The Apple vs. Samsung Thread

Oh man. We've gone through this so much already. We should just merge this with the Samsung Thread going on with this debate already.

The outcome of this trial will be pretty monumental.... though maybe not to the companies itself as much as to the bickering Internet Comment sections that are crazy in "who's the best Smartphone".

All you need to know about what's happening real time in this case:

http://mashable.com/2012/07/31/apple-v-samsung-tweets-from-the-courtroom/

I feel there's just so much evidence of a shady "by any means necessary" brattiness by Samsung. From those commercials they used to air about making fun of Apple fans for waiting in line (clearly a jealousy move as nobody waits in long lines for Samsung's, and of course, Samsung was "making fun" of Apple while advertising a product that's a spitting image [copy] of an iPhone, talk about disrespect), to them actually asking the Courts to rename the case "Samsung VS Apple" instead of what it's officially named right now: "Apple VS Samsung". They actually GOT the courts to ADD "Samsung VS Apple" under the original and first official title: "Apple VS Samsung". Ridiculous.

From the get-go, Samsung's lawyers have been getting reprimanded for inappropriate conduct in the courts, it seems, as well, they leaked to the public information that the Judge said wasn't allowed to be used in the courts, which has the Judge call the Samsung lawyer to "the chambers" it looks like.

As well, various Emails are being used by both parties, one of note that Apple has from Samsung execs is when they said that the iPhone will be "easy to copy".

So many stories of shady business from Samsung.

So apple is suing them for using the square shape ?

we all do. Elon Musk is the next steve I believe

Their relationship is SO weird indeed. I wonder who the first will be to do the REAL battle move, even more drastic than these lawsuits.... i.e, who will have the balls to cut the other one out of their little "relationship" that's so lucrative to each party? IMO, the ball is more in Apple's court here, as obviously they will pick the BEST suppliers and their suppliers will have to match Apple's exact and perfectionist desires, proving that Samsung is really the best of the best in this situation, as Apple's would have been long gone a while ago.... however, there's always a chance that somebody else CAN do it, and will jump so highly at the chance to do it for Apple, and frankly, Apple's business to Samsung is a VERY large part of Samsung's income, and there's only one Apple, so Samsung cutting ties would be drastic to their own business.

These lawyers are making a killing, indeed. I feel this case is only Apple's to win, with their biggest repercussion being lawyer fees (already priced in, easily afforded). If Apple can't "prove" that Samsung infringed, then nothing changes, and the two stay the same. However, if Apple does prove, Samsung's penalties for patent-violation could be very righteously drastic.

I do to. Steve was one of a kind. However, remember that Steve's hands are ALL over this case. He's the one who was so backhanded by these guys that he vowed to "Go to war with them". He said he doesn't even want Google's and Samsung's money, he wants them crushed and reprimanded for stealing Apple's ideas.

Knowing what I know about Tim Cook, if he were CEO years ago, I don't think we'd have such litigations. One of Steve's greatest traits and biggest flaws was his "by all means necessary" approach, and make no mistake, Steve, wherever he is, is hoping for nothing less than Samsung getting set on fire for what he feels they've done to him.


And THAT is one of the many things that I love about Steve Jobs. You can't find that passion and the ability to back it up in this world so often.

I'm pretty positive that part of Apple's (and of course Steve Jobs' particularly) mantra was to have as little overhead as possible. It seems like part of their business genius is that they put as much weight on other parties as they can, keeping them in a very nimble and agile place themselves. I'd assume that picking up a supplier division would add a lot of "fat" onto a company that likes to stay lean and utmost-ly focused on what they do best, and let others do the rest of the work for them. It's seriously "revolutionized" the way businesses are run, as you hear so many "cutting the fat" as they watch and learn from how Apple did it (Google's new CEO Larry Page got that exact advice from Steve Jobs, i.e "You guys have too much junk that's unsuccessful, it hurts the image of your company, cut the fat out", and has started to already apply it).

Of course, if Apple had no other choice, that might very well force them into it.

I've heard that not only Samsung's ability to provide the quality that Apple needs is what keeps Apple with them, but the speed at which they can churn it out. Tim Cook in particular is an operations mastermind, he created Apple's whole system (he basically is the one that figured out how to make Apple rich off of their products), so you know that he demands (and needs) exceptional speed and quality, and Samsung are obviously the best for the job. So much so that Apple can't even risk cutting them out and hurting them where it hurts (pocketbook) it would seem.

I'm not sure, but I've also heard that the revenue Samsung gets from Apple as a client accounts for a whopping 11+% of their yearly income, which obviously means that losing Apple as clients would hit them pretty hard.

Nice! I knew it would happen! Hit 'em where it hurts, Apple.

Nice to see Tim Cook's got a sack of cajone's to pull stunts like this, as Mr. Jobs did.

I think that they were going primarily to Samsung before, and now that Apple is fed up with Sammy, they are starting to trickle the process into other vendors. It seems apparent that they are gonna try and eliminate ties with Samsung completely. Keeping in mind that they're Samsung's largest customer, accounting for lots of Samsung's revenue, perhaps that's an even better way to send them a message than the (justifiable) lawsuits.

Apparently, Samsung's lawyer is trying to sabotage this case to get an attempted mistrial. Acting disrespectfully toward the judge, apparently destroying evidence, playing games with the jury, and things like the company leaking information that not supposed to be used for the trial, to the public. Doesn't get shadier than that.

Looks like they know they don't have a case:

Apple 2.0

Covering the business that Steve Jobs built

comments

Playing the jury card: Samsung trying to get an Apple mistrial?

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt August 3, 2012: 8:19 AM ET

• EmailPrint

Why a seasoned lawyer might disrespect the judge in a multibillion dollar patent trial

FORTUNE -- Even a veteran court reporter like Alison Frankel was surprised when Samsung's lead attorney, John Quinn, approached judge Lucy Koh just before opening arguments in the high-stakes Apple v. Samsung patent infringement trial and threw the legal equivalent of a hissy fit in a last-ditch effort to get some excluded evidence (see here and here) before the jury.

Here's how Frankel described the scene in her On the Case column:

Dressed in a stylish blue suit with mussed hair, Quinn stood before Koh and said he had "been practicing for 36 years" and had never begged the court, but that now he was begging that she reconsider on the slides. Again, Koh said no.

"What's the point of having a trial?" Quinn said, his voice rising. "What's the point?"

Koh tried to shut him down. "Mr. Quinn, please, please, we have done three reconsiderations on this. You've made your record."

"Can I get some explanation..."

"Mr. Quinn, don't make me sanction you, please!" the judge barked. "I want you to sit down, please."

Savvy trial watchers will recognize that Quinn was setting ground work for an appeal. That's what Koh was referring to when she told him "you've made your record."

But what happened next suggests Quinn may be playing an even more devious game. Two hours later, he e-mailed the excluded evidence to several journalists covering the case, along with a paragraph of inflammatory rhetoric that, inevitably, got widely reported:

"The Judge's exclusion of evidence on independent creation meant that ... Samsung was not allowed to tell the jury the full story... The excluded evidence would have established beyond doubt that Samsung did not copy the iPhone design. Fundamental fairness requires that the jury decide the case based on all the evidence."

Dissing a judge behind her back in a manner that's sure to get back to her might be considered a rookie move. But Quinn, the managing partner of the powerhouse litigation shop Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, is no rookie. His e-mail provoked Apple (AAPL) to call for extraordinary sanctions (basically, they want Judge Koh to hand them the case). To which Quinn filed arebuttal that began:

"Apple's request is an affront to the integrity of the jury. Apple proceeds on the groundless assumption that the jury, already instructed by the Court not to read media accounts, will violate the Court's instructions and do precisely that."

"An affront to the integrity of the jury"? Really?

The evidence Quinn planted in the press is beginning to look like an Internet honey trap. Here's how it works: Some or all of the jury sees it, the judge finds out, and Samsung gets a mistrial in a case that was not exactly going its way.

We'll find out if the trap was sprung when proceedings resume Friday morning in San Jose.

More bullcrap from Samsung. There's so much evidence against them, I can't see them coming out of this unscathed.

Apple 2.0

Covering the business that Steve Jobs built

• 0

comments

Samsung's 'Beat Apple' files: Are these the smoking guns?

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt August 5, 2012: 6:18 AM ET

• EmailPrint

Just before their weekend break, the jury got a peek at Samsung's internal documents

Samsung internal "direction for improvement." Click to enlarge.

FORTUNE -- The tech reporters covering the Apple v. Samsung trial last week feasted on the testimony of two senior Apple (AAPL) vice presidents and the carefully selected secrets they revealed from inside One Infinite Loop.
But it was Apple's grilling of its final witness Friday -- Samsung's chief strategy officer Justin Denison -- that most interested me.
His testimony gave the jury its first peek at the "Beat Apple" files.
Asked under oath whether Samsung tried to emulate any Apple products, Denison, according toCNET's reporting, said that was not the case.
That gave Apple's lawyers the opening they needed to start introducing a series of internal Samsung documents with titles like

"Beat Apple response"
"Lessons from Apple"
"Why you should care about Apple"
"Recent Apple analysis project"
"iPhone 5 counter strategy"

The jury was shown Samsung-created slides with side-by-side comparisons of iPhones and Samsung phones still under development with specific "directions for improvement." These invariably involved lifting design elements from Apple -- double tapping to zoom into a portion of the screen, say, or adding three-dimensional lighting effects on icons to give them the "luxurious feel" that the iPhone managed to achieve.
We know from the release of court documents two weeks ago that Apple has a whole drawer full of this stuff, and some of it's pretty devastating.
My favorite: A survey of Best Buy customers returning the Samsung Galaxy Tab to the store. According to Samsung's own market research, the most common reason customers wanted their money back was that they bought the Tab thinking it was an iPad.
See "Root Cause" memo below. For a preview of what else is in the Beat Apple files, see Dieter Bohn's summary at The Verge.

A good read here. It shows proof of how obsessed with Apple Samsung is, and how obsessed with "killing" Apple they are, by literally trying to be Apple. It also says how ATT was opposed to Samsung's jealousy ads that based Apple customers (because Samsung never enjoyed such hype, they tried to tear down Apple's. It also shows how Apple was so ahead of everything, Samsung simply used them as R&D. Also, interesting note: Google even told Samsung that they had to change the Galaxy Tab because it looked too similar to Apple.



Documents show Samsung fixated on a 'Beat Apple' strategy, but did it cross the line?

By Dieter Bohn on July 27, 2012 01:05 am

4

7

in

Share

Tonight's trove of court documents in the Apple vs. Samsung case not only revealed a ton of new images of iPhone and iPad prototypes, but also show that Samsung was very focused on making sure that it is competitive with Apple offerings. That's exactly as you'd expect, but the level and depth of Samsung's focus on Apple is still quite revealing.

The documents show that Samsung was watching Apple closely since the very first iPhone. For example, one email showed that the company realized early on that it would need to switch away from resistive touchscreens to capacitive ones. All of the documents show that Samsung had an honest and candid understanding of its competitive position compared to Apple.

"GOAL OF NEXT YEAR - BEAT APPLE."

By late 2011, however, it becomes clear that Samsung is not only interested in competitive research, but was formulating a specific strategy targeted specifically at Apple. "Goal of next year - BEAT APPLE," read one September, 2011 memo. As early as June of 2011, we found references to a "Beat Apple strategy."

According to the documents, the goal was to "Go Head-To-Head with Apple" in multiple price segments and in multiple regions. By February of 2012, Samsung honed its focus on beating Apple to a finer edge, with one document dismissing other phone manufacturers and declaring that the "three horse race [is] becoming a two horse race between Apple and Samsung."

The question that will likely face the court is this: did Samsung's competitive analysis cross the line into copying Apple's products? There are bits and pieces that Apple will probably point to to prove that point. Mixed in with Samsung's research and emails regarding how to improve its products are hints that Apple may believe proves its case.

"GOOGLE IS DEMANDING DISTINGUISHABLE DESIGN."

In February of 2010, an email suggests that Google had concerns that Samsung's "P3" tablet — the Galaxy Tab 10.1 — and requested design changes. "Google is demanding distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad for the P3." Google went so far as to ask Samsung to make it "noticeably different starting with the front side."

In May of 2010, after Google I/O, internal emails reveal that some of the iPhone-related comments from the developers in attendance were circulated within the company. "The GalaxyS [sic] looks very similar to iPhone." By October of the same year, emails circulated requesting browser features like "bounce effect" and other improved animations: "The animation effect for multiwindow deletion is plain in comparison to the iPad." The "bounce effect" issue, in particular, has a good chance of being front-and-center in Apple's case. It's one of the remaining patents at issue after both companies agreed to jettison some of their disputes before the trial — and one that Apple offered to license to Samsung. This memo could also be interpreted as an explicit request to copy iOS, and we expect that Apple will certainly try to present it in that light.

In February of 2011, meeting notes from an executive level discussion described a "crisis of design" at the company. According to the notes, executives were concerned that Samsung was too focused on Nokia. The real competitor was Apple, and the problem was that when Samsung's "UX is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth."

"THE DIFFERENCE IS TRULY THAT OF HEAVEN AND EARTH."

In August 2011, Samsung took the natural and understandable step of surveying Best Buy stores to find out why its Galaxy Tab tablet was being returned. Most of the reasons listed within the document were spread along the usual gamut of hardware and software complaints. However, in seven of the 30 stores surveyed, the primary reason for returning a Samsung tablet was "lack of product knowledge." One such example could potentially be damning for Samsung, depending on how widespread it actually was:

The most common pattern is that a customer returns the product which was purchased because the customer thought it was an Apple iPad2 [sic]

Although it seems like a relatively small number overall, it's likely enough for Apple to want to bring it up during the trial.

Looking at these hints out of context, it's impossible to know whether they are damning evidence of infringement or innocuous evidence of a company completely focused on beating its rival. However, the existence of that focus can't be put in question.

In February of 2012, an internal memo presented the challenges Samsung faced on a specific carrier: AT&T. It was concerned about the lack of LTE, its own inability to launch competitive phones on multiple price points, and even AT&T's own attitude towards its phones. One line reads, "AT&T has opposed 'Fan Boy' ads, so not possible to fully leverage our spend." That's likely a reference to the Samsung commercials leading up to and during the Super Bowl, which mocked Apple customers.

"AT&T HAS OPPOSED 'FAN BOY' ADS."

If AT&T did indeed try to quash the ads and Samsung chafed under the restrictions, as this memo implies, then the company's goal to "beat Apple" begins to take on the same bitter undercurrent that many detected in those very commercials.

Both internal documents and commissioned work from third parties show that Samsung has been hell-bent on matching Apple's ecosystem. iTunes and the App Store offer a significant advantage in that customers tend to be more locked into the content and apps they've purchased for iOS. By the end of 2011, Samsung's plan to launch the Galaxy S III and a set of related content services was put in place. Still, the company was concerned that it was "lacking a WOW idea to share with GS [...] Generally, lacking confidence in our plan to 'beat Apple.'"

To wrap up, it has to be noted that these documents are obviously selected to put a bad light on Samsung and its analysis of the iPhone and iPad as competing products. It will be up to the jury to decide whether Samsung's attempts to compete crossed into attempts to copy. Whether or not that stratagem works, the documents paint a picture of Samsung as one of the fiercest competitors in the mobile landscape. For anybody that's watched Samsung's rapid rise in marketshare, that picture should be a familiar one.

LOL, would be interesting if there were such heated patent scraps in the automotive world