Apple Files Suit Against Motorola Xoom In EU 181
CWmike writes "Apple isn't just going after the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Europe, it's also attacking the Motorola Xoom. Apple's lawsuit, which was filed in Germany and led to Tuesday's injunction barring sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe, makes reference to a separate complaint against the Motorola Xoom. Patent expert Florian Mueller, who told Computerworld on Tuesday that the mounting patent cases could cast a cloud over Android licensing, found the original lawsuit, filed in Dusseldorf, Germany, and pointed out the Motorola action. The reference in the suit says that Apple has also filed a complaint over the design of the Motorola Xoom, which runs the Android operating system. But it's unclear if Apple is seeking an injunction that would immediately prevent Motorola from importing the tablets into Europe."
Bad move. You do NOT fuck with Motorola. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's one thing to bully johnny foreigner about like HTC, Samsung etc. Motorola made the first mobile call [wikipedia.org] in 1973, 3 years before Apple existed [wikipedia.org] (well, that's if you are talking about the Apple with the same name as the Beatles record label which hates copying so much). Motorola has thousands of patents going right back through this peroid. You can only imagine how many of these relate to fundamental baseband radio tech. So these newcomers whining about the shape of the corners on their toys don't seem to realise the established guys quite literally have their finger over the button when it comes to radio comms. Let's see how many tablets/phones they sell when they can't make airtime connections.
Re:Attacks all thin tablets (Score:4, Interesting)
These are suits regarding the equivalent of design patents. If Apple thinks it has a design patent over both Samsung and Motorola (the two tablets are quite different from each other), it is basically claiming that it has a patent on the design of *any* thin tablet device.
Which would be utterly absurd. I can understand the Galaxy Tab thing since the devices were very similar in appearance.
I would be interested if you could point to two LCD televisions which look in any way different apart from the manufacturers logo.
Motorola is Just Receiving What It Asked For (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying I'm supporting all this patent fighting but if you go after Apple, Apple will go after you.
Bubble as a business model (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Apple is becoming desperate. As their market capitalization approached (and even surpassed for a moment) Exxon-Mobile market cap, they're now officially in bubble terrirory. At first glance it does not seem like a bubble as their P/E ratio isn't so high (around 14 as we speak), but their current profits is clearly a bubble thanks to fat profit margins. Most of their profits come from iPhones and iPads - all remaining revenue sources pale in comparison to these two. As they're getting more and more real competition in market they've created, they'll have to compete and they'll experience significant margin compression. In other words, if any real competition emerges, they'll lose support for their insanely high stock price. Don't get me wrong - I don't predict any kind of doom for Apple - I just say that their current stock price is unsupportable in long term.
My take is that they'll fight teeth and nail to keep any meaningful competition out of the market - legally or not. In Samsung case they've got too far - now it appears that they've managed to get injunction without even notifying Samsung about this, so Samsung lawyers had no chance to even respond. This is propably illegal, but it seems that Apple is prepared to pay very high fines/damages in order to keep monopoly on tablet market.
It also strikes me that previously they've always managed to get ahead of competitors in terms of new, better products and now they started using lawyers on grand scale. Why is that ? Is it because of Jobs' deteriorating health their product/innovation pipeline is shortening ? If the only person capable if envisioning a new product in this company is Steve Jobs, then they're a kind of one-time wonder.