A war on sales of Samsung Galaxy Nexus

BANGALORE, INDIA: Apple has won a lawsuit to grant a preliminary ban of the sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the USA after a judge in California deemed it was a breach of Apple's patent rights

Following 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 Apple will have to post a bond of almost a $100 million dollars to cover Samsung's losses in case the ruling is repealed.

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The 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.

Skip 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.

Source: http://pcquest.www.ciol.com/