Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ewan 
It's time Apple gets a taste of their own medicine. How dare they try to block Samsung products and stop competition so they can stop innovating and start shoving the same old crap down our throat. The iPhone hasn't innovated anything since the iPhone 1.
Samsung doesn't do much in the way of innovating with cell phones and tablets. They just copy. They've been doing that for years. They tried to copy the RIM and Palm phones with their other phones. Samsung also tried to copy Apple's Newton product, which was the first handheld pen PDA.
My question is why didn't Moto try to sue Apple long before Google bought the company. It's not like Moto didn't know Apple has been selling smartphones.
Is there a distinction between cell phones and smartphone? Yeah, one is more of a computing device and a cell phone, rather than just a cell phone with a couple of specific apps loaded on it. Apple doesn't make a cell phone with just a couple of specific apps loaded on it. You can add more apps that perform more functions to that of a computer. So, there might be a way around it.
The other thing is patent infringements is a difficult thing to deal with. NO company like having to sue another. Apple has TRIED to deal with Samsung for MANY YEARS on this.
In the end, it wouldn't surprise me if Samsung ultimately had to pay Apple over $2 Billion. See the problem is that some patents aren't justifyable patents, but many are. The US Copyright Office, obviously can't go through every patent submitted to check the validity of the patent in the first place. They just process the paperwork in hopes that it was checked PRIOR to be submitted and the patent attorneys filled out the paperwork properly. From my limited knowledge of patent law, since I'm not an attorney. If a product is sold on the market with a certain functionality, without patent paperwork submitted, then the patent is or at least SHOULD BE invalidated.
I personally don't know how many of these patents Moto has the are actually patentable since email, email notification, video players have been around before Cell phones and I'm sure Moto didn't come up with the first email system with notification as well as video players, etc. But since Apple just seem fit to just settle, Google wants to go to court on it.
Obviously, some of things that are going on have a personal tone to it. Apple was developing THEIR unique approach to a smartphone by using their OWN operating system, with a touchscreen sans physical keyboard, as well as having the look and feel of an APPLE product rather than trying to LOOK like a PALM phone, or a RIMM phone. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO at the time, was on Apple's Board and Apple has been doing business with Samsung on component supplier and Apple thought that it was improper for Google and Samsung to work together on whatever level they were, to basically through the components Apple didn't buy, slap it together and do a quick and dirty almost blatant copy of an iPhone and iPad, almost down the carton. Maybe Apple used some of Samsung patents knowingly or many times unknowingly.
Some times they do something and they don't have time to research every single patent before they actually start using it. Yeah, Apple had access to the products that have been shipped, but anything that wasn't shipped, they don't have access unless Apple gets physical possession of something to rip apart and get access to it, especially since they are not patents on the outside, but more internal workings.
Either way, we can have out own opinions on everything, and ultimately what is going to happen is up to the courts and people involved, not us. We all have our own biases that produce our own opinions, so right, wrong, indifferent, the ugliness of patents will continue on and it is up to the courts and each party to deal with, not us.
I just think that Apple could potentially do things to prevent Google's Android OS from doing things that gives them equal footing. Apple has iBooks and PodCasts, if Apple wants to protect that, they MIGHT be able go after the app developers and prevent the capability of being able to download and/or view/listen to iBooks and Podcasts on Android devices.
That would be my next move if I were Apple. Apple pretty much owns the Podcast market and Google just dropped their Podcasting software because no one wants to have their content on Google's eco-system as they prefer to have it on Apple's. Apple developed the iBook standard and they might be able to control what products can have readers for these.
