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the ban of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales in the US market,
Apple
has successfully won another lawsuit to have a preliminary ban
on the
sale of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the US on June 29, 2012 .
Judge
Lucy Koh deemed that the Galaxy Nexus was violating four
patents of
Apple, and that it is “no more than colorably different”. This
will be a huge blow to Samsung, who is using the device as its
flagship model for its new OS, Android 4.1, also known as
Jelly Bean.
To summarize, the court ruling deemed that Samsung Galaxy
Nexus
violated 4 patents of Apple's, which would cause great damages
to the
sales of the iPhone. The major clincher among all of the
patent
issues is clearly the one about the “unified search”, which
basically entails using one user interface to mine several
sources
for information. This kind of algorithm is used in Apple's
virtual
voice assistant, “Siri”, and the court deemed that this patent
was violated heavily the Galaxy Nexus in its android software.
Apple
will have to post a bond of almost a $100 million dollars to
cover
Samsung's losses in case the ruling is repealed.
nebulous world of patents
The
controversy of this whole situation lies in the validity of
the
patents that are being contested. In fact, one of the patents
involved in this case is highly debatable in its validity.
Apple has
patented its “swipe-to-unlock” feature that is used on many
Apple
products, such as the iPhone. There is a rule about “prior
art”,
which means that a patent will be invalidated if there is
proof that
the innovation existed even before the patent was being filed.
In
this case, there is solid evidence that a device that existed
in
2005, called the Neonode N1m, has a screen unlock motion
gesture that
is strikingly similar to the one the iPhone uses. You can
check out
the video
for
yourself.
to around 4:00 seconds to see the gesture used in the N1m.
So, how is
it possible that this resemblance was not brought up when
the patent
was filed? It was likely that Apple knew about it, although
the court
did not. However, in the Netherlands, the court threw out
Apple's
patent on the slide-to-unlock feature, using the NeoNode N1m
as
sufficient proof that the feature was too trivial to be
considered
for patent rights.
However, this
patent
still stands firm in the US, and by the same logic in which
Apple is
prosecuting Samsung, they will be able to file lawsuits
against
practically every smartphone company that is using a similar
feature.
While Apple is
currently still the biggest player in the smartphone
industry,
Samsung is hot on their trails with the unveiling of the
Samsung
Galaxy SIII in the market. Is this a ploy to bring negative
publicity
to Samsung, or to stymie their efforts to market their new
phone?
Also, by holding so many patents, is Apple attempting to
keep their
competition at bay?
Also, how is it
that
Apple's patent on their unlock feature still stands with
such strong
evidence to invalidate it with “prior art”? It will be
interesting to observe how this “patent war” folds out
between
these two heavyweights.
Please give
your
feedback to tell us what you think.