Ondrej Holzman The years-long dispute between Apple and Samsung reached a resolution other than financial compensation for the first time in early 2016. After years of efforts, Apple has succeeded in preventing the South Korean company from selling certain phones in the United States due to patent infringement.
However, this is far from such a victory as it might seem. A dispute that less than two years ago culminated in a relatively small fine for Samsung, because it concerned products that are now several years old. Samsung will not be affected by their ban in any way.
One month from today, Samsung is banned from selling nine products in the United States that, according to a court decision, infringed on selected Apple patents. Judge Lucy Koh initially refused to issue the ban, but eventually relented under pressure from the Court of Appeal.
The ban applies to the following products: Samsung Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note and Note II, Galaxy S II, SII Epic 4G Touch, S II SkyRocket and S III - i.e. mobile devices that are usually no longer sold for a long time.
Probably the most famous phones Galaxy S II and S III violated the patent related to quick links. However, this patent will expire on February 1, 2016, and since the ban will not take effect until a month from now, Samsung does not have to deal with this patent at all.
The "slide-to-unlock" patent for the method of unlocking the device was violated by three Samsung phones, but the South Korean company no longer uses this method at all. The only patent that Samsung might be interested in "circumventing" it in its own way concerns auto-correction, but again, this is only for old phones.
The sales ban is primarily a symbolic victory for Apple. On the one hand, such a decision may set a precedent for the future, as Samsung tried to indicate in its statement that patents can be used to stop selected products, but on the other hand, it must be expected that similar disputes will definitely last a very long time.
If such patent battles are decided on a similar time scale as the one between Apple and Samsung, they will almost never be able to involve actual products that would really affect the market situation in any way.
"We are very disappointed," a Samsung spokesperson said after the ban decision. "While it won't affect US customers, it's yet another example of Apple abusing the legal system to set a dangerous precedent that could harm generations of customers to come."
This is the end of Samsung. The ban on the sale of S2 and S3 won't help. After all, Apple is an innovator and not that it isn't. I congratulate them very much. lol
After all, this is not about banning the sale of those products at all, but about legal precedent.
I don't understand this, plus Apple wasn't the one who came up with the Slide2Unlock feature.
Here you can see who spends more on lawyers and who spends more on development.