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This is sort of a separate question and one that is separate to the trial. The trial is asking "did Samsung copy Apple?", this question is "should that matter?

This is sort of a separate question and one that is separate to the trial. The trial is asking "did Samsung copy Apple?", this question is "should that matter?" which is a question for our law makers. The side you don't talk about is what benefit accrues to someone who does great design or R&D or produces great art if it can just be immediately copied by someone who doesn't have to make the investment in time or money. If that deters investment then it's not necessarily in the long term interest of the users. Personally I'm not intrinsically anti-IP, I see some benefit, I just think the level of protection that's afforded goes on for too long and is handed out to too easily. My feeling is that if you look at how markets develop, there is a period where there is rapid innovation followed by a period of stabilisation and standardisation. If we provided protection during the initial period (maybe three to five years) that provides incentive but may also encourage innovation as people looked to innovate themselves to compete. Then after the market has settled down and there are clear winners and losers, the protection is moved and the standardisation you talk about can come to pass as the foundation for the next wave of changes. But critically IP needs to be looked at on a market by market basis. Having a one size fits all system that covers drugs that need years of expensive testing, music that might be written in a few hours, software that is almost certainly redundant in a couple of years and hardware (that depending on it's nature could fall almost anywhere on the spectrum) is mad.

vibrunazo 14y ago
> what benefit accrues to someone who does great design or R&D or produces great art if it can just be immediately copied by someone who doesn't have to make the investment in time or money. If you assume that everything Apple invented was trivial to copy. Then even then, Apple was still the richest company in the whole planet before having ever bothered that anyone copied them. The richest company in the whole planet. It seems to me that the R&D investment already payed off, lawsuits or no lawsuits. I believe that answers your question. It's clear from these results that Apple and competitors will invest in R&D anyway no matter if they get copied afterwards. It still pays off for them. I'm pretty sure the world won't stop inventing new things because some are being copied.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  I don't assume that at all, it's why I say a one size fits all approach makes no sense. Different things have different costs to develop, different value, different life span, different barriers to duplication and so on. Some of the things Apple have been granted patents to they'd have done if they had no protection at all, others they may not have bothered with. But it's easy to look at the success of the iPhone and say "it's obvious it paid off" but not all R&D leads to an iPhone and not all companies are Apple. That's like talking about running and only using Usain Bolt as an example. I agree that we should have different IP laws for different situations but I don't think profitability or size is a good metric to use. EDIT: I wonder (thinking out loud) whether some sort of system where you have to be willing to license all patents on something like a FRAND basis might work (not FRAND in terms of the detail but the overall principal)? No-one gets exclusivity but you do get a return. Competing companies can then work out whether they think it's worth paying the modest fee or whether to develop and alternative themselves.
  - vibrunazo 14y ago
    With consumer demand in mind. Don't you agree that if an invention didn't see the light of day, doesn't that mean there wasn't a market for it in the first place? Then why does it matters if that invention wasn't put in market, if consumers didn't want it in the first place? Remember we're not trying to give benefits for inventors for no reason. We're trying to give consumers something they want. We're not trying to throw money at inventors to invent random stuff no one cares about. We're trying to create cool new things for consumers. If there is no consumer demand for an invention, why would consumers care if the invention didn't make it to market?
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      Consumer demand doesn't necessarily equate to success or profit for the inventor. Say you're a one man start up and you invent something really cool in your garage. You start marketing it, get a bit of leverage and sell a few. It's going great, you've got some orders, get some money from an investor, you've got a proper workshop and are growing nicely. Then Samsung or Apple see what you're doing and think it looks cool. They get their factories up to speed and throw a few million dollars into marketing (that you don't have needless to say) and before you know it they're selling millions. Everyone wants it, consumer demand is off the chart and no-one cares a jot about you in your workshop any more because Apple and Samsung can make the thing cheaper and get it to consumers faster. So, it made it to market, there's plenty of demand and yet where's the incentive for you to do anything when you have your next great idea other than go and get drunk in a ditch because you've got no desire to get screwed over again? Yes the consumer benefits from cheaper devices but they also benefit from great people having great ideas and being incentivised to do something with them because they know they could get a reward. And that's before we get into talking about how we do want to encourage failure because if we try 1000 long shots, even if 90% of them fail, we'll have more great stuff than if we try 100 things and half of them work out. research risks benefit the consumer in the long term.

vibrunazo 14y ago

> what benefit accrues to someone who does great design or R&D or produces great art if it can just be immediately copied by someone who doesn't have to make the investment in time or money. If you assume that everything Apple invented was trivial to copy. Then even then, Apple was still the richest company in the whole planet before having ever bothered that anyone copied them. The richest company in the whole planet. It seems to me that the R&D investment already payed off, lawsuits or no lawsuits. I believe that answers your question. It's clear from these results that Apple and competitors will invest in R&D anyway no matter if they get copied afterwards. It still pays off for them. I'm pretty sure the world won't stop inventing new things because some are being copied.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
I don't assume that at all, it's why I say a one size fits all approach makes no sense. Different things have different costs to develop, different value, different life span, different barriers to duplication and so on. Some of the things Apple have been granted patents to they'd have done if they had no protection at all, others they may not have bothered with. But it's easy to look at the success of the iPhone and say "it's obvious it paid off" but not all R&D leads to an iPhone and not all companies are Apple. That's like talking about running and only using Usain Bolt as an example. I agree that we should have different IP laws for different situations but I don't think profitability or size is a good metric to use. EDIT: I wonder (thinking out loud) whether some sort of system where you have to be willing to license all patents on something like a FRAND basis might work (not FRAND in terms of the detail but the overall principal)? No-one gets exclusivity but you do get a return. Competing companies can then work out whether they think it's worth paying the modest fee or whether to develop and alternative themselves.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  With consumer demand in mind. Don't you agree that if an invention didn't see the light of day, doesn't that mean there wasn't a market for it in the first place? Then why does it matters if that invention wasn't put in market, if consumers didn't want it in the first place? Remember we're not trying to give benefits for inventors for no reason. We're trying to give consumers something they want. We're not trying to throw money at inventors to invent random stuff no one cares about. We're trying to create cool new things for consumers. If there is no consumer demand for an invention, why would consumers care if the invention didn't make it to market?
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Consumer demand doesn't necessarily equate to success or profit for the inventor. Say you're a one man start up and you invent something really cool in your garage. You start marketing it, get a bit of leverage and sell a few. It's going great, you've got some orders, get some money from an investor, you've got a proper workshop and are growing nicely. Then Samsung or Apple see what you're doing and think it looks cool. They get their factories up to speed and throw a few million dollars into marketing (that you don't have needless to say) and before you know it they're selling millions. Everyone wants it, consumer demand is off the chart and no-one cares a jot about you in your workshop any more because Apple and Samsung can make the thing cheaper and get it to consumers faster. So, it made it to market, there's plenty of demand and yet where's the incentive for you to do anything when you have your next great idea other than go and get drunk in a ditch because you've got no desire to get screwed over again? Yes the consumer benefits from cheaper devices but they also benefit from great people having great ideas and being incentivised to do something with them because they know they could get a reward. And that's before we get into talking about how we do want to encourage failure because if we try 1000 long shots, even if 90% of them fail, we'll have more great stuff than if we try 100 things and half of them work out. research risks benefit the consumer in the long term.