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Samsung Plans To Block the iPhone 5 In Korea
c0lo writes "In apparent retaliation to its U.S. rival's continual patent challenges in global markets, Samsung Electronics is seeking a complete ban on the sales of the upcoming Apple iPhone 5 in Korea. This is one of Samsung's several recently-opened fronts in the patent world wars: Apple was sued in France on 3 technical patents and counter-sued in Australia over 7 technical patents (after an Apple 'offensive' temporarily blocked Galaxy Tab for the Australian market)."
Soon all cell phones will be banned because of their dangerous IP infringement, and the landline will return as the obviously superior technology
You know, I remember as a kid learning about the great inventions and inventors and thinking how cool it would be to come up with the next great idea. Now when I think about coming up with the next great idea, all I can picture is how I would even *begin* to deal with all the patent lawsuits that would inevitably follow.
Maybe there is someone out there who has the grain of insight in his mind that could lead to a radical advance in propulsion that could make a manned mission to Mars practical. But if the first thing that some venture capitalist tells him is "We'd love to fund this, but there is no way we can afford to defend you in the onslaught of patent lawsuits" how is it ever going to materialize? Patent trolls and patent collectors make it harder and harder for anything that isn't mainstream and almost immediately marketable from ever making it past the concept phase.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Where's the popcorn when I need it?! Ah! Here it is! Now the show may begin!
All we need is a real-time simulator showing all the patent lawsuits occurring across the planet. Kinda like the classic Wargames but with patents instead of nukes.
The world economy is increasingly based on intellectual property, which is not governed by the physical laws of production capacity and unit cost. Instead intellectual property is government by subjective judgements about who deserves how much of the credit. These judgements are formalized in patent and copyright law, but they still come down to interpretation and value judgement. There is no firm ground to stand on.
You mean something like "Global Intellectual* War"?
*: needed to drop the "property" for pun's sake. Sue me.
Seriously, people are quick to jump on companies that are doing the suing, but the problem at heart is that there needs to be some serious patent reform. Until then, companies will sue for whatever ridiculous reason there might be if it leads to happier shareholders.
Google's acquisition of Motorola will be the final nail Steve Jobs' coffin.
Perhaps literally... ouch!
(I hope not!)
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Hopefully, with the current thermonuclear melt down going on between the "big boys" over all those bogus patents, the people holding those patents will come to realize that bogus patents cause more trouble than they are worth (literally). Maybe then the big boys will get on the bandwagon to eliminate bogus patents from the system.
By "bogus" I mean patents that are trying to claim that "one click checkout" is a novel, cutting edge technology (or using gestures to unlock a smart phone, or the colors used for an icon, or any of that trivial nonsense that have achieved the status of an 'novel invention' with the patent office).
Of course, in the meantime, the lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank, which is always the problem because now we want to change a legal concept which serves the needs of the owners of the legal system.
The implication is when your product and your profit mark up are no longer competitive, companies often seek other legal manipulations, political corruption and, deceitful mass media to keep other products out and of course to continue to artificially inflate their profit margins.
So the big question is who will be the winner in the consumer eyes, who will be seen as the manipulative, conniving, greedy, anti-customer, corporation holding the end user hostage to the greed of corporate executives out of control.
Even if they break even, Apple loses badly, as the fashion conscious technology unconscious product any tarnishing of their marketing image will cost them hugely.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Currently the patent wars look like this...
http://freshdigital.info/computer/patent-wars-diagram-who-is-actually-suing-who/
http://www.onlinemarketing-trends.com/2011/08/state-of-techology-patent-warswinners.html
Global map coming soon, then Armageddon.
which one is Ukraine?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Could it be that the patent system is biting the technology companies, that they themselves brought it into existence and nourished it, in the ass? And, if yes, would they ever realize it?
I work for a fairly large chemical company and we stopped filing for patents. Although the purpose of a patent is to protect the inventor, it inevitably makes the idea accessible by the competition. Since all chemical factories are private grounds protected by fences and guards, we cannot check whether our competitors have actually stolen our patented inventions (and, of course, nor can they). Besides, we have better stuff to do than going through all production facilities in China to check every damn apparatus to see whether we should file a lawsuit or not.
So there you have it. No patents, no trouble. Just a big ol' fence and LOTS of security (both physical and IT). We also stopped publishing our research findings to conferences and journals and we demand a confidentiality agreement from every university that sends students to work for us.
Are you serious? The guy is complaining about a notebook that looks *completely different than Macbooks".
Sony is more guilty of ripping off Macbooks.
Sony laptops have looked like that for at least 10 years, if not more.
LOL.
Okey... First of all the sides are styled after the PSP sides. Sony had the chiclet keyboard earlyer than Apple. The backplate (behind the screen) is tranlucent. The flip meganism is totaly different. The on-off key and it's light is, well Mac doesn't have it. The side/onderside is halfway divided into two colors. The speakers are above the keyboard. The curvature in which the keyboard lies is curved down only one way. It doesn't have a seperate trackpad; the entire underside is translucent and the keys and the trackpad itself is also translucent... And so much more actual industrial design that Macbooks lack.
Oh, not to mention the fact that the screen has better quality, it's sturdier and lighter. It comes with all of Adobe's offering too, so it's absolutely a 100% superior in terms of publishing (something you buy a Macbook for, right? With it's 90's color management... ROFL). Now games. So far 2D superiority. Now let's see what it can do in 3D. DirectX 11 and faster OpenGL speed. Wait.. you mean OpenGL 4.2 support? Holy shit... That's lightyears better than OpenGL 2.1.
I could go on, but I think that this laptop beats the shit out of MacBooks...
Here be signatures
We should be encouraging more behavior like this.
/. now believe that the patent system is actually functioning well and serving the public in the way it was supposed to? Anyone who keeps remotely abreast with tech and science trends knows that the current patent system (and for matter, intellectual property law in general) is massively broken.
How many who are reading
Reform will only come when the waves get big enough that the public starts paying attention. That's not going to happen with the equivalent of small scale knife fights that get settled behind closed doors.
To make real reform happen, it needs to get to a point when high profile players with very deep pockets get to a point where neither will back down. Even better is if all parties involved start generating some real fear, uncertainly and doubt. Get the public to pay attention. Really make it seem like the nuclear options are on the table. Aka, "If we lose, we're going to have to disable X features on your device..."
Then we'll see some action. Then we might some serious attempts at reform.
Apple taking the hard line on this on so many fronts seems so nonsensical that I half believe that they're doing this on purpose. If you're Apple, I think you see the writing on the wall. Doing what Apple does best (other than making money) on the production side - putting together other people's ideas into a smart, well-designed, consumer-friendly package - is going to get harder and harder with these shackles and hillbilly armor that everyone's weighing themselves down with. If you think about it, Apple doesn't usually invent most of the tech in their products.
Really, is this absurdity that far-fetched? The level of Apple's aggression on so many fronts is mind-boggling.
I think Google's got a Plan, too. We already know that Google types think of massive patent bidding wars - they were submitting joke bids during the Nortel auctions.
That's my fantasy, anyway. In this fantasy, the world is Good & Just. Apple hasn't taken over the role of Evil Empire from Microsoft and Google's policy of do no evil actually means something.