Great work, Daniel. Clear and comprehensive, frosted with irony.
"... Judge Posner decided that ... Motorola would be left trying to sell Google's indisputably "inferior non-Apple technology" and it would be "catastrophic" if customers had only one source to obtain Apple technology."
Sweet.
Not often Posner gets stuff horribly wrong. But that "catastrophy" seems to be what Article 1, Section 8, clause 8 of the Constitution seems to require.
It is kinda scary that the fate of so many is in the hands of a group of people who probably don't understand more than 5% of what the combatants are arguing about.
I personally would like to see Apple prevail but I'd also like this all to end by Apple being able to completely kick Samsung to the curb as a component supplier. I have nothing against Samsung competing against Apple based on their own ideas, innovations, and hard work. In fact, from a big picture view Samsung competing head to head against Apple on the high end of the market is really helping Apple sustain its premium product lines and pricing. If Samsung had a clue they'd back away from the high end market and try to disrupt Apple from the bottom. Over the long term that seems to have a higher probability for success if they can live on the smaller margins but higher volume from the low end while supplying components for the high end. They are clearly operating based on ego and coveting the limelight that Apple has rather than building a long term sustainable business model. I just don't think Samsung is capable of sustaining itself in the very high reward but very high risk game that Apple is playing and especially if they ruin their reputation as a reliable business partner in the component space. This ongoing drama is doing nothing more than making Samsung look lazy, pathetic, sleazy, and untrustworthy. Those attributes will haunt them forever if they don't clean up their act.
For everyone who doesn’t want to read all this nonsense, here’s the summary. Remember, the little red flag at the bottom left of each post is there for a reason!
What about it is junk? Android is a stolen product that Steve Jobs promised to crush. And now you are advocating censorship simply because you disagree with it? Fabulous.
Instead of trying to flag this post, why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker. Can't afford it because you are a secretary, LPN or janitor having to make ends meet on $30,000 a year? Well it stinks to be you! How dare evil Google create a way for Sony, LG, HTC, Lenovo etc. to sell decent functional devices for half as much!
The really ridiculous part is that folks do not realize that Android helps Apple in the long run. People buy a cheap Android device to get them into smartphones, then they upgrade to Apple when they find out that they are much better. What do you think is driving the huge growth in Apple products in developing nations where the vast majority of the population has never owned a PC or have Internet access? Android phones and tablets. Android devices are having the same effect in developing markets right now as cheap computers running DOS and Windows did in the 1980s and 1990s. And in the long run that helped Apple, who was able to get all those Windows users to buy I-Pods first and now replace Windows with I-Pads later.
But hey, don't bother trying to come up with your own point of view. Just flag me and be done with it.
But nah. You guys are right. Increasing the number of computer users to create a much bigger market of people who might one day purchase an Apple device is bad. DOS, Windows and Android massively increasing the market of potential buyers for Apple products hurts Apple. It would have been better had Windows and Android never come along and allowed the computer/tech market remain a little niche market.
Who makes up these jurors? Regular folk or people who know what the hell they are listening to with all the technical jargon what not? I was thinking these days you can get jurors made up of media tech writers or Apple would be sunk for sure.
For everyone who doesn’t want to read all this nonsense, here’s the summary. Remember, the little red flag at the bottom left of each post is there for a reason!
In some ways, I wonder why Apple Legal doesn't hire Daniel for these trials. He always comes up with more historical and pertinent information than we hear from court proceedings. Has anyone found a writer on Samsung's side who has anywhere near as much understanding and information as Daniel? Probably doesn't exist.
He would be excellent for the job. Only one little problem. Although he is an independent journalist, his close association with AI means Apple would never associate with him due to some bad blood between Apple and AI regarding a lawsuit brought against AI and Kasper back in 2005. (Apple Computer v. DOE 1, et al.,)
What about it is junk? Android is a stolen product that Steve Jobs promised to crush. And now you are advocating censorship simply because you disagree with it? Fabulous.
Instead of trying to flag this post, why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker. Can't afford it because you are a secretary, LPN or janitor having to make ends meet on $30,000 a year? Well it stinks to be you! How dare evil Google create a way for Sony, LG, HTC, Lenovo etc. to sell decent functional devices for half as much!
Why are the only two options "Apple the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker" or Android licensees allowed to infringe specific patents?
Do you really think that without taking specific ideas Apple has patented (and we are not talking about multitouch or the basic concept of a iPhone), Android licensees can't produce cheap phones? Why can't Samsung license Apple's patents the same way that it licenses Microsoft IP or the way HTC licensed Apple's patents?
Look at the iPod: Apple was making its product, and a number of other companies were making different things, most of which weren't very successful. But plenty of cheap options; there was no lack of options for the rich or the poor. Most people just chose Apple's product.
Your morality play is simply nonsense. First of all, even people with limited means can afford to get nice products. As a poor starving student teen I bought a Sony Discman on a paper route budget. It cost more than an iPod or even an iPhone in inflated dollars.
The super cheap devices being used in very poor developing nations do not require free access to Apple patents covering whimsical UI features like "Slide to Unlock" to sell.
The real issue is that Samsung's products ripping off the iPhone are sold for prices that are equal to or more than the iPhone.
The low end junk that Samsung is dumping on emerging markets is the same kind of barely functional junk it was dumping on the U.S. before the iPhone arrived.
I wouldn't put your hopes on anything more than a weak version of 3. Apple has the IP, but juries are notorious in these cases as being not much better than a flip of the coin. I think you can expect Apple to lose this case on some level. The really interesting possibilities for Apple are based upon what they announce in June. Serial Innovation becomes more and more difficult to copy. Even if Apple only fights Samsung to a standstill on the prior theft of IP, if they keep producing new tech, it is going to get more and more obvious what is going on.
I also think the Mr Dilger is not giving the Devil his due with the prior history lesson. Microsoft mainly won because Apple and Steve Jobs were not careful enough in the wording of their licensing agreement with Microsoft while they were making Word for the Mac. If my memory serves me right, there was a clause in the contract between the two of them that was construed to include the rights to use the interface. Smart copiers will always exist. The only way to fight that is to use every tool in your box.
Another, far more realistic possibility is that the jury finds for Apple but awards a relatively small amount (something north of $38 million and well south of $2.2 billion).
I am hoping for a thermonuclear holy war, on an unprecedented scale! Hell, let's even throw in a tiny bit of biological warfare, just for good measure.
...why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker.
Do you honestly think, that if no company was allowed to copy Apple, there would be no phones to compete?
Maybe if you remove the copying, it might just force others to innovate more which would keep Apple on its toes and not not sitting on laurels. Not that's what Apple does necessarily.
The problem is as follows, iPhone was/is? obviously vastly superior to every other competitor's alternative. How does one then deal with a situation where that company (Apple) can then dictate to the market what is going to be the standard until its IP can be copied?
Obviously the creator should be allowed to protect its creation and benefit from it financially. However there is the public good. Normally after a certain period say 5 or 10 years competitors should be able to copy and make a generic product. The issue here is to ascertain if Samsung broke the rules by copying too early.
My opinion, which means nothing, is that they did break the patent law.
The second issue is if another company (Samsung), because it thinks it can get away with it, and because it knows it's inferior products cannot possibly compete with the newcomers superior product, blatantly copies it, AND gains significant market share. This creates a second problem because then all the customers who purchased the "illegal" copy are then compromised. If Apple can stop the sale of the knock off, this will not be in the public good, however justifiable the original company's inventor status is.
The sad fact is Samsung should arguably have been stopped earlier, but the court system is broken. Samsung took advantage of the court system knowing full well they could get away with it. Morally this is reprehensible. But that folks is going to be the reason why in the end we all lose out ultimately because there will be little incentive to build great new products given a company like Samsung can get away with this type of thing and unfortunately we will never know just how much it will cost us because we won't know what might have been designed.
I wonder if this is the real reason Apple hasn't come out with an iWatch or other products yet because they can't trust Samsung not to copy it?
If this had been a new drug , there is no way that it would have been allowed.
So ironically its Apple's fault, they should not have designed a phone that leapfrogged the crap that was there and gained a 3 year advantage. Is it a wonder Apple is so secretive? Who can blame them?
Instead of trying to flag this post, why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker.
Absolutely no one has said anything even remotely like this. Keep your strawmen to yourself.
…I-Pods…
Learn how to spell, please. It helps hide the trolling.
It's educational that DED brought up the 1992 copyright case, Apple v. Microsoft.
This was the infamous "look and feel" trial whereby Apple failed to clinch that their design prowess would rule. As a courtroom spectator then, I saw (now retired) jurist Vaughn Walker (of prop. 8 fame) masterfully "rule from the bench" that a look-and-feel doctrine could not be established, because copyright only protects "expression", but that items like overlapping windows and the file trashcan as blatantly copied by Microsoft did not constitute "substantial similarity of protectable expression".
It also didn't help that Apple signed a bum contract licensing Gates too much.
So, because copyright protects only very specific expression, not ideas, one might think that patents would be the way to go to protect (original) ideas. Hence the software industry explosion of patents, even though most are not at the level of more than workman-like engineering practice as done by those with ordinary "skill in the arts".
Mind, even though I'm against software patents as much as the next techie, for the most part (it's an artifice that software patents only protect "machine implementations", not ideas), I'm very pro-Apple here. Yes, Samsung has patents, Apple has patents, but the whole of the borrowing is so lopsided.
You might think that common sense (as eventually happened in the auto and electronics industry to preserve high barriers to entry) would prevail, whereby cross-licensing developed, with the original R&D innovators like Intel and IBM preserving a bit more of the profit margins. These ones-twosy patent trials are water torture to witness, but what else can bring the parties to reach a compromise licensing agreement? Though it is said that Apple simply does not want to license IP to such a copyist, they do already cross-license, via agreements with others such as Microsoft, HTC, and likely IBM. This is not necessarily "honor among thieves", but Samsung should at least continue to be shamed for such clear and ongoing IP (or least "design patent, trade dress, etc.) appropriation.
If Apple fails to force their hand, there is little choice but to continue vertical integration, cutting Samsung out of the supplier loop, trying to corner the market on certain types of supply (flash, displays, sapphire, etc.), maintaining as much secrecy as possible, then preserving high profit margins until things are copied. If this is the new world whereby Apple's IP is not protectable, it may usher in a new era where media campaigns must be waged to make clear just who is the big counterfeit, just to preserve "mindshare". Unfortunate.
I wouldn't put your hopes on anything more than a weak version of 3. Apple has the IP, but juries are notorious in these cases as being not much better than a flip of the coin. I think you can expect Apple to lose this case on some level. The really interesting possibilities for Apple are based upon what they announce in June. Serial Innovation becomes more and more difficult to copy. Even if Apple only fights Samsung to a standstill on the prior theft of IP, if they keep producing new tech, it is going to get more and more obvious what is going on.
I also think the Mr Dilger is not giving the Devil his due with the prior history lesson. Microsoft mainly won because Apple and Steve Jobs were not careful enough in the wording of their licensing agreement with Microsoft while they were making Word for the Mac. If my memory serves me right, there was a clause in the contract between the two of them that was construed to include the rights to use the interface. Smart copiers will always exist. The only way to fight that is to use every tool in your box.
The Windows 1.0 deal - signed off by John Sculley, not Jobs--offered Microsoft a license to some Macintosh desktop "visual elements" in exchange for 2 two year exclusive of Excel on Mac. The court rather insanely interpreted that contract as being a perpetual agreement for everything Apple had in consideration of a then expired exclusivity period for Excel from a decade prior.
Judging from the clarification questions the jury hasasked the court so far, it's hard to say what they are thinking. Their questions about Steve Jobs, the involvement of Google, when the patents involved in the cases were selected and the response by Samsung to Apple's claims might suggest that the jury was completely bamboozled by Samsung's scattershot defense of contradictory circles of flawgic.
My understanding is jury still has some popcorns left and they are hopping for some more dramas!!
Comments
Great work, Daniel. Clear and comprehensive, frosted with irony.
"... Judge Posner decided that ... Motorola would be left trying to sell Google's indisputably "inferior non-Apple technology" and it would be "catastrophic" if customers had only one source to obtain Apple technology."
Sweet.
Not often Posner gets stuff horribly wrong. But that "catastrophy" seems to be what Article 1, Section 8, clause 8 of the Constitution seems to require.
Blah
Edit: forget it, you aren't worth it.
I personally would like to see Apple prevail but I'd also like this all to end by Apple being able to completely kick Samsung to the curb as a component supplier. I have nothing against Samsung competing against Apple based on their own ideas, innovations, and hard work. In fact, from a big picture view Samsung competing head to head against Apple on the high end of the market is really helping Apple sustain its premium product lines and pricing. If Samsung had a clue they'd back away from the high end market and try to disrupt Apple from the bottom. Over the long term that seems to have a higher probability for success if they can live on the smaller margins but higher volume from the low end while supplying components for the high end. They are clearly operating based on ego and coveting the limelight that Apple has rather than building a long term sustainable business model. I just don't think Samsung is capable of sustaining itself in the very high reward but very high risk game that Apple is playing and especially if they ruin their reputation as a reliable business partner in the component space. This ongoing drama is doing nothing more than making Samsung look lazy, pathetic, sleazy, and untrustworthy. Those attributes will haunt them forever if they don't clean up their act.
For everyone who doesn’t want to read all this nonsense, here’s the summary. Remember, the little red flag at the bottom left of each post is there for a reason!
What about it is junk? Android is a stolen product that Steve Jobs promised to crush. And now you are advocating censorship simply because you disagree with it? Fabulous.
Instead of trying to flag this post, why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker. Can't afford it because you are a secretary, LPN or janitor having to make ends meet on $30,000 a year? Well it stinks to be you! How dare evil Google create a way for Sony, LG, HTC, Lenovo etc. to sell decent functional devices for half as much!
The really ridiculous part is that folks do not realize that Android helps Apple in the long run. People buy a cheap Android device to get them into smartphones, then they upgrade to Apple when they find out that they are much better. What do you think is driving the huge growth in Apple products in developing nations where the vast majority of the population has never owned a PC or have Internet access? Android phones and tablets. Android devices are having the same effect in developing markets right now as cheap computers running DOS and Windows did in the 1980s and 1990s. And in the long run that helped Apple, who was able to get all those Windows users to buy I-Pods first and now replace Windows with I-Pads later.
But hey, don't bother trying to come up with your own point of view. Just flag me and be done with it.
But nah. You guys are right. Increasing the number of computer users to create a much bigger market of people who might one day purchase an Apple device is bad. DOS, Windows and Android massively increasing the market of potential buyers for Apple products hurts Apple. It would have been better had Windows and Android never come along and allowed the computer/tech market remain a little niche market.
Right?
Thanks!
In some ways, I wonder why Apple Legal doesn't hire Daniel for these trials. He always comes up with more historical and pertinent information than we hear from court proceedings. Has anyone found a writer on Samsung's side who has anywhere near as much understanding and information as Daniel? Probably doesn't exist.
He would be excellent for the job. Only one little problem. Although he is an independent journalist, his close association with AI means Apple would never associate with him due to some bad blood between Apple and AI regarding a lawsuit brought against AI and Kasper back in 2005. (Apple Computer v. DOE 1, et al.,)
What about it is junk? Android is a stolen product that Steve Jobs promised to crush. And now you are advocating censorship simply because you disagree with it? Fabulous.
Instead of trying to flag this post, why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker. Can't afford it because you are a secretary, LPN or janitor having to make ends meet on $30,000 a year? Well it stinks to be you! How dare evil Google create a way for Sony, LG, HTC, Lenovo etc. to sell decent functional devices for half as much!
Why are the only two options "Apple the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker" or Android licensees allowed to infringe specific patents?
Do you really think that without taking specific ideas Apple has patented (and we are not talking about multitouch or the basic concept of a iPhone), Android licensees can't produce cheap phones? Why can't Samsung license Apple's patents the same way that it licenses Microsoft IP or the way HTC licensed Apple's patents?
Look at the iPod: Apple was making its product, and a number of other companies were making different things, most of which weren't very successful. But plenty of cheap options; there was no lack of options for the rich or the poor. Most people just chose Apple's product.
Your morality play is simply nonsense. First of all, even people with limited means can afford to get nice products. As a poor starving student teen I bought a Sony Discman on a paper route budget. It cost more than an iPod or even an iPhone in inflated dollars.
The super cheap devices being used in very poor developing nations do not require free access to Apple patents covering whimsical UI features like "Slide to Unlock" to sell.
The real issue is that Samsung's products ripping off the iPhone are sold for prices that are equal to or more than the iPhone.
The low end junk that Samsung is dumping on emerging markets is the same kind of barely functional junk it was dumping on the U.S. before the iPhone arrived.
I also think the Mr Dilger is not giving the Devil his due with the prior history lesson. Microsoft mainly won because Apple and Steve Jobs were not careful enough in the wording of their licensing agreement with Microsoft while they were making Word for the Mac. If my memory serves me right, there was a clause in the contract between the two of them that was construed to include the rights to use the interface. Smart copiers will always exist. The only way to fight that is to use every tool in your box.
Why is that and why isn't it indicated that it was removed?
I am hoping for a thermonuclear holy war, on an unprecedented scale! Hell, let's even throw in a tiny bit of biological warfare, just for good measure.
I want the verdict to be lethal!
Hopefully the jurors will make the wise decision.
...why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker.
Do you honestly think, that if no company was allowed to copy Apple, there would be no phones to compete?
Maybe if you remove the copying, it might just force others to innovate more which would keep Apple on its toes and not not sitting on laurels. Not that's what Apple does necessarily.
I think the case can be summed up as this:
The problem is as follows, iPhone was/is? obviously vastly superior to every other competitor's alternative. How does one then deal with a situation where that company (Apple) can then dictate to the market what is going to be the standard until its IP can be copied?
Obviously the creator should be allowed to protect its creation and benefit from it financially. However there is the public good. Normally after a certain period say 5 or 10 years competitors should be able to copy and make a generic product. The issue here is to ascertain if Samsung broke the rules by copying too early.
My opinion, which means nothing, is that they did break the patent law.
The second issue is if another company (Samsung), because it thinks it can get away with it, and because it knows it's inferior products cannot possibly compete with the newcomers superior product, blatantly copies it, AND gains significant market share. This creates a second problem because then all the customers who purchased the "illegal" copy are then compromised. If Apple can stop the sale of the knock off, this will not be in the public good, however justifiable the original company's inventor status is.
The sad fact is Samsung should arguably have been stopped earlier, but the court system is broken. Samsung took advantage of the court system knowing full well they could get away with it. Morally this is reprehensible. But that folks is going to be the reason why in the end we all lose out ultimately because there will be little incentive to build great new products given a company like Samsung can get away with this type of thing and unfortunately we will never know just how much it will cost us because we won't know what might have been designed.
I wonder if this is the real reason Apple hasn't come out with an iWatch or other products yet because they can't trust Samsung not to copy it?
If this had been a new drug , there is no way that it would have been allowed.
So ironically its Apple's fault, they should not have designed a phone that leapfrogged the crap that was there and gained a 3 year advantage. Is it a wonder Apple is so secretive? Who can blame them?
Instead of trying to flag this post, why not explain the many benefits that would be provided to the consumer and the market if Apple was the only commercially viable smartphone and tablet maker.
Absolutely no one has said anything even remotely like this. Keep your strawmen to yourself.
Learn how to spell, please. It helps hide the trolling.
This was the infamous "look and feel" trial whereby Apple failed to clinch that
their design prowess would rule. As a courtroom spectator then,
I saw (now retired) jurist Vaughn Walker (of prop. 8 fame) masterfully
"rule from the bench" that a look-and-feel doctrine could not be
established, because copyright only protects "expression", but that items
like overlapping windows and the file trashcan as blatantly copied by Microsoft
did not constitute "substantial similarity of protectable expression".
It also didn't help that Apple signed a bum contract licensing Gates too much.
So, because copyright protects only very specific expression, not ideas, one might think
that patents would be the way to go to protect (original) ideas. Hence the software
industry explosion of patents, even though most are not at the level of more than
workman-like engineering practice as done by those with ordinary "skill in the arts".
Mind, even though I'm against software patents as much as the next techie, for
the most part (it's an artifice that software patents only protect "machine implementations",
not ideas), I'm very pro-Apple here. Yes, Samsung has patents, Apple has patents, but
the whole of the borrowing is so lopsided.
You might think that common sense (as eventually happened in the auto and electronics industry to preserve high barriers to entry) would prevail, whereby cross-licensing
developed, with the original R&D innovators like Intel and IBM preserving a bit more
of the profit margins. These ones-twosy patent trials are water torture to witness,
but what else can bring the parties to reach a compromise licensing agreement?
Though it is said that Apple simply does not want to license IP to such a copyist,
they do already cross-license, via agreements with others such as Microsoft, HTC, and likely IBM. This is not necessarily "honor among thieves", but Samsung should at least continue
to be shamed for such clear and ongoing IP (or least "design patent, trade dress, etc.) appropriation.
If Apple fails to force their hand, there is little choice but to continue vertical integration,
cutting Samsung out of the supplier loop, trying to corner the market on certain types of supply (flash, displays, sapphire, etc.), maintaining as much secrecy as possible, then preserving high profit margins until things are copied. If this is the new world
whereby Apple's IP is not protectable, it may usher in a new era where media campaigns must be waged to make clear just who is the big counterfeit, just to preserve "mindshare". Unfortunate.
I wouldn't put your hopes on anything more than a weak version of 3. Apple has the IP, but juries are notorious in these cases as being not much better than a flip of the coin. I think you can expect Apple to lose this case on some level. The really interesting possibilities for Apple are based upon what they announce in June. Serial Innovation becomes more and more difficult to copy. Even if Apple only fights Samsung to a standstill on the prior theft of IP, if they keep producing new tech, it is going to get more and more obvious what is going on.
I also think the Mr Dilger is not giving the Devil his due with the prior history lesson. Microsoft mainly won because Apple and Steve Jobs were not careful enough in the wording of their licensing agreement with Microsoft while they were making Word for the Mac. If my memory serves me right, there was a clause in the contract between the two of them that was construed to include the rights to use the interface. Smart copiers will always exist. The only way to fight that is to use every tool in your box.
The Windows 1.0 deal - signed off by John Sculley, not Jobs--offered Microsoft a license to some Macintosh desktop "visual elements" in exchange for 2 two year exclusive of Excel on Mac. The court rather insanely interpreted that contract as being a perpetual agreement for everything Apple had in consideration of a then expired exclusivity period for Excel from a decade prior.
Judging from the clarification questions the jury hasasked the court so far, it's hard to say what they are thinking. Their questions about Steve Jobs, the involvement of Google, when the patents involved in the cases were selected and the response by Samsung to Apple's claims might suggest that the jury was completely bamboozled by Samsung's scattershot defense of contradictory circles of flawgic.
My understanding is jury still has some popcorns left and they are hopping for some more dramas!!