Samsung vs. Apple - two biggest players in the smartphone power battle worldwide.
In November, Apple won a fight of over two hundred and ninety million dollars in damages for patent infringements on the graphical user interface and its physical design. With litigation cases in over 10 countries and 19 cases, this is only one small win in that large war. As pointed out in lecture this week, patent wars are not only to secure and increase the individual company's market share, but it is also to slow down the growth of the competitors.
For me, the major point regarding the issue of patent war is its push to slow down the growth of societal gains. At this point, through the numerous cases, Samsung owes Apple a sum of around $1 Billion (a small margin for the giant companies). Yet, the ability to create a small barrier in timeline for the opposing company is a huge motivator behind the cases. The question becomes, what is the purpose of patents? Thus far in my studies, the reason for patents and owning intelligence has mainly been to encourage people to innovate and conduct research. The patents are to allow people to benefit from the investment they have made for their product. Yet, the battle between Apple and Samsung has done the opposite. This leads to the reasoning behind Obama's decision to veto against the resulting the I.T.C. ban on Apple Products. His reasonings were that the patents that Samsung won against Apple would remove the building blocks of the industry, causing a backward step the technology innovation space. Comparatively, Obama did not veto against Samsung's recent win against Apple because the firm will still be able to function and (almost forced to innovate in order to) function without it.
It is also interesting to note that the US Patent and Trademarks Office announced after the ruling in November awarding Apple $290 million that the patent on which the lawsuit was based on should never have been granted in the first place. Although many people look at court cases with the perspective of whether a patent has been infringed or not, very few people question whether the patent should have been issued (which, I suppose, should be expected as once a patent is granted, it's granted--there's really no going back). I believe there should be some sort of system to ensure that the USPTO does not issue patents which are far too broad to prevent this system of patent trolling by Apple and others.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of an overreaching patent is troublesome, especially in the realm of computer programs where the building blocks for developing code are becoming constantly more accessible to the public. It is, however, more troublesome to conceive of a system which could demote an individual's intellectual property from the past based on a contemporary opinion of it's worth.
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