[algolicious]

This is one of the best critiques so far of the decision.

There are two sides to this trial. On the one side is the emotional appeal: Samsung copied Apple, and documents detail the extent to which Samsung imitated the iPhone. On the other side are the various technical ways in which Apple claimed that Samsung copied them. But just as Apple engineers slaved for years over the technical details of the iPhone, it is incredibly important for the future of mobile innovation that all of the technical parts of the trial are correctly decided. If the jury finds no infringement but finds that infringement was induced, this indicates that technical mistakes were made. But in particular, I wonder if the jury was so swayed by the emotional appeal that sufficient attention was paid to the substantial prior art demonstrated regarding capacitive touch screen phones and multitouch displays.

[hahainternet]

According to the comments in the post, this is one of the infringements: http://androidheadlines.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/thumb...

If this is true, then it's hard to give this decision much weight at all. These two phones are vastly different and one literally says SAMSUNG on the front.

[esolyt]

Just to remove all doubts about whether the jury was smoking crack or not, this phone is found to be infringing the iPhone's design patents:

http://androidspin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/samsung-ga...

[mbreese]

Close the keyboard, then look at it. The jury, apparently, decided what their criteria were for infringement and then applied those criteria to all of the phones. The extra fact that this model had a keyboard wasn't one of the criteria.

Let's not assume that we have the whole story behind the way the jury decided anything, one way or the other.

[surrealize]

Aside from the keyboard (which is significant IMO), this phone differs from the iphone in that:

* this phone has curved (not flat) ends

* four HW buttons on the front (rather than one)

* it's black with a black border (has any iphone had that? Usually the iphone border is in a contrasting color)

* has a big "samsung" on the front

It's pretty distinct, hardware-design wise.

[hahainternet]

From what I've read so far, the very existence of a full display and a bezel surrounding the front of the phone may have been sufficient in this case for damages.

That's obviously crazy, but that appears to have been criteria used.

[ncallaway]

I'm reminded of an old joke: "In Soviet Russia reasonable and appropriate considerations are made before awarding 1B in damages based on vaguely similar designs".

[danielweber]

Thanks. While I'd like to see Apple gets it teeth kicked in as much as the next guy, the amateur analyses on HN about why the jury is obviously wrong are pretty frustrating to deal with.

[ncallaway]

True, though the professional analysis from groklaw is a pretty good read.

[nitrogen]

I purchased that exact phone, exactly because it wasn't an iPhone, had a keyboard (very important for mobile ssh), and ran Android. I knew exactly what I was buying, no confusion whatsoever. The presence of a keyboard is a significant differentiator between that phone and Apple's products.

[eridius]

Also, I thought the design of the home screen (a grid of icons with labels) also had something to do with it? Both of the linked phones have a grid very much like the iPhone.

[magicalist]

icon grids predate the iphone, of course (windows mobile, palm pilot, newton?). I think Apple's claims were more specific, dealing with particular icons, colors, and the favorite apps at the bottom.

[DanBC]

Did 16x16 (and then 32x32, and etc etc) icons get patents? Because someone, somewhere, lost a lot of money - and I got consistently sized icons for many years.

EDIT: This isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. See this 2002 article. BT registered a patent in 1976 for "double clicking hyperlinks" (or somesuch), and then in 2000 they realised that they owned this patent, and a bunch of people were clicking hyperlinks on the WWW, and they started suing people. They lost.

(http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/BT-patent-case-raises-...)

(http://eupat.ffii.org/pikta/xrani/hyperlink/)

[vacri]

favorite apps at the bottom

Quicklaunch bars certainly predate the iphone

[regularfry]

So did Windows 3.1.

[seanalltogether]

The Samsung Gem was also listed with a $4 million infringement. http://www.samsung.com/us/system/consumer/product/sc/hi/10/s...

edit - The Replenish was also granted 3.3 million http://www.prepaidreviews.com/podcast/SamsungReplenish.jpg

These are just laughable

[andybak]

Which aspects did these two infringe? The only thing that even seems plausible is the home screen/icons part of the claim.

[nolok]

Well, they're phones. And black. And Samsung is the bad guy in this story. Alright then, 4 million.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

If my old HP iPaq had a black, not silver bezel and had less hardware buttons, I imagine it would have looked something like that. Hmm.