Steve Wildstrom:
Samsung contributed greatly to this with a post-trial statement that said: ““It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.” It’s more unfortunate that the claim was largely a fabrication that was swallowed whole by many writers.
What a great article by Steve. Go read it.
Michael Wolff:
But let us not argue the case that all this quite obviously impedes innovation and is part of a new unreal property land grab – not about technology at all, but about intellectual property: an effort to privatize much of what was once understood to be shared and public (indeed, not ownable, like the shape of the iPhone).
There is just so much wrong with Wolff’s story, it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s just take this little gem of a paragraph.
How is it that stopping a company from blatantly ripping off your design “obviously impedes innovation”? It doesn’t. As I wrote earlier this week, all it does it stop copying. It encourages innovation because companies will have to think for themselves instead of stealing like Samsung did.
This is not about the shape of the iPhone. Nokia has a rectangle phone too, but Apple didn’t sue them. This is about Samsung stealing everything that Apple did, from hardware design to software and sold it as their own.
Samsung and writers like Wolff are using this innovation argument as a scare tactic. It won’t work.
Apple on Monday asked a federal judge to block the sale of more than a half dozen Samsung smartphones, after a jury found on Friday that Samsung had infringed a series of Apple’s mobile patents.
A nice rundown from Bloomberg’s Sam Grobart on what Apple is really after.
Maybe Samsung missed this part of Steve Jobs’ iPhone introduction. […]
In very welcome news to iBookstore publishers, Apple has recently added some support options to make it easier to get answers about pesky issues that might be delaying the sale of the next Great American Novel.
Ben Bajarin:
Creating something new or unique is not terribly difficult. I’ve got great ideas for all kinds of unique products that no one wants but me. Creating something new, unique, different, and innovative that garners mass market success is EXTREMELY difficult and more interestingly EXTREMELY rare. The fundamental challenge and to a degree fear around innovation is that you create something the market does not want. This at its core is the reason why it is easier to follow the leader than blaze a new trail.
In a blog post, Robert Scoble said while Samsung will take a big PR hit and lose $1 billion, it was worth it to copy Apple because it vaulted the company ahead of other smartphone rivals. Samsung also sells an … Continued
One of the popular arguments making its way around the Internet since Apple won its patent infringement lawsuit over Samsung is that the verdict will stifle innovation in the mobile industry. I don’t buy it. […]
Samsung in a memo to employees after losing to Apple:
History has shown there has yet to be a company that has won the hearts and minds of consumers and achieved continuous growth, when its primary means to competition has been the outright abuse of patent law, not the pursuit of innovation.
By innovation, do they mean blatantly copying Apple?
I’ve seen a number of comments around the Internet about how Apple didn’t exactly go “Thermonuclear” in its win against Samsung. There’s an important point to remember — Steve Jobs wasn’t talking about Samsung, he was talking about Google. […]
Google’s statement on Apple’s landslide win:
The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims. Most of these don’t relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office. The mobile industry is moving fast and all players — including newcomers — are building upon ideas that have been around for decades. We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don’t want anything to limit that.
I wouldn’t get too comfortable.
In the wake of the $1.05 billion verdict delivered Friday in the widely watched U.S. intellectual-property case won by Apple Inc. and lost by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Samsung was battered in Korea Exchange trading Monday, with its share price sinking by more than 7 percent as of Sunday at 11 p.m. EDT.The giant South Korean technology firm shed about $12 billion in market capitalization as a result of the rout, which came on significant volume (i.e., more than double the three-month average).
Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.
An important day indeed.
“We didn’t want to give carte blanche to a company, by any name, to infringe someone else’s intellectual property,” Hogan told Reuters a day after the verdict was delivered.
Good for them.
Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer,” Samsung said in a statement. “It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies. Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer.
“Samsung will continue to innovate?” I’d be satisfied with starting to innovate.
My latest column on Techpinions looks at what I thin will happen to the tablet market after Apple releases a 7-inch iPad.
You knew it was going to happen.
It is a typewriter for the ipad. Users can enjoy the old feeling of typing and also the lastest technology.
Microsoft Surface vs the iPad Retina.
Eric Slivka:
The negotiations are reportedly seeing Apple joining forces with its courtroom foes Samsung and HTC, as well as smartphone platform rival Google, in an effort to obtain the patents for a price well below that sought by Kodak.
I don’t understand why Apple wouldn’t just buy them — they have the money. Unless they are worried about having too much control.
Dan Graziano:
Over the three-month period, the company found more than 14,900 new malicious programs targeting the platform. Nearly half of the malicious files were classified as multi-functional Trojans that were programmed to steal data from smartphones and could also download and install programs from remote servers.
There is a much better alternative you know.
Judge Lucy Koh:
“I mean come on. 75 pages! 75 pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages, (and) unless you’re smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called when you have less than four hours,” Koh said.“Your honor, I can assure you, I’m not smoking crack,” Lee replied matter-of-factly.
I like this judge. That’s brilliant.
MG Siegler:
The problem is that all of these different devices require testing for each and every app. They all create a different Android experiences — some in subtle ways, some in big ways. Some run certain Android apps, others don’t. Some apps work fine on one device then are buggy as hell on another one. Sometimes this gets fixed, sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the popularity of that device and the resources the development team has.
Yes, that’s a problem.
Although Adobe is no longer actively developing the [Flash] player for Android, Blackberry or Symbian devices – and never released it for Apple iOS or Windows Phone handsets – it has said it would continue to offer security updates and bug fixes for existing versions until September 2013.
Not as successful as they said it would be.
Gruber dives deep into the iPad mini.
The ‘460 patent protect elements of email and photo browsing in a camera-equipped device. Specifically, it covers three different functions: sending a text-only email, sending an email with an attached photo, and stepping through different photos in a gallery mode. According to Dr. Yang’s testimony, the iPhone 4, 3G, and 3GS — along with the iPad 2 and fourth-generation iPod touch — all infringe the patent on both iOS 4 and iOS 5.
It’ll be interesting to see how Apple argues this.
A Samsung Electronics designer testified on Tuesday that she didn’t copy Apple when creating the icons for the Galaxy line of products.“Not at all,” senior user experience designer Jeeyuen Wang said, through an interpreter.
Oh, okay then, let’s just cancel this trial and move on.
After writing about how iPads and YourTeacher helped raise math scores by 49%, I decided to speak with YourTeacher CEO Charlie Hermes to find out more about his company, and what it’s like to publish textbooks on the iBookstore. […]
Global BlackBerry sales tumbled 43 percent last quarter as RIM’s aging lineup of devices failed to match the consumer appeal of Android phones and Apple’s iPhone. BB10 will change RIM’s fortunes, Heins said today.“We’re here to win,” he said. “We’re not here to fight for third or fourth place.”
Maybe RIM is tired of Samsung getting all the attention and says stupid things to turn things around.