Apple vs Samsung: patent wars. Confrontation between Apple and Samsung: attack as a method of defense From partners to competitors

Apple went on the offensive, accusing Samsung of copying solutions used in iPhone devices and iPad. Related patent complaints have been filed in dozens of countries, including Germany, Japan and the United States. Samsung hit the ball, accusing Apple of violating Korean patents related to mobile communications 3G.

Last Friday, a US federal judge decided that the next stage of the dispute between the two companies will begin tomorrow, October 25, 2017.

The patent war between the giants of the smartphone world began in 2010. Then Apple accused its Korean competitor of theft protected by intellectual property patents. At that time, the American concern confirmed Samsung as a “reliable partner” that supplied millions of dollars worth of screens and many other components for the production of the iPhone. The idyll ended when the management of both companies did not agree on mutual licenses.

Over the next 6 years, both giants fought in courts around the world with varying effects. For example, in Australia, a judge forced Samsung to delay the launch of tablet sales Galaxy Tab 10.1. In the UK, in turn, Apple had to apologize to Samsung for convicting the company of patent infringement. The decision of the American court, which in 2012 awarded Apple $1 billion in compensation, turned out to be a turning point. Samsung appealed the punishment, and the judge ruled in favor of the Koreans, given that the damages Apple received were incorrectly calculated.

Samsung ultimately agreed to pay $548 million in damages for infringing three patents, but did not object to any right to relief from Apple. Samsung agreed to pay a minimum of $149 million, but other claims will go to the Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court took up the case in 2016 and ultimately said that damages in patent infringement cases could be calculated differently than in the past. The judges unanimously found that damages should not apply to the entire product, but only to those elements that violated the patents. That Supreme Court decision was cited by Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District in issuing a ruling on Sunday to reopen the trial.

Samsung told CNET that it welcomes the resumption of the process. “This is a historic opportunity to determine how the Supreme Court's recommendations on compensation in the area of ​​design patents will be implemented here and in the future,” Samsung said.

A real patent war has unfolded between two giants - Samsung and Apple. The fight for markets, consumers and profits threatens to hurt both sides, as money spent on lawsuits and lawyers may not be recovered. German Klimenko, head of LiveInternet, comments on the situation around Samsung and Apple to Pravda.Ru.

German Klimenko: Samsung vs. Apple

First, let's look at the chronology. In April, Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics, accusing it of copying the look, interface and hardware iPad and iPhone in their Galaxy products. The South Koreans, in turn, filed a counterclaim for violation of patents related to data transmission technologies in cellular networks.

While the court was dealing with the first wave of the confrontation, sales of the Galaxy Tab were suspended first in the US, then in Europe, causing Samsung to suffer losses. Apple decided to pursue competitors in the Asian market, reaching Japan in September. But sales of iPhone and iPad could not be stopped anywhere. As it turned out, Asian markets are no less important for Apple than European ones, especially since the “apple giant” began to lose influence in Japan. Yes, in the past year Samsung Galaxy S outperformed iPhone sales, and this year the “Apple phone” is stepping on the heels of the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Tab 7.

By the way, the latter immediately became involved in Apple's lawsuit, which the company sent to the Tokyo District Court. The iPhone manufacturer estimates the losses caused to it in the Land of the Rising Sun at $1.3 million - a completely insignificant amount, but when a ban on the sale of products important to a competitor is at stake, you start counting every penny.

Moreover, to date, at IFA 2011, Apple was able to achieve a ban on displaying the latest Samsung tablet, the Galaxy Tab 7.7, which is technically significantly superior to the iPad2. It's fair to say that Samsung has been calling for an amicable settlement of the patent dispute in Australia. But when a competitor “took a stand,” the South Korean company responded in kind, fulfilling one of the court’s orders in an unconventional way: paying two billion dollars for patent infringement in fifty-cent coins. Thirty trucks were needed for this, but history, unfortunately, is silent about how many Apple employees it took to count the money and hand it over to the bank.

So far, only Russia has not experienced the full storm of the patent war between the two giants. Meanwhile, if this war reaches our market, it will directly affect the interests of Russian buyers of smartphones and tablets. But who then compensates for the losses of distributors and resellers? And if, after all, one of the products is banned in our country, what alternative will we get?

German Klimenko, head of LiveInternet, discusses the pros and cons of Apple and Samsung products:

"This is not just a struggle for the souls of consumers, it is a struggle of ideologies. If you look at what is happening in the market mobile internet, then we see: the share of mobile devices on the Android platform is constantly growing, the share of devices with iOS is decreasing. And the patent war tells us that both companies take this market very seriously. More than 50 percent of smartphones now use it, and it’s clear that in the near future there simply won’t be any regular phones left. And the one who now stakes out his place will lead the market forward, to victory, to capitalization. Today, Samsung has all the advantages: devices are cheaper, Android is more accessible - it can be installed on the cheapest devices, it is imported into a variety of form factors, Samsung is constantly producing new products. And Apple has steadily continued to develop its line of iPhones, the standard set of integrations with Mac computers, and we don't know which one will win. However, the consumer will win anyway because there is always a choice."

The patent war between Apple and Samsung, which has been going on for more than a year, is so complicated that last week Judge Lucy Koh, desperate to understand the parties' arguments, once again called on the companies' top managers to hold telephone conversations before the jury deliberations. In April of this year, the leaders of both companies already promised to meet and discuss the situation privately, but this matter ended in nothing. As a result, both companies suffer losses - in different countries courts alternately side with either Apple or Samsung, banning the sale of tablets and smartphones by one of these companies.

This legal battle brought by Apple can be considered to be largely a fulfillment of the will of the late Steve Jobs, who once promised to “drown” the operating room. Android system, under which they work Samsung devices. The situation is completely confused by the fact that both companies are closely connected by partnerships: at least a quarter of the components in the iPhone and iPad are from Samsung, and these are key components: displays, flash drives, processors. Accordingly, Samsung gained access to the secrets of new Apple devices before others. It is thanks to this, Apple believes, that Galaxy Tab tablets and Samsung smartphones were able to compete so strongly with Apple products (in some countries, including the USA, Apple has already lost its undisputed leadership in the market).

If you look at the devices of both companies with an open mind, the similarities are “confusingly”, as patent lawyers put it, really striking. On the other hand, if you look at many communicators and tablets from other companies, you will find that they also resemble the iPhone and iPad - and how could it be otherwise in the design of a case, display and a single button?

Therefore, the point is not whether Samsung borrowed Apple's ideas - of course, it did, like dozens of other companies. This always happens with any fashionable innovation - and, as is typical, with both useful and harmful or simply unnecessary. And the point is not even whether 2 million Apple devices were really undersold due to the “theft” of technology and whether Samsung should pay Apple $30-40 in royalties from each device (as it was offered in 2010 at the instigation of Jobs ) - the court will sort all this out. The question is much broader: how common is this situation for the high-tech industry and who ultimately wins and who loses?

Patenting software

The most confusing aspect of intellectual property ownership is the situation with patenting. computer programs. On the one hand, programs are a typical technical product; in this quality they are no different from a car or a household electric meat grinder, and therefore patenting them seems natural. On the other hand, they are only the practical embodiment of mathematical and design ideas, and ideas, as we know, are not subject to patenting. In this way, society protects itself from the unjustified privatization of publicly available knowledge—it’s easy to imagine what would happen if every scientific theory were patented.

As a result of this ambiguity, in the United States (and Japan) software is patented, but in almost everything else in the rest of the world it is not, protected by ordinary copyright, on the same basis as literary works. Since it is extremely easy to get around this condition - it is enough, for example, to rewrite the program in another programming language - there are many tricks: “control methods” are patented, design and design elements are protected by trademarks, etc. Nevertheless everything key features modern programs are immediately taken over by the community and become commonplace. Programs would be impossible to use if they were patented and prohibited from freely using such interface details as windows, icons, main menu, address bar and other commonly used things.

Nevertheless, attempts to patent the well-known occur regularly: a typical story occurred in 2000, when the well-known company British Telecom tried to extend the scope of a patent received in 1976 to the use of hypertext links on the Internet. Then the American Internet Patent News Service distributed through the network a 1968 film in which the inventor GUI Douglas Engelbart demonstrates the transition in hypertext by clicking on a link with the mouse. The court, of course, rejected the absurd claim, but not because of the film, but for a formal reason: supposedly some provisions of the British Telecom patent do not exactly correspond to how hyperlinks are used now.

An attempt to sue Linux

For the time being, a completely decent and unremarkable company, which then, in the nineties, bore the name Caldera, did not stand out as anything special among other suppliers software solutions based on operating Unix systems. In the late nineties, it acquired the rights to the already dying operating system DR DOS, which represented a version of the product from the original developer DOS systems Gary Kildall, and managed to sue Microsoft for $250 million for using its version of MS DOS for many years. Undoubtedly, this success inspired the company's management to take further action. Note that former Novell CEO Ray Noorda played a huge role in the history and initial success of Caldera, who supported it through his venture capital company Canopy Group.

In 2001-2002, Caldera acquired the well-known company SCO, and with it some rights to Unix, including managing licenses for the legacy Unix code owned by Novell. In 2002, a new director, Darl McBride, came to the company and first of all renamed it SCO Group. In March 2003, the renewed company sued IBM with a then-unprecedented billion-dollar claim for allegedly using its code in Linux, and at the same time sent out largest companies letters in which it stated that it would require payment for licenses to use Linux.

Soon after this, events took a tragic turn. By that time, Ray Noorda, who was at the origins of the whole story, had retired, but his daughter, Val Noorda-Kreidel, outraged by the turn that events had taken, in December 2004 achieved the dismissal of the embezzled Ralph Jarro, who replaced Noord in the management of Canopy (and former the initiator of McBride's invitation). A few days after Yarro was fired, Canopy CIO Robert Penrose shot himself. In March 2005, the court declared Noord incompetent due to his age, but Jarro did not return to the position of director, being satisfied with compensation in the form of a stake in SCO. A week after the agreement, Val Noorda-Kreidel was found dead; According to official police information, she also shot herself. And if the motives for Penrose’s suicide are presumably clear - he could have been accused of embezzling three million dollars given to him by Yarro - then the reasons for Val’s death are still unknown.

In 2007, the court ruled that SCO had no rights to the Unix code, which still belonged to the original owner, Novell, and that the plaintiff only had the right to manage the licenses. But the most important thing is that Darl McBride could not present to the court a single line of code copied from the novel's Unix - all his statements turned out to be just naked PR. And not unsuccessfully: some people still forked over the cash, not wanting to get involved in litigation (which, apparently, was the intention). But this free money did not save SCO, which spent all its cash in litigation and on PR support - in the same 2007, it had to declare itself bankrupt for the first time. Nevertheless, even after firing the odious McBride in 2009, SCO did not calm down. Already in April of this year, she suddenly emerged from oblivion and promised to again raise a claim against IBM. But this was already agony: in early August, SCO Group finally declared itself bankrupt in accordance with Chapter 7 of the US Bankruptcy Code (the seventh chapter means the liquidation of the company).

Who benefits from all this and who doesn’t?

It has already become commonplace to believe that post-war Japan rose by borrowing and talentedly reproducing other people's ideas. Currently, China is following the same path, not without success. Moreover, if you take an unbiased look at many of the achievements of the USSR (especially the pre-stagnation period), it turns out that they were also borrowed from Western models. This is not something to be ashamed of: good example gives us the domestic Raketa vacuum cleaner, which remains an integral part of the childhood memories of my generation. Once copied down to the design details from Electrolux's Model V, this vacuum cleaner in a domestic design and using domestic materials became a symbol of reliability: citizens of the USSR claimed that if you threw it from the eighth floor, then nothing would happen to it.

By copying the American B-29 under the name “Tu-4” A.N. Tupolev managed to raise the aviation industry of the USSR to unprecedented heights: he had to master a huge number of new processes, materials and technologies that were not previously known in the Soviet Union. At the same time, it is important that the copying party has the necessary groundwork: only then will the borrowing be successful and profitable. The designer of unmanned aerial vehicles, Nikolai Dolzhenkov, in one of his interviews describes a case when they could not copy the device that separates the parachute from the plane upon landing: there were simply no machines that would allow achieving such a clean surface treatment.

That is, real copying is an expensive pleasure. In the history of the USSR there are examples of both positive and negative borrowings. The introduction of Fiat technologies in the automotive industry was certainly positive - it’s not for nothing that the “classic” Zhiguli lasted on the market until recent years. The entire Soviet microelectronic industry was created according to Western models, thanks to which our specialists entered the world market fully prepared. But a similar attempt to copy IBM computers in the seventies backfired, on the contrary, almost completely stopping its own promising developments* and leading to an irreparable lag in this area.

So the issue of borrowing other people’s ideas from the point of view of public good is not clear-cut: both those who believe that the invention belongs only to its author and those who are ready to a priori declare it public property are wrong. As in many other cases, it all depends on who, under what conditions and for what purpose copies: it can be outright theft, or an unconditionally good deed for the benefit of others. Returning to the dispute between Apple and Samsung and assessing it in isolation from formalities, one cannot help but admit that by borrowing and creatively reworking American concepts and technologies, South Korean engineers did a rather good deed, satisfying the needs of a wider range of potential consumers.

* See Novaya Gazeta dated 04/20/2012 -

Samsung Galaxy The Tab certainly takes the iPad's core idea of ​​one-button control, while moving everything else to the touchscreen. However, only a very biased person can confuse the tablets even visually: firstly, the Galaxy Tab is significantly smaller (7-inch screen versus 9.7 for the iPad), and most importantly, almost half as light. As a result, according to many users, the Galaxy Tab is much more comfortable to use - it easily fits into a coat pocket or handbag. The Samsung product makes your hand less tired when you have to hold the device suspended for a long time - for example, when reading texts on the road. It’s more comfortable to watch videos on the larger iPad screen (which also has one and a half times longer battery life), but the main difference between them still lies in the properties of the operating systems. Applications to open Android much more than with iOS, where Apple applies a strict filtering policy, as a result of which some functions, perhaps minor, but important for certain categories of users, cannot be performed on the iPad in principle. As a real-life example that made my builder brother become an ardent fan of Android devices: viewing design documents in AutoCAD format is easy on Android, but impossible on Apple tablets - and this is a whole group of potential users for whom tablets are very convenient. The author of these lines, who found himself involuntarily tied to an iPad for ten days as the only means of communication, was unable to perform the simplest operation on it: download and forward an attachment to an email to another correspondent. So, as a work tool, Android tablets are probably preferable.

It is more difficult to unambiguously determine preferences in the class of smartphones, where the Samsung Galaxy S from a certain distance is really indistinguishable from the iPhone. Reviewers name some minor features that seem to make the Galaxy S more convenient to use (removable and replaceable batteries, expandability internal memory via flash cards, stereo FM, integration with Google Maps and GPS, allowing you to use the device as a full-fledged navigator). But the South Korean engineers themselves readily acknowledge the advantages of the iPhone: Samsung lawyers even presented to the court a 132-page report prepared back in 2010, which lists in detail all the differences between the two devices and admits that even the copied functions in the Galaxy S are significantly inferior to the American product.

This week, a US court began considering technology giant Apple's lawsuit against Samsung. The American company accuses its competitor in the smartphone market of “systematically copying the features of its devices” and demands $2 billion for copyright infringement. Which patents does Apple think the Korean manufacturer has violated?

In the Apple lawsuit we're talking about about five technologies that affect ten smartphone models and Samsung tablets. In particular, Cupertino believes that the Koreans are illegally using a patent called “System and method for performing an action on a structure in machine-generated data.” This document describes the function of “highlighting” information of a certain type in the text, with which the user can perform certain actions (for example, call a phone number in SMS).

The second controversial patent is called "Asynchronous data synchronization across devices." This feature is widely used on iPhone and iPad: users can interact with applications simultaneously with data synchronization (for example, when a new meeting created on a computer is loaded into Calendar).

Patents for “highlighting” information and searching for mobile device

Third patent “Universal interface for retrieving information in computer system" describes the search function on mobile devices. When you enter a query, iPhone and iPad search not only the data stored on the mobile device, but also allow you to access the Internet or Wikipedia. Fourth, “Method, system and graphic user interface"providing verbal recommendations" describes the function of auto-substitution of words when entering text.

The fifth patent – ​​“Unlocking a device with a gesture performed over the unlock image” – is one of the most important. According to Apple, Samsung is illegally using the function of unlocking smartphones and tablets by swiping a finger across the screen.

Patents for text unblocking and auto-substitution

Samsung's lawyers will likely respond to the claims by arguing that similar features were developed by Google and other companies before the first iPhone model was released in 2007. They may also argue that Apple's complaint threatens competition on mobile market, and the patents in question largely relate to Android, which means other manufacturers must be involved in the legal dispute.

It is possible that this is exactly what Apple is trying to achieve. The company's blow is aimed not so much at Samsung, but at Google - the developer of the most common operating system, which is used in Galaxy smartphones, products from HTC, Sony, LG and other companies. On Android based running over a billion devices, so if Apple wins, Google and its partners will have to modify Android and related software. The Internet search engine is not a defendant in the case, but Google employees are expected to testify at the hearing.

In reality, Apple is at war with Android already six years. operating room Google system The late Steve Jobs called it a “stolen product” and threatened the search engine with “thermonuclear war.” “I am ready to fight until my last breath and spend every cent of Apple’s bank account to prove their guilt. I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product," he said.

Hello everyone, the media yesterday and today also continue to write about Samsung and Apple and their patent wars. Since many headlines and news generally contain a lot of yellow heresy, I decided to sort it out and write everything correctly. I'm already interested in it myself.

This patent war has been going on since April last year.

Since then, the two companies have filed over 30 lawsuits against each other in courts in dozens of countries, including the United States, Germany, Australia, Holland, South Korea and Japan. In Cupertino they say that Koreans are blindly copying the appearance of iPad tablets and iPhone smartphones, as well as the technologies that are used in these devices. In response, Samsung is complaining that Apple is infringing on its wireless patents.

In several countries, the court sided with Apple. For example, in Germany and Australia, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet was banned from sale, but Samsung managed to circumvent the regulations each time by making changes to the design of the device.

At the same time, despite the legal struggle and competition for market share, both companies have long had business relations.

Sudv South Korea as punishment, he limited sales of “controversial” devices from companies: Apple will not be able to sell iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 1 and iPad 2, and Samsung will not be able to sell 12 products, including Galaxy smartphone. Apple must also pay Samsung 40 million won ($35,000), and the Korean company will pay its American competitors 25 million won (about $22,000).

The Seoul Central District Court, where the patent trial took place, decided that the American company infringed two Samsung patents related to data transmission technologies. Samsung, in turn, was found guilty of violating Apple's patented “bounce-back” technology used for the touchscreen. However, the court did not recognize that the South Korean company copied iPhone design, which the American company insisted on.

One of the jurors in the Samsung vs Apple case: after we were shown this picture, doubts disappeared

But just yesterday, finally and very unexpectedly, an American jury rendered a verdict on Apple and Samsung. Apple won the patent wars on almost all counts.

Apple and Samsung court decision on patent wars

• There were violations both in the field of application patents and design patents. In total, violations of 6 out of 7 patents were recognized.
• Intentional patent infringement was found in violation of 5 patents out of 6. Infringement of one patent was assessed as unintentional.
• The court also found that Samsung copied not only devices, but also accessories.
• Samsung also managed to violate antitrust laws with one of its UMTS patents

Infringed patents:

• Scrolling documents, translating them, scaling and enlarging them on the screen. This also applies to photography.
• Structured interface for documents.
• Possibility to use third party applications for standard operations. Go to the menu, call.
• Rounded corners.
• A graphical user interface for a screen or part of it.

Strangely, the iPad patent has not been violated. Since there were a lot of rumors and opinions that this patent was definitely violated. They are almost indistinguishable.

The jury assessed damages at 1 billion 50 million US dollars .

The jury ruled that none of the patents that the Koreans accused Apple of had been infringed. All Apple smartphones and tablets have been cleared of any charges. Apple did not harm Samsung through its actions or its devices, so Apple is not required to pay any compensation.

In the face of Samsung.

Despite Apple's convincing victory, Samsung managed to avoid complete defeat. Let me remind you that Apple insisted on compensation of $2.5 billion and recognition of all violations as intentional.

It is also known that a ban on the import of products will not be imposed. Apple will have to negotiate royalties. However, this is a heavy blow for the South Korean company. Lawyers could not find a single patent in the intellectual property bins that Apple violated. It has already become known that Samsung will appeal this court decision.