A jury in a California court recently sided with Apple in a patent case
versus Samsung. This, most analysts agreed, was a huge victory for
Apple. Not only was it awarded a billion dollars, it was also found that
several devices by the South Korean manufacturer infringed on various
Apple patents, for both hardware and software. While the endgame of the
court victory still has to be played out, and courts in other countries
have ruled quite differently, this decision by a jury of nine people
will have a profound impact on the world of consumer technology.
Apple did not invent the mobile phone (or the smartphone for that matter), nor did it invent the tablet computer. What it did do was to make using such devices incredibly easy. Apple also made them very good-looking and marketed them to make them objects of desire, even lust. In the process of creating such devices, Apple filed a whole host of patents to protect themselves from any infringement.
In one of the most widely quoted passages from Walter Issacson’s biography of Apple founder and its former Chief Executive Steve Jobs, it is said that Jobs was willing to spend each penny of Apple’s not inconsiderable cash hoard to go ‘thermonuclear’ on Google’s Android operating system. It was believed that Jobs looked at Google’s creation of Android as a breach of trust, particularly after he took Google’s founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin under his wing and Google’s Chairman and former Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sat on the Apple board.
The legal battle with Samsung, which ironically is one of Apple’s largest suppliers, was widely seen as part of the huge proxy war that Apple is having with Google. Everything from product design to the user-interface of devices was challenged. And when Apple won, Samsung sent out a terse note saying that the defeat was a defeat for ‘consumers’. Which brings us to a simple crux, the patent system.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office which issues the largest number of patents of any patent office in the world is widely seen as an organisation that protects the rights of innovators. The USPTO has played a clear role in America’s massive technological and industrial domination of global affairs. But can a system, essentially designed for the late-eighteenth century continue to be valid today?
It is not as if patent laws have not changed. Controversially, process patents have been allowed and even though the system does allow for licensing, there has also been the issue of patent trolls. Patent trolls are companies that do not make any tangible product; they just own a patent and file lawsuits ostensibly to force product manufacturers that breach patents to pay up for using a patented product. The patent laws have also allowed companies to patent ‘plant’ products which have often brought controversy as companies have tried to patent traditional plants and medicines.
But this issue is not about the rights and wrongs of that. A comprehensive updating of patent laws is required not just in the United States but across the whole world including India. Intellectual Property Rights cases are clogging legal systems across the world, although these include not just patent violations in the technology sphere but also in the medical and entertainment worlds.
In a world where technology evolution has reached breakneck speed, the term of patent protection of twenty years is proving to be a hindrance to technology evolution. The granting of some patents which some people see as obvious and other do not can lead to such issues. One such patent is that granted to Apple, which allowed the US company to claim a patent on rectangular devices with ‘rounded corners’.
Was this abuse or was the company simply trying its luck with the patent office, remains to be seen. But patents like these neither protect innovation nor do they foster competition. Apple did highlight during the case that it is not impossible to create a differentiated device or operating system, and gave Microsoft’s Windows Phone devices as an example. So while it is not impossible to innovate ‘around’ patents and license those that are needed, sometimes the patent system shoots itself in the foot.
Any review of the patent system has to ensure that patent protection terms are reduced. Half a century ago, product lifecycles lasted decades. However, a mobile phone would be fortunate to be used for over two years, lest the user be considered a technological dinosaur. In less than five years, most consumers have moved on from cathode-ray tube based televisions to smaller, slimmer flat panel displays. In the current system, the person who patents the technology that will allow for holographic three-dimensional phone calls will make a killing.
There is no doubt that innovation ought to be protected, but the very definition of innovation is being twisted by the patent system. Some aspects of Android and Samsung’s devices could easily be seen to have violated Apple’s intellectual rights, others less so. But the jury decided that they did, and while we have not heard the last of this case as it is expected to go up to the US Supreme Court, be sure that whatever decision they take will be as vital as a case they decided in November 2000 that controversially upheld the election of George W Bush in the US state of Florida thus handing him the US presidential election.
It might take a while yet, but the nine justices on the US Supreme Court might eventually decide whether Apple’s ‘thermonuclear’ war will lead to a nuclear winter for the technology world or it will herald a new urgency in technological development akin to what happened in Japan and West Germany after World War II.
Like it or not, the consequences of this case will impact every single consumer, no matter which tech brand or brands they purchase.
(from: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52430-pinch-technology-pay-the-price.html)
Apple did not invent the mobile phone (or the smartphone for that matter), nor did it invent the tablet computer. What it did do was to make using such devices incredibly easy. Apple also made them very good-looking and marketed them to make them objects of desire, even lust. In the process of creating such devices, Apple filed a whole host of patents to protect themselves from any infringement.
In one of the most widely quoted passages from Walter Issacson’s biography of Apple founder and its former Chief Executive Steve Jobs, it is said that Jobs was willing to spend each penny of Apple’s not inconsiderable cash hoard to go ‘thermonuclear’ on Google’s Android operating system. It was believed that Jobs looked at Google’s creation of Android as a breach of trust, particularly after he took Google’s founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin under his wing and Google’s Chairman and former Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sat on the Apple board.
The legal battle with Samsung, which ironically is one of Apple’s largest suppliers, was widely seen as part of the huge proxy war that Apple is having with Google. Everything from product design to the user-interface of devices was challenged. And when Apple won, Samsung sent out a terse note saying that the defeat was a defeat for ‘consumers’. Which brings us to a simple crux, the patent system.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office which issues the largest number of patents of any patent office in the world is widely seen as an organisation that protects the rights of innovators. The USPTO has played a clear role in America’s massive technological and industrial domination of global affairs. But can a system, essentially designed for the late-eighteenth century continue to be valid today?
It is not as if patent laws have not changed. Controversially, process patents have been allowed and even though the system does allow for licensing, there has also been the issue of patent trolls. Patent trolls are companies that do not make any tangible product; they just own a patent and file lawsuits ostensibly to force product manufacturers that breach patents to pay up for using a patented product. The patent laws have also allowed companies to patent ‘plant’ products which have often brought controversy as companies have tried to patent traditional plants and medicines.
But this issue is not about the rights and wrongs of that. A comprehensive updating of patent laws is required not just in the United States but across the whole world including India. Intellectual Property Rights cases are clogging legal systems across the world, although these include not just patent violations in the technology sphere but also in the medical and entertainment worlds.
In a world where technology evolution has reached breakneck speed, the term of patent protection of twenty years is proving to be a hindrance to technology evolution. The granting of some patents which some people see as obvious and other do not can lead to such issues. One such patent is that granted to Apple, which allowed the US company to claim a patent on rectangular devices with ‘rounded corners’.
Was this abuse or was the company simply trying its luck with the patent office, remains to be seen. But patents like these neither protect innovation nor do they foster competition. Apple did highlight during the case that it is not impossible to create a differentiated device or operating system, and gave Microsoft’s Windows Phone devices as an example. So while it is not impossible to innovate ‘around’ patents and license those that are needed, sometimes the patent system shoots itself in the foot.
Any review of the patent system has to ensure that patent protection terms are reduced. Half a century ago, product lifecycles lasted decades. However, a mobile phone would be fortunate to be used for over two years, lest the user be considered a technological dinosaur. In less than five years, most consumers have moved on from cathode-ray tube based televisions to smaller, slimmer flat panel displays. In the current system, the person who patents the technology that will allow for holographic three-dimensional phone calls will make a killing.
There is no doubt that innovation ought to be protected, but the very definition of innovation is being twisted by the patent system. Some aspects of Android and Samsung’s devices could easily be seen to have violated Apple’s intellectual rights, others less so. But the jury decided that they did, and while we have not heard the last of this case as it is expected to go up to the US Supreme Court, be sure that whatever decision they take will be as vital as a case they decided in November 2000 that controversially upheld the election of George W Bush in the US state of Florida thus handing him the US presidential election.
It might take a while yet, but the nine justices on the US Supreme Court might eventually decide whether Apple’s ‘thermonuclear’ war will lead to a nuclear winter for the technology world or it will herald a new urgency in technological development akin to what happened in Japan and West Germany after World War II.
Like it or not, the consequences of this case will impact every single consumer, no matter which tech brand or brands they purchase.
(from: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52430-pinch-technology-pay-the-price.html)
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