely tall.
One of my favorite lines used by people defending Samsung during their $1 billion legal beatdown from Apple was the claim that Apple doesn’t have a patent on glass rectangles with rounded corners. “You can’t patent the rectangle,” they would say.
Yeah, well Apple just did. Kind of.
After a review by a patent examiner on Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Apple an additional design patent for the iPad’s “ornamental design.” The design feature cited in US Patent D607,286 for a “Portable display device” pretty much appears to be a literal rounded rectangle.
When Apple’s annual capital expediters report for fiscal 2012 was released, it was discovered that Apple spent $10.3 billion when they had only planned to spend about $8 billion. The discrepancy in the huge change from Apple’s original forecast left some wondering what that $2.3 billion went to.
If one analyst is correct, that $2 billion may have gone to Sharp to help bail them out of their financial problems, and keep display supplies flowing for Apple’s products.