The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Apple's Patent Victory

• Report this Comment On August 27, 2012, at 10:55 PM, DefunctAcct wrote:

  "Rich Karlgaard puts it: "Do we want a patent system in which the strongest sue everyone else? Is this good for innovation?""

  This can only come from some one who actually knows nothing about the high tech business nor the details of what it means to create innovative new product.

  As for the rest of the write-up, about how consumers vote with their wallet, it is childish at best and I am being charitable. It is amazing that such severe lack of knowledge qualifies a person to write anything about investments and high-tech business anywhere.

  I will only say that I have had much experience over the past many years working in several high-tech start-up's in the Silicon Valley. We created real products and shipped them. During that process, many of us put in our own cash, sacrificed months of salary, risking our families and our children to bring good ideas and new visions into the software product space. I am glad we mostly succeeded given we were able to ship real product and actually generated sales. In all that experience, we encountered cases of blatant copying by large software companies and smaller start-up competitors. Our legal team had to send cease-and-desist letters.

  If not for patent protections, our tiny start-up's, barely surviving for the first year or two, would have been destroyed by LARGER corporations who copied our ideas. If not for patent protection, our fellow start-up competitors would have been able to blatantly copy our ideas and visions and race us to product shipment.

  If not for patent protection that granted us protection and thus allowed us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors, affording us opportunities to build and ship the product to generate sales, then ALL the risks my colleagues and friends took, the second-mortgage taken out to finance such a risk and the countless hours of hard work to realize a vision would all be for naught.

  Last and the worst of all, I and my friends would not be putting foods on the table for our children.

  Patent protection actually protects the LITTLE GUY as much as larger corporations.

  Only those who have NEVER invented anything, who have NEVER needed to protect such invention, who NEVER needed relied on invention for sustaining a livelihood, would make such simplistic and childish claims against patent protection.

  Outdated? COnsumer vote by their wallets? Small thoughts come from small minds.

• Report this Comment On August 27, 2012, at 11:05 PM, DefunctAcct wrote:

  For those of us TOO BLIND to see clearly, I direct your clouded view to the PC-era when Windows reigned supreme.

  Every hardware company bought more or less the same parts to slap together more or less the same shape boxes and ALL of them competed by slashing prices and touting ever changing specifications.

  Microsoft felt no need to innovate and its UI and OS design remained more or less stagnant up into Windows VISTA.

  That is what can happen when you have NO patent protection and everyone can copy freely offering the same thing.

  Allow me to take your feeble little mind a little further with some simple logic.

  Assuming there is NO patent protection, then tiny start-up's will DIE. There is no chance for any single person to come up with ANY idea. What will we have left? Large conglomerates.

  In that new patent-less world, only the few largest conglomerates can compete just like hardware companies competed within the WIndows space during the PC-era.

  Everyone copied and stole from each other as fast as possible and everyone ship as fast as possible and compete on price.

  Do the consumers gain anything? Price and specification. Innovation? May be, but it will be extremely slow. MOre likely, there will be little to NO innovation. Just look at the PC era. Even though Apple was around, it was not a significant threat to Microsoft so MSFT felt no need to change. In a patent-less world where everyone copies and steals from everyone, why would MSFT have any incentive to change and improve?

  Can you grasp this logic yet? Or is it too high-schoolish for you?

  It is exceedingly frustrating for ANYONE to have to teach WRITERS who post anything of this sort online. The least you writers should do is to study the subject and understand the issues before jumping to some conclusions based on total and utter ignorance.

• Report this Comment On August 27, 2012, at 11:12 PM, xmmj wrote:

  I am afraid I must disagree here, particularly with:

  "Here, the free market does a commendable job of regulating itself. Consumers vote with their wallets. Make a better mousetrap, cover it in appropriate marketing efforts, and rest assured that the best product will win."

  The problem with the "market" is that consumers will usually go with their wallets - they will go with whoever is cheaper, even that product simply copied the hard work of others.

  You do not have to be an Apple fanboy to understand this. Samsung decries the decision saying that it is stifling innovation while at the same time they want to charge Apple many times the going rate for their standards based patentes.

  The author here does not seem to feel that innovators should be rewarded at all for their efforts. Which brings us back to the "market." Consumers seeking short term expediency, harm themselves in the long run if they stifle innovation by not protecting it from those who copy willfully.

  For an alternative view:

  http://beta.fool.com/jaans/2012/08/25/apple-wins-tim-cook-me...

• Report this Comment On August 27, 2012, at 11:40 PM, Starktechcon wrote:

  I agree with the commenters - the author of this article obviously has no idea how much intellectual property is already stolen, or how much it is worth. I have worked in the high tech industry for many years, during which time I have lived and worked in Korea. I have watched Samsung steal other companies' IP on a regular basis.

  I am sure Andrew and Richard would be pretty pissed off if someone else copied their articles, books, blogs, etc. and pretended they had written them and collected fees - or do these guys also think copyright laws are "outdated" in this "fast-paced" era?

  There would be no advanced communications technology, none of the medical technology and pharmacology we take for granted, or even advanced space and military technology without patent protection. The profit motive has driven most innovation for the last few centuries, profits are not protected without patents. This argument makes about as much sense as saying we have outgrown capitalism, and all benefits of industry should be equally distributed to all.

  Guess which countries have the weakest patent protection laws? You guessed it, former and current communist countries. Korea is not communist, but it is damn close to a corporatocracy. I believe this ruling is a major step forward for all the people in Korea who don't work for Samsung. Up until now, Samsung has had a monopoly on the domestic markets; it was financial suicide for any company (Korean or foreign) to sue Samsung for infringing on patents. I applaud Apple for having the guts to take on a company that was actually one of their biggest suppliers and customers. Hooray for an American company that is willing to stand up for the rights of companies and individuals to own the fruits of their own labor! And here's hoping that hundreds of Korean entreprenuers will be emboldened to create new products knowing there is hope that their inventions will be protected.

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 12:26 AM, Bourbonian wrote:

  The patent system is very much broken. All these verbose posters are surely patent attorneys who want to protect their futures.

  To the idiot who claims no patents led to me-too PCs: that allowed an innovator to come along. All the monkey-see-monkey-do PC makers that you talk about are all out of business now, because innovation is what wins out in the end. What you seem to prefer is to have only Apple innovate on smartphones. Oh great, that is really going to work well for the public. It took Android to innovate and offer true multitasking, something Apple iPhone still can't do right.

  The article correctly points out that in the fast moving world of technology, by the time the idiot lawyers have argued it all out, the market has moved on. What really counts for longevity is building a good brand.

  To the other idiot who claims that patents work for the little guy...they do not. It takes time, effort and resources to file a patent, which most little guys don't have. Oh but the big guys like Apple sure do, and if you beat them to the patent office, their lawyers will be all over the little guy. That is not what the purpose of the Constitution intended.

  Eventually this will get to the Supreme Court, and I believe that the Court will invalidate all these silly design patents and order the complete overhaul of the system. And it will be good riddance.

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 4:49 AM, eldoctoro wrote:

  Bylund ....so now you're a constitutional expert? You continue to post drivel...nothing new here, just his crusade to disallow IP patents.

  Get a life.

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 6:26 AM, CaptainWidget wrote:

  There's no evidence that markets without IP suffer from stifled innovation. It's 100% propaganda promoted by those who benefit from government fiat on IP.

  Comparing misrepresentation and fraud to "using a square shaped icon" is laughable. The fact that apple is patenting things like button shapes and and transition screens is good for NO ONE but apple.

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 7:30 AM, TMFZahrim wrote:

  While certainly I appreciate the beautiful array of straw men and ad hominem arguments being thrown my way, I stand by the article. Patents may still be useful in some industries, like drug development where R&D is difficult and expensive, but not in technology and particularly not software, where a 7th-grader's computer science homework solutions may well trample all over existing patents. You shouldn't be able to patent logic. And for design, we already have protection by trademarks and copyright. The "ugly" section is for real.

  Anders

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 10:35 AM, eldoctoro wrote:

  LOFLMAO...and the NEW APPL patents are another sharp stick in your eye!

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 10:43 AM, Morgana9 wrote:

  1. WHy would I bother to innovate (create) if it is okay for someone to steal it?

  2. Apply this elsewhere: msft; Picasso (the painter),

  In the arts and literature, we make a distinction between influence and imitation. Influence creates something know while acknowledging . . . well . . . influence of predecessors. Imitation is slavish, without creativity, without . . . innovation.

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 11:12 AM, CluckChicken wrote:

  The problem isn't necessarily the patent laws but what is being allowed to be patented. This case just points out the ridiculousness of it all. Apple basically won on patents for design (appearance) and transferred technology (multi touch actions).

  Can anybody truly justify why anybody why there is even a patent for the basic look of the iPhone? A rectangle with curved edges is nothing new, even as a potable item.

  Technology transferred from a desktop to a portable device is not an invention nor is it truly innovative, it is an evolution. There are actually patents out there for transferring data from a PC to a wireless mobile communication device (7724705), the technology is not any different then transferring the data from a PC to a PC wirelessly. But that isn't even where the silliness ends, there are also patents for transferring music (20050181756) and one for video (5806005). Data is data not matter what form it appears to be.

• Report this Comment On August 28, 2012, at 6:39 PM, CaptainWidget wrote:

  <<1. WHy would I bother to innovate (create) if it is okay for someone to steal it?

  2. Apply this elsewhere: msft; Picasso (the painter),

  In the arts and literature, we make a distinction between influence and imitation. Influence creates something know while acknowledging . . . well . . . influence of predecessors. Imitation is slavish, without creativity, without . . . innovation.>>

  There were no IP rights to plays at the time Shakespear was writing. He was ripped off within weeks of first performance of his play. Others would write down the story and go perform it elsewhere.

  And yet he was one of the most prolific play writes of the time. Lack of IP obviously didn't stop him from creating. In fact you could argue, it mandated it. He had to continually write new plays, staying ahead of those who wold steal his material.

  We don't know for sure how IP affected Shakespear, but you would have to assume that his career would have been less rich had he spent any portion of his energy chasing down thieves and trying to take back some intangible piece of property......

  Again, there's never been any EVIDENCE that lack of IP's stifle innovation.

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