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Apple, Samsung Declare Peace
- kodablah 8y ago> Apple said after its May victory that the case “has always been about more than money” and “it is important that we continue to protect the hard work and innovation of so many people at Apple.” So...is that what was accomplished here?
- tooltalk 8y agonot so much of accomplishments, but two take-aways that come to my mind are: 1) you can't mess around with a politically well connected American company. Of course, I'm talking about the Obama administration's reversal of Samsung's ITC win that would have settled this lawsuit back in 2012. 2) thx to Apple, now we are very likely to see more absurd design patent lawsuits in coming months.
- bsiemon 8y agoIt is interesting to think about these trans-national corporations fighting wars and then signing peace treaties. Used to be only nation states did that.
- wyattpeak 8y agoThat's a long way to stretch an analogy to make a political point. Were there armies? Soldiers equipped to kill? Or was this a legal dispute of the sort that companies have been engaging in since the invention of companies, and individuals have been engaging in since the invention of the court?
- fhood 8y agoArmies of lawyers I guess. Don't need soldiers if someone else is doing the enforcing.
- simonask 8y agoI mean you are right that in absence of a judicial system and the monopoly on violence exercised by nation states and supranational treaties, a conflict such as this could have been violent. Thankfully that world is far away.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoDidn’t sound like a political point to me, just a reflective/thoughtful comparison.
- erk__ 8y agoI am pretty sure Samsung could mobilize a smaller army, with all the millitary gear they make.
- sonthonax 8y agoEarly corporations fought wars against nation states, peoples, and became sovereign entities. Like the East India Company.
- da_chicken 8y agoThat's a little bit cheating because VOC was backed by the Dutch government, but there were a lot of wars in southeast Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries that came about because of company activity.
- afandian 8y agoNah, private companies have got involved in that kind of thing since forever: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
- denzil_correa 8y agoUFC : The Chiquita banana company who lobbied for the "1954 Guatemalan coup d'état" - an operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan government. Why? The elected president policies were a threat to UFC's exploitative labor practices. CIA involved, Guatemalan government overthrown, dictatorial rule, civil war for decades. The CIA even launched another operation to find the Soviet influence in Guatemala to justify the coup. The operation was a failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état
- pecg 8y agoAnd the same kind of practices where done in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, Perú, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, to name a few.
- pm90 8y agoThe nice thing is that these wars are now fought in boardrooms rather than battlefields.
- nickpsecurity 8y agoAnd for the "fighting wars" part, let's not forget this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes They were quite effective, too.
- digi_owl 8y agoThe world has started to resemble cyberpunk more and more over the years...
- chadash 8y agoTLDR; Apple and Samsung seem to be tired of fighting this fight, so they settled. They have each spent hundreds of millions in legal fees on the ordeal and they avoid spending hundreds of millions more by settling the ordeal, which can go on a long time.
- tooltalk 8y agoWell, no. Samsung won the SCOTUS decision last year that cancelled out Apple's hometown jury's absurd design patent award. The case was sent back to the district court for damage-only re-trial where Apple's hometown jury awarded even more money to Apple. Apple clearly had no desire to settle, but Samsung clearly saw that there was no way that they could get a fair trial like they did in non-US courts around the globe. Samsung probably ended up paying slightly less the amount the last jury awarded, plus some humiliating terms and conditions.
- foobarbazetc 8y agoDefinitely padded the bank accounts of a bunch of law firms though.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoLaw firms aren't incentivized to conclude litigation, are they?
- bigpicture 8y agoOf course they are. A firm-wide email celebrating the "successful" conclusion of a litigation and naming specific associates who did important work is primarily how associates gather the necessary recognition to make partner. The last thing an associate wants to have happen at the partnership vote is for 2/3 of the senior partners to say "who?" when their name comes up. The last thing a partner wants to have happen is to get a reputation of "nobody ever makes partner working for him/her".
- DrFell 8y agoApple cannot fight a war on two fronts, patent trolling and innovation Alzheimer's.
- deltateam 8y agoBecause the technology and hardware being debated was obsolete.
- ksec 8y agoApple needs to focus on Qualcomm, and that is why it is time to end the case with Samsung once and for all. On one hand Qualcomm CEO have said it is all about the cost of patents, and they will very likely settle out of court. Downplaying whatever damage there is, on the other hand they don't seem like they will settle. Another interesting battle looming.
- tooltalk 8y agoApple has 90+ other pending patent litigations. I hardly doubt this closure is going to help them focus on Qualcomm. Apple was forced to settle with pretty much every wireless patent holders and all in patent holders' favors (eg, Nokia, Ericsson to name a few) in the past -- I'm not sure if that's going to change this time.
- ergothus 8y agoAside from enriching lawyers, was there any benefit to this extended dispute? While this drained company's coffers ( and whatever they would have funded instead) was there direct harm from the dispute? I'm trying to find a reasonable perspective despite my unreasonably low (re: forming an opinion ) specific knowledge.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fhood 8y agoThe benefit is precedent. Apple shows that they will do everything they can to enforce their patents, and Samsung shows that they will fight back. Both companies thus lower the chance that someone else will do the same thing.
- ergothus 8y agoThat benefits THEM...how does it benefit the world? Were these infractions that threaten the incentive to innovate, or they infractions just because they could call them infractions? If someone else DID do the same thing, would the world be better off or not? IBM is considered an IP failure for allowing the PC-clone market to come into being...even though it is highly unlikely computing would have taken off the way it did otherwise.
- ISL 8y agoThe notion hinges on the idea that someone or a group of people can invest time and resources into innovation with the understanding that they will get paid if the idea pans out. The arguments for and against this notion are perpetual.
- ergothus 8y agoBacking up: I'm aware of the sides of the "how to spur innovation" argument. I'm asking if, in this set of proceedings, there was any impact OTHER than these two companies establishing that they will vigorously defend their claims AND I'm asking if those claims lie near any areas of interest. For example, the "Dummie's Guide" trade dress cases about yellow or the one-click patent lived at the edges of those spheres, and thus helped define what the edge was. Was this a case that largely only impacts these two companies, or does the matter at hand fall into well-established realms and this was just a matter of legal details? These are questions most journalism does a terrible job of covering, and hunting down legal blogs that also have enough technical knowledge AND aren't biased because patent attorneys tend to fall into the "everything must be protected no matter what" camp is quite an exercise.
- post_break 8y agoI have to wonder if Apple got Samsung to reduce the cost of their displays in the deal. Or the ability to license the tech to build them themselves. Just a complete shot in the dark but I could see Apple seeing that as a huge win.
- ratsmack 8y agoI have personally become weary of ridiculous patents over extremely trivial items that the average person considers obvious. These pissing contest stifle new and improved technologies built upon older ideas and makes it impossible for new startups to enter the field. The entire idea of patents is sound, but the rules we play by need to be revised... hopefully our nations lawmakers will one day see how destructive the current rules are.
- habitue 8y agoIs the entire idea of software/design patents sound?
- matthewmacleod 8y agoIt generally seems at least as reasonable as any other form of IP protection. After all, the underlying principle is that the creators of an 'invention' deserve some kind of protection from others who would profit from their work without requiring the same level of investment – with idea that it's better for society in the long term to avoid a 'race to the bottom'. I'm not sure that's particularly different whether we're talking about creative work, physical inventions, manufacturing processes, computer software, or design languages. It does seem that the rules governing them need to be revised. Many patented ideas are utterly trivial, or have no practical implementation, or are just unused. The terms are clearly too long as well. But the underlying idea doesn't seem terrible.
- dsr_ 8y agoNo. The entirety of intellectual property is a pure construct of human convention. At one end of legitimacy is the right of proper attribution, and at the other end is the right to be a patent troll. The US does not do a great job in setting the balance points. Copyrights should not apply to any functional work. Trademarks should not be used to stifle discussion, review and criticism. Patents should require expert testimony on originality and also a working example.