Who Cares If Samsung Copied Apple? 544
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article that's questioning the very premise of the Apple v Samsung case. From the article: 'It isn't the first time Apple has been involved in a high-stakes "copying" court case. If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case. But it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.'"
Yeah they did stop innovating (Score:1, Interesting)
After Apple lost the "Microsoft coppied our GUI" case, their desktop GUI remained unchanged for 10 years. System 7 through 9 were basically identical..... they couldn't even multitask properly (used cooperative multitasking which led to misbehaving programs refusing to give-up the CPU & freezing the system). Apple said they would stop innovating their GUI if competitors simply copied their ideas, and that's essentially what happened.
Samsung Must Be Made an Example (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though in doing so, they actually may increase the sales of Samsung tablets. Some percentage of people who wouldn't have given a non-Apple-tablet a second glance may now decide "Hey, if Apple is 'worried' enough to sue over this, it must be pretty good."
However, Apple really has no choice. If they don't sue, then that would be the "green light" for the "Allwinners" of the world to come in and just crank out $40 blister-pack 'ePads', absolutely indistinguishable-from-iPad (until you actually tried to use them!) tablets.
Not only would that eat into Apple's sales/profits, but it would eventually (and wrongly) leak into the consumer mindset that ALL tablets are shit. And that could make the iPad market dry up as quickly as it was created.
Steve Jobs (RIP) was fond of this axiom (Score:5, Interesting)
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal. And at Apple, we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
[Source: Isaac's authorized biography]
Apparently he never liked it if someone else followed this axiom, though.
Re:The Chinese... (Score:5, Interesting)
You kid, but this is actually important.
Supposedly we live in a "Global Economy" now.
China manufactures a lot of goods for the US. Now ask yourself, what does the US have to offer China, and the rest of our world? Intellectual Property, which is only reinforced by our nations laws? Our Lawyers, which mostly are specialized in US law? Our MBAs?
If we hardly manufacture anything now and IP is our primary "resource", and foreign countries do not need to respect our IP, then what exactly do we have to trade for? What do we offer the world?
Apple infringed first (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple should start playing by they own rules.
If a company infringes someone elses patents then they should lose the right to defend their own.
Apple doesn't license other peoples patented technologies - they just infringe. Ask Nokia how they magically got around $650 million from Apple last year along with an ongoing royalty payment for every iPhone. Because Apple refused to license key Nokia technology and just blatently infringed when they refused the terms Nokia offered. They then went to the courts claiming that Nokia were unfair to them in the terms and so shouldn't be allowed to hold the patent.
And it wasn't a "key technology" like rounded corners - it was GSM to make it work like a phone!
Re:Samsung Must Be Made an Example (Score:3, Interesting)
And the harm in that would be what?
The iPad is doing a good job at planting the idea in people's minds that tablets are overpriced toys for kids.
Re:Apple Did stop Innovating. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seeing both sides (Score:4, Interesting)
Whilst I am hoping that Samsung largely wins its case, I can see that there should be limits to what can be copied and how much a rival product can simply imitate the originator. Apple should be able to protect the unique aspects of its design, and both Samsung and Apple should be able to patent technological innovation where it is appropriate to do so.
Having said that, I feel Apple is trying to grab too much in this case. It is obvious that Apple didn't come up with the general idea for the layout of a tablet, even if they were the first to market with a genuine product that consumers wanted. It is similarly obvious that everyone wanted to go to a touch screen phone layout at around the same time, and the ergonomics and layout for that are obvious.
Whilst the gap is narrowing, Apple should realise that they really make their money from producing a product that, whilst on the leading edge of techology, is a polished design where all the parts have been carefully put together. I have a Samsung phone at the moment, and whilst there are aspects of it that are probably better than an iPhone, the whole product lacks the design harmony of its rival. The UK judge who, in dismissing Apples case, said that the Samsung product was 'not as cool' probably expressed it best.
Re:Yeah they did stop innovating (Score:5, Interesting)
How can something be 100% stable and have 2 kernel panics?
If you exclude "sketchy third-party" drivers, you could knock every BSOD that I've experienced with Windows off the table.
With Gnome taking a bit of a dive, Unity a bit on the rise, and Metro just starting out, these are certainly interesting times. Just grab some popcorn and see what happens.
Re:It isn't very easy to tell an original from a c (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK lost out because at a certain point, the innovations necessary to continue to progress required more and more specialized technical education. The British University system was simply not set up to handle that. It was designed to turn the sons of Lords into Lords, and the upper middle-class into educated Lordly-like young men, optimized for leading business, but NOT in leading technical innovation (or military strategy, for that matter). Such a hands-on education was beneath them.
In addition, they always felt they didn't need such innovation in re-inventing that which they already had because of their extensive colonial might. Why invent a blue dye and undercut the price tag you were already commanding by being able to bring in the dye from the east-asian source?
Germany, on the other hand, spent most of the last decades of the 19th century realizing that trade schools, which the British wouldn't invest in, were precisely the means by which Germany could catch up to the rest of the world. German innovation happened most in the field of chemistry, where they were more and more able to invent (from coal and coal tar) products that could make up for places they lacked both colonies or military power. The process for sodium-nitrates alone (originally to be a fertilizer) produced enough explosives to preserve the German army for years through WW1.
Re:The Chinese... (Score:2, Interesting)
In any serious war, you'd be fighting with what you had. A WWII fighter could be built and flying in a few days (few weeks if you had to start from nothing and build engines, etc, from scratch), but replacing an F-22 would take months or longer, even if you had no supply problems... the war would be over before the first replacements reached the front lines.
Years ago I worked for a company whose chips were used to a small extent in military aircraft. If I remember correctly, we had to build those chips in America rather than Taiwan, but they were so obsolete by the time the hardware flew that we had to pay the fab to do a special production run for us every time they wanted some.
Re:The Chinese... (Score:3, Interesting)
China manufactures a lot of goods for the US. Now ask yourself, what does the US have to offer China, and the rest of our world? Intellectual Property, which is only reinforced by our nations laws?
Competence?
It's a running joke that Americans are fat, stupid, lazy bastards. Many of us are. It's true for Northern Europe, too. What is also true is that when you're looking for field experts and one-of-a-kind capabilities, this is still where you look.
You fail to realize that when another country needs precise engineering (regardless of the field), they'll usually look to the US. Yes, even today. With few exceptions, the rest of the world still looks to the White Man Culture to implement the new, important, interesting, useful things - and then "steals" them, implementing lesser versions of them.
* skilled machinists
* structural engineers
* any precision instruments
* specialty, non-consumer electronics
* competent sysadmins
* software that actually does its job well (what, did you think you'd find something in India?)
This isn't race pride or anything like that. You can find eg. good software engineering in India, but it's rare due to the culture.
Don't be fooled by the news and these patent sharks. There is still a lot of capability left in the US and the West as a whole, despite the powers that be trying to pillage it away.
Re:The Chinese... (Score:2, Interesting)
Except that your military advantage is entirely intellectual property driven, the (technical) design off all of your equipment and all of the components of that equipment define the equipment. If someone can copy those, and remember, quite a lot of the parts are made in places not covered by US IP laws, you lose your military advantage.
Re:Apple infringed first (Score:5, Interesting)
those were FRAND
if you develop new tech for wireless, wifi and other open technologies and the patents get accepted into an open standard you have to agree to license them to everyone who asks at a similar rate. usually a penny or two per device
Re:Patent System Broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Here's the obligatory TED link, with an interesting view on how the lack of patents, and an obvious and accepted pattern (pun intended) of copying has made the industry huge.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html [ted.com]
Re:What Innovfation? (Score:0, Interesting)
Remember the 1997 Microsoft settlement...It was Jobs basically Telling Microsoft that they had to buy $150 million worth of non voting stock otherwise Apple would proceed with a lawsuit about them using Quicktime source code to build MMP and they would also not continue GUI lawsuit appeals and they would cross license code.
Most people think "Microsoft bailed Apple out" out of the kindness of there hearts....lol
.
Re:The Chinese... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is, of course, exactly why the Obama Administration has been "going nuclear" on domestic and especially non-domestic threats to that precious IP. It's what prompted the extreme and illegal actions against MegaUpload and Kim Dotcom, not to mention that fellow from the UK whose name and site escapes me who also faces a sort of extreme rendition. There's also WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, because our government also perceives the diplomatic cables, war documents and videos and all the rest that WikiLeaks has shared to be "intellectual property" of the government itself.
This is why "infringement" is no longer simply a civil matter. It's now a crime against the state.
Re:Lets be honest here. (Score:4, Interesting)
As it stands now, those in Afghanistan have no reason to quit fighting, they haven't really lost anything they value and those who live there are not to the point where they would put a stop to those supposedly fighting for them
The other approach (which has somewhat worked in Iraq) is to convince the population that the life provided under US occupation or a US-allied government is better than life under the other guys. For instance, the main reason that the VietCong had the slightest chance of winning in Vietnam is because their government had convinced people that they were the better choice - if they hadn't, the Vietnamese peasant population would have promptly turned in any VC in the area to the French, US, or South Vietnam.
If it works, it kills far fewer people than, say, the Dresden bombing.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Chinese... (Score:4, Interesting)
doesn't mean we do not have a formidable military presence in the rest of the world.
China well knows that if it really tried to piss us off it could be turned into a vast repository of active nuclides so they won't.
Wow.... just wow. Are Americans really this naive? You know America! Fuck Yeah! isn't really a usable military strategy? Sure you have some impressive hardware, but you have no brain. Let me tell you how it will work. China will destroy the US without a single shot being fired. They'll steal you're IP, hack your secrets, buy your officials, supply drugs to your children, financially back all the conflicting fringe groups and rot you from the inside out. They won't kowtow to the religious crazies, the gun nuts or anti-abortionists, they'll do whatever needs to be done to win, and you won't know it has happened until it's all over. China has a hundred year plan, The US can't plan past next week. You've already lost, it will simply take a few years for all the pieces to fall into place.