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After Knocked-Down Damages Claim, Apple Again Seeks to Ban Some Samsung Phones
Bloomberg reports that after Apple's patent victory in court last week over smart-phone rival Samsung, Apple is
seeking a sales ban on several specific phones from Samsung; none of them are currently flagship devices. "The nine devices targeted by Cupertino, California-based Apple for a U.S. sales ban include the Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S3 and Stratosphere." Getting the competition blocked from the marketplace over patent claims is something that Apple's tried before in connection with its beef with Samsung, and the company has had mixed results, depending on jurisdiction. Last week's decision in favor of Apple hints that the jury didn't think the company deserved the entire $2.2 billion it was seeking, awarding (a mere) $120 million, instead.
Be honest, if Apple were the one who had stolen physical designs and software innovations from Android, you nerds would ask nothing less than nuking Apple from orbit.
Eh. Their new ring-HQ-thing would make an attractive target from high altitude I suppose; but I don't think I'd be as worked up as you give me credit for:
As with so many things patent-and-tech-related, whatever ends up being the killer app always looks simultaneously brilliantly innovative and obvious in hindsight; but attempts to actually put your finger on precisely what is patentably special about it frequently run into trouble on some mixture of university research projects that just got shelved after somebody finished his PhD, stuff IBM did in 1980 but charged approximately a zillion dollars a month to lease and hid behind an interface designed to sell you consulting services through sheer pain, or assorted bits and pieces identifiably but unhelpfully introduced in prior products that were dragged down by mediocrity in other areas.
That's what I find most unsympathetic about Apple's protracted litigation on what are basically broad look-and-feel grounds. Were they the first ones to use a capacitive touchscreen to make a smartphone that doesn't suck? Sure, no problem. And look at the giant pile of first mover advantage and cash that they got for it. Does this entitle them to a monopoly on rectangular touch sensitive objects for two decades? Less impressive case to be made. And, much to their chagrin, less impressive legal payout. As much as Apple might prefer otherwise, nailing the execution is not a patentable achievement, and a great many elegant executions break down into a lot of substantially nonpatentable, or already commonplace, bits and pieces put together correctly.
I definitely don't like the idea of nuking Apple. Let the market do that for us. But Apple needs to stop using our tax dollars to defeat their competitors outside the market. They've done so since way back in the Apple II days.
We wouldn't be stuck using Windows, either, if Apple hadn't killed the competetive GUI market on the PC. They drove the GEM Desktop and GeoWorks out of competition, and set a tone where no third parties could produce windowing environments. It's Apple's fault for clearing the market entirely which made way a deep pocket competitor like Microsoft the ultimate winner.