Saturday, April 6, 2013

Week 10 - Post 2: Android Text Selection to Infringe

        The second article that I read this week was about Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender's preliminary ruling on remand issues regarding Apple and Samsung.  Pender had remanded a case of Apple against Samsung, allowing Apple to "broaden its win" against Samsung with respect to two patents.  However this is also an opportunity for Samsung to overturn the original ruling or to narrow Apple's claim for later.  Apple was able to successfully broaden its win regarding one of the two more important patents against Samsung.  Specifically Apple is asserting multiple claims against Samsung regarding a " method and apparatus for providing translucent images on a computer display", and Samsung was found to have infringed on all of these - notably through their text selection feature in the Android browser and  the the translucent buttons of the Android photo gallery.
The offending translucent text on an Android phone.

         Apple's claims were all deemed valid, however for the ITC to give an exclusion order on the corresponding Samsung devices, Apple must demonstrate that the act of importation itself constitues a patent infringement.  Interestingly enough, the remand of the trial issued by Pender was as a result of a minor oversight on his part, and the remand gave him the opportunity to fix his mistake, which was regarding one of Apple's claims.  Regardless, now what remains to be seen is whether Samsung's offending devices are taken off the market due to an import ban on behalf of the ITC.  Samsung will have to disprove Apple's claim, although the odds do not seem in their favor at this point.  I would be curious to hear what everyone else things about this whole situation.

 Link: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/04/corrected-itc-ruling-finds-androids.html
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6 comments:

  1. UnknownApril 7, 2013 at 4:10 PM

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  2. UnknownApril 7, 2013 at 4:11 PM

    I think eventually the case will not rule in favor of Samsung but will continue to side with Apple. It seems as if the court has already agreed that Samsung has infringed on the listed Apple Claims but now due to technicalities Samsung hasn't been found 'guilty' of the verdict yet.
    This will buy Samsung more time to build another defense but I doubt in the end that their outcome will be positive.

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  3. JosefApril 7, 2013 at 6:10 PM

    I don't know how I feel about an import ban on a whole phone because of "method and apparatus for providing translucent images on a computer display" but I guess without the import ban it would be hard to protect intellectual property.

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  4. GautamApril 7, 2013 at 11:20 PM

    That's an interesting case - especially because the 'Samsung' features in question are actually used across most Android phones. If I'm not mistaken, they're an in-built feature of the Android OS.

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  5. Eric LiuApril 11, 2013 at 11:38 PM

    At this point, all these patents to me are looking the same. Design patents are probably the hardest to make judgement calls on. Definitely would reconsider becoming a patent lawyer ;p

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  6. UnknownApril 14, 2013 at 2:31 AM

    Seems like a fairly cut and dry case--although precedence suggests that despite Samsung's infringement of Apple IP, Samsung won't be slapped with an injunction. Maybe they will have to pay a settlement at worst.

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