Earlier this month, the United States Patent Office made a non-final ruling that one of Apple’s design patents for the original iPhone is invalid within Apple’s long-running lawsuit against Samsung, according to a report from FOSS Patents. This particular patent, as seen in the drawings above, references the overall design of the original iPhone launched in 2007. It is known as the “D’677” patent in court proceedings and legal documents. FOSS explains the reasoning behind the invalidation:
The problem the D’677 patent faces here is that the USPTO has determined (for now) that this patent “is not entitled to benefit of the filing date” of two previous Apple design patent applications because the design at issue was not disclosed in those earlier applications. As a result, certain prior art is eligible now, and against the background of that additional prior art, the USPTO believes the patent shouldn’t have been granted.
One reason for the invalidation at this point in the proceedings is that this particular patent was not disclosed by Apple in earlier patent applications, according to FOSS Patents. Additionally, as the report notes, this patent was already deemed by the USPTO to not be valid on four occasions due to comparisons with patents from LG and Sharp.
As Apple initially won the lawsuit in late 2014 against Samsung for iPhone design patents, and as Samsung’s latest appeal in the case was actually rejected just last week, it does not appear that this new patent invalidation will affect Apple’s odds of collecting over half a billion dollars from Samsung in patent infringement penalties. According to today’s report, it invalidation could only come into play if the “Supreme Court [becomes] interested in looking into this issue now and [overrules] the Federal Circuit.”
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Samsung continues to prove that you can copy and steal — and profit enormously — while the patent and court systems stumble over themselves for years. Crime does pay.
You know what they say “Good artists copy but great artists steal.”, it’s old like the world…
And we know Apple did that to Xerox, and even Microsoft follow suit.
Apple saw about 1% of what Xerox was doing so your argument is invalid.
Why is it that some people insist on quoting things completely out of context in order to attempt to make a point? The “Good artists copy….” comment was Steve Jobs quoting Picasso. He was talking about being inspired by things in nature, etc. He wasn’t talking about actually stealing someone’s implementation of a specific product.
@djngoma. Apple did not steal anything from Xerox. Apple visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center for a total of 16 hours and PAID for every thing they learned there with the right for Xerox to acquire one million shares of Apple pre-IPO common stock. Had Xerox held on to that stock today, after numerous splits, it would be 56 million shares today. . . worth about $6.5 Billion. It was not Apple’s fault that they sold it for only $16 million after the IPO. In addition, Apple developed the entire thing themselves and Apple’s user interface bears little relationship to Xerox’s Smalltalk. Apple invented the drag and drop to Icon, the trashcan, the dropdown menu, dragable windowing systems, and contextual menus. Microsoft, on the other hand did steal the technology. . . from Apple.
Samsung was able to find some success from copying Apple. I think everyone would agree with that. But as an Apple fan, I take solace in Samsung’s declining sales figures for phones. They have not been able to recreate the success they had with the Galaxy S4. And I’d like to believe that a part of that is lack of innovation.
That said, I am happy to have Apple see features on other phones that people like and find a quality way to bring those features to iOS. So by the same logic, I do not feel it fair to get upset when other companies do the same with Apple features.
(Now, as for the naming conventions–e.g., Apple Pay launches, Samsung copies it and names its service Samsung Pay–I remain indignant. Is there not a single original person at Samsung?)
The S4 was the closest to the previous Apple design at the time, as is the S6 now that it has once again stolen the look and feel of the iPhone 6 – and no Samsung a larger screen is not innovation. They’ve also peed off a lot of their diehard fans by removing the features that were unique, like the removable battery and the SD Card slot. Ironically of course that was the stuff they were predicating their ads on in previous generations and now they have the same issues as it were.
The bigger issue is that the US Patent Office – and the very patent laws themselves – need a MAJOR Overhaul! Witness all the Patent Trolls that file bogus lawsuits in East Texas with the sole intent of shaking down legitimate businesses because it’s ” . . . cheaper to settle.”
The USPO is a real joke and a waste of our taxpayer $$$..
Time to bring a halt to this eternal squabble and both Companies get around to interesting new developments instead.
This is just stupid.
Someone bribed someone in the Uspto
“As Apple initially won the lawsuit in late 2014 against Samsung for iPhone design patents, and as Samsung’s latest appeal in the case was actually rejected just last week, it does not appear that this new patent invalidation will affect Apple’s odds of collecting over half a billion dollars from Samsung in patent infringement penalties. ”
The original court case was 2012.