Saturday, August 25, 2012

Jury Awards $1 Billion to Apple in Samsung Patent Case

Jury Awards $1 Billion to Apple in Samsung Patent Case, NYT article.
That is not a big financial blow to Samsung, one of the world’s largest electronics companies. But the decision was closely watched because it could help shape the balance of power in the growing smartphone and tablet computer business. It could also give Apple a tool it can use to more aggressively protect its innovations from a fleet of rivals flooding the market with competing devices.

Holy mama.
I don't think anybody expected such a clear-cut win for either side.
I think, right now Apple doesn't even have to say anything to the other "copyists", like LG and HTC, they will be scrambling to take their next phone further away from the iPhone.

I must say, on the whole... much as I think conflicts are usually a waste of time, this result is not bad. Samsung clearly had gone after the closest thing to a pure copy of the iPhone they could get away with, and I think that the global business learning a little about such thinking being less than ethical or honorable is a good thing. As a race we could learn a thing or two about making a living on our own efforts rather than whole-sale ripping-off if we can get away with it.
And it should encourage people to innovate if there's an increased feeling that it is more likely to give rewards than just to use the ideas of others without permission or compensation.

Besides, plain copying and aggressively making money on something just gives me a bad taste in the mouth. I feel that people or companies who do this a lot has zero self-respect, only interest in cold mammon.

And much as Apple, due to spectacularly sound business skills on top of the innovation, has become one of the most successful companies in history, it was very clear that Steve Jobs, even when he said "I don't mind, no I don't mind", really did mind. It hurt him that everything but everything Apple ever invented, was copied wholesale by competitors as fast and as far as the law seemed to permit. He was bitter. Understandable. I'm no big-business man, but I'm an artist, and if I'd had a big success with a particular style, and a couple of other painters got success too by coldly copying the style, I'd not feel great about it.

5 comments:

Stephen A said...

In the long term I suspect this is a disaster for Apple. On par with if IBM had defeated the Clone manufacturers and we were stuck with only genuine IBM PS/2s running OS2 or the like and slowly squeezed the margins on Intel and Microsoft.

They just nuked their primary supplier for iPad components. And set every hardware manufacturer against them. Why tolerate razor thin margins and threats of lawsuits?

They established themselves as a vertical monopoly, subject to antitrust investigations and scrutiny. During equivalent periods IBM and Microsoft stumbled badly.

While Apple will be coasting on a small number of established designs, it's competitors will be forced to "think different". It is likely that the "Next Big Thing" will arise from this maneuvering. The primary internal drive for innovation was Jobs and he has left the building.

As with Microsoft's period of dominance, third party software (and in this case hardware) developers will fear that Apple will "embrace extend and extinguish" any new innovation in the tablet space.

Apple is also the new vanilla. In the absence of competition or contrast Apple designs will be the boring old default, and every design flaw will be something to bitch about. The Bell Telephone Western Electric Model 500 phone was quite a remarkable piece of engineering, but people ran like hell from it once alternatives became available.

Finally, Apple has now inherited from Microsoft (and previously IBM) the title of "the big bad" which the next Steve Jobs will rail against. They are the empire now, not the rebels.

I figure this means quite a few years of lucrative stagnation and internal decay followed by quite a few big stumbles. At best modern day Sony, at worst Nokia.

I figure Google starts moving sideways with Google Glass, picoprojectors and ubiquitous computing.

TC [Girl] said...

Stephen A said...
They just nuked their primary supplier for iPad components.

Uh...Yeah.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yeah, but hopefully Samsung are businessmen and not three year-olds who will knife their own toys to stop the neighbor kid to get at them.

TC [Girl] said...

this just in. Interesting.

TC [Girl] said...

I don't think anybody expected such a clear-cut win for either side.
I think, right now Apple doesn't even have to say anything to the other "copyists", like LG and HTC, they will be scrambling to take their next phone further away from the iPhone.

I must say, on the whole... much as I think conflicts are usually a waste of time, this result is not bad. Samsung clearly had gone after the closest thing to a pure copy of the iPhone they could get away with, and I think that the global business learning a little about such thinking being less than ethical or honorable is a good thing. As a race we could learn a thing or two about making a living on our own efforts rather than whole-sale ripping-off if we can get away with it.
And it should encourage people to innovate if there's an increased feeling that it is more likely to give rewards than just to use the ideas of others without permission or compensation.

Besides, plain copying and aggressively making money on something just gives me a bad taste in the mouth. I feel that people or companies who do this a lot has zero self-respect, only interest in cold mammon.


Apparently, NOT SO.