Apple is not the boss of every word in the English language, and Samsung is on the verge of breaking the U.S. Patent system forever. The Patent Wars roll on, and to what end? If Apple is going to try to corner the market on words, and no company in the United States is going to be stopped from putting copycat products on store shelves until it is too late, these lawsuits will never stop. Join us for another week of Law & Apple as we try to make some sense of this nonsense.
Bloomberg reports that U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton granted Amazon’s request to throw out one claim in Apple’s ongoing lawsuit against Amazon. In the lawsuit, originally launched in 2011, Apple claimed trademark infringement and unfair competition. Among other requests, Cupertino asked the court to prevent Amazon from using the term Appstore, claiming that Amazon's use of the term to describe its Android app marketplace was "false advertising" that could confuse consumers.
Amazon argued that the term is generic, and itself is part of the name of Amazon’s store. "It is not a statement about the nature, characteristics, or qualities of Amazon’s store, much less a false one," Amazon wrote in their filing.
Judge Hamilton agreed with Amazon, ruling that "The court finds no support for the proposition that Amazon has expressly or impliedly communicated that its Appstore for Android possesses the characteristics and qualities that the public has come to expect from the Apple APP Store and/or Apple products."
Is there some way we could just get a patent on the whole thing?
As TechCrunch points out, this ruling was specifically on this single aspect of the case; the full decision regarding other claims related to dilution, unfair competition, and trademark infringement is not expected until later this year. "By rejecting the claim, Amazon was essentially asking the court to focus on the trademark dispute," wrote TechCrunch's Sarah Perez.
This is the kind of headline-grabbing, head-scratching legal development that leads most of us to wonder how far this Patent War is going to go. Surely, no one could really claim to have been confused if they should go to Amazon or Apple just because of the word Appstore. Surely, Apple has better things to do than arguing about silliness like this. Right?
There are more important legal battles for Apple to wage, more important questions to answer, like what exactly will it take in the tech world to be able to get an injunction granted?
This past October, a three-judge panel rejected Apple's request to ban Samsung's Galazy Nexus smartphone ahead of a trial that is not going to happen until spring of 2014. To many people, Apple more than met the tests to have an injunction granted, yet the panel seemed to raise the bar to levels that will make it nearly impossible for any company to meet. Effectively, the remedy of an injunction in cases like these has been rendered powerless. Should a company wish to make an infringing product, they will be able to sell it, and profit from it, for years before a final ruling is issued from the courts, by which time the product will most likely be obsolete anyway.
Apple has asked the Federal Court of Appeals to take another look at the ruling, but as Reuters reports, Cupertino's chances of overturning the October decision are slim to none. Traditionally, the court is unlikely to overturn unanimous decisions (like this one) or issues that do not have significant support from third parties (like this one). Samsung's response to this appeal is expected next week, at which point Apple will need five of the nine judges to agree to a review of the October decision. There are several pro-plaintiff judges on the court, but perhaps not enough to change the ruling.
Just let me know two years from now if you wanted me to stop selling these products last year.
If Apple loses at the Federal Court, Cupertino could take the issue to the Supreme Court, but many legal scholars feel the SCOTUS would be unlikely to take up the case. "If they don't get it now," R. Polk Wagner, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School and a former Federal Circuit clerk said of Apple's chances with a Federal Court appeal, "any chance they have won't come again for a long time."
This would be a huge win for Samsung, as an injunction would be crippling to the Korean smartphone manufacturer. Apple claims that, from 2010 to March 2012, Samsung earned over $8.16 billion in U.S. revenue from products that infringed Apple patents. However, a U.S. patent system that doesn't really allow for an injunction as a reasonable measure is crippling for every manufacturer. As Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents stated a few weeks ago, "if Apple doesn't win one (injunction) in this case, no patent holder in this industry ever will."
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