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Google Distances Android From Samsung Patent Verdict
Nerval's Lobster writes "On August 24, a California court ruled in favor of Apple in its patent-infringement case against Samsung, hitting the latter with a $1.05 billion fine. Tech pundits spent the weekend chattering about the possible repercussions of the decision, which Samsung will surely appeal. One of the biggest issues under discussion: how Apple's victory will affect Google Android, the operating system that powers the majority of Samsung's mobile devices, and itself a player in the patent-infringement actions shaking the tech world. For its part, Google made every effort to create some distance between Android and the smoking ruins of Samsung's case. 'The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims' the company wrote in a widely circulated statement. 'Most of these don't relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office.' Google didn't end there. 'The mobile industry is moving fast and all players—including newcomers—are building upon ideas that have been around for decades,' the statement continued. 'We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don't want anything to limit that."
To Microsoft's credit though, Bill Gates was an excellent businessperson (better than Jobs ever was). The only reason Microsoft "won" that case was that Jobs needed apps on the Mac, and ended up signing a contract crafted by Gates where Microsoft would write the apps, and inherit a license to the UI.
That was why Microsoft won - Apple licensed the UI stuff to Microsoft. All Microsoft did was point out the contract that said so, game over. Perfectly legal transaction.
Windows stealing the thunder? The joke that was Windows 1.0 would've dissuaded you on that (no overlapping windows, to begin with. It was actually closer to the Xerox model (also no overlapping windows) than Mac). Windows 2.0 wasn't much better. Windows 3 got somewhere, and Windows 95 and NT blew OS X out of the water (mock all you want, at least 95 had protected memory and preemptive multitasking, two things that MacOS lacked until OS X's release 6 years later. And the NT line...). All Apple had was a crusty OS, a dead-in-the-water rewrite (Copland) and really nowhere to go. They had to buy the next MacOS (from NeXT) to get this stuff (after attempts to buy BeOS failed when Be got a bit greedy).
Though, you can be sure Apple was not going to do THAT again. (And Apple didn't take it from Xerox - they licensed it for Apple stock).
Difference is, Apple paid Xerox for the right to use it.
Has Samsung paid Apple for all the copying they did?
To further make the point
1) Nokia chose to lic apple patents and to obtain others via use of MS windows (which also lic apple patents). This was a slower approach than the android approach and they lost market share to samsung which played fast and loose. Nokia was punished worse than apple for being IP sensitive.
2) Samsungs internal documents compared their in house design to the Apple one and recommended chucking many design elements in favor of copying apple. Thus evidently some (not all) of the apple design exceeded what Samsung could do. it was not obvious evidently. So please stop saying this is all about rounded corners or that someone somewhere implemented pinch zooming on a 40" surface monitor. Getting all these things to work as a whole on a small pocket size device is a matter of careful selection of feature integration and attention to details. Samsung failed on their own to hit the sweet spot and said so in their own documents.
3) The pre-2010 samsung phones and tablets look like crap.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.