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Jury Members Discuss Thought Process Behind Apple vs. Samsung Verdict
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And to be fair - Gillmor has been highly suspicious of software patents and such for everyone, not just Apple software patents (as well as other forms of IP).
And I'm not completely unsympathetic to that position. On the whole, I think software patents have proven to be a bad idea, though I think it could be solved by stricter standards to grant them rather than just kill them.
My main objection in this thread and elsewhere is those who are essentially saying "Apple should've lost because they didn't do anything worth protecting". Which is utter bull.
I wish I would know who you are so that I never hire you or any member of your family or any of your friends...
There is something to be said about loyalty... But I'm not sure that you would know...
I think he meant loyalty to a company you've bought stuff from. Presumably most of the people in this thread aren't Apple employees.
He must buy different brands of toilet paper, toothpaste, bread, etc.. each week.
I'm a happy Apple fan, got an iMac, got an iPad, had a lot of iPods of the various generations and flavors. (I also have a Dell I use for games.) But my appreciation for Apple products won't keep me from calling them when their wrong. And Apple is at least partially wrong - they need to strike a reasonable deal for the standard gestures that make up a universal language, and I think they were wrong to depend so much on the trade dress stuff.
I don't really care what universal system is adopted. Everyone can get together and agree a set of international patent standards.
Imagine if you were an inventor living in the US or the UK. You work hard and invent something and patent it. Then along comes someone in Germany or China or wherever and takes your idea and makes their own product to sell around the world. Ok you sue them in the US and win but that doesn't stop them selling the product everywhere else in the world because the US court has no jurisdiction outside the US. If you are an individual inventor or a small company you almost certainly can't afford to pursue the violating company through the courts around the world so you end up unable to do anything and your invention gets exploited around the world making lots of money for someone else. What a great system that is. Happy now? No not really.
Everyone can't get together and decide on things like discrimination is bad and landmines shouldn't be made - and they're going to agree on something technical like patents?
That's assuming your poor inventor can afford to press the case in the Hague or in Sweden or New York (if he's a UK poor inventor) plus any time you get into these international venues the costs for representation go way up.
And in the reality of the market today, what would happen is that you'd either go bankrupt winning your patent cases or you'd sell it to a larger company that can pursue it.
I get it. There is some inefficiency in the idea of the multiple venues and multiple trials. I'm an engineer too, inefficiency is bad. But sometimes it's unavoidable. This isn't going to happen.
Interesting article. Pretty much sums up the concerns many people have about this decision and it's implications for us all in the future.
Claiming the graphic illustrates everyone is suing everyone is a gross miscarisoriatizon of what it shows. Just over half the companies in it are not suing anyone at all. 75% of the cases it shows are Nokia,Kodak and Apple suing other companies.
Ever heard of these international standards bodies...
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Those are (mostly) easy, straightforward engineering decisions (though if you've followed the drama on the HTML5 spec, even then things can get "interesting"). They're also non-binding because people just choose to adopt them (and they do because there's little to no downside). There's nobody with a particular dog in the hunt for "wait a minute, the meter should be defined this way" or "No, no, no, you can use 4.5 volts for that line, it must be 6 volts".
Choosing what is patentable, what is the standard for whether a patent should be granted, these aren't engineering issues, they are decisions of value and everybody's got a dog in that hunt wanting one thing or another. Furthermore, because it then involves courts and legal consequences like fines and injunctions, it must be approved into law so the people with the dogs in the hunt (everyone) can tear it to pieces there.
And now almost all Windows Phones do NOT have a keyboard.
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Samsung didn't invent any of that stuff either.
But that's not what this trial is about.
This trial is about patents that Apple obtained... and the claims that Samsung infringed on them.
Surely you jest!
In the past if you infringed on someone else's patent, wasn't the standard process to be sued and have the infringing product pulled off the market until a non-infringing version could be developed? What game changing patents in the past were automatically licensed to the company's competitors?
Apple brought a game changing product to market, and their competitors felt like they had carte blanche to copy that product. What else can Apple do?
You've obviously never sat in on an IEEE meeting. They are far from straight forward and easy. But never mind that, the point I was trying to make is that there are plenty of international organisations around the world who are able to bring representatives from around the world to sit down and agree a common set of standards for their industry. Look at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. That works very well. You have a panel of judges from around the world but it's still one court.
Do I think this will ever happen? No probably not because their are too many petty narrow minded nationalists who think ceding things like this to an international court somehow represents a deletion of their national sovereignty, which IMO it doesn't - it just makes things a lot easier. However sadly where idiots lead politicians usually follow closely behind.
I didn't claim that, I summarized the situation as "everyone is suing everyone, pretty much". Which is what the NYT article concludes, your point is obvious, which is why I asked why you made a list, perhaps I'll make a song about the graph.
Apple does not hold anywhere near a monopoly, if anything, Samsung is more likely the one to have that title.
Now, now, Apple clearly wants a monopoly in the iPhone market.
Unreasonable of them, isn't it?
So you are asking why I produced a list when it was obvious your point was wrong?
Not that EASY!. First one has to determine that the verdict is fair, reasonable and correct which is a complete NOT!. They jury did NOT follow the judge's instructions and delivers based on emotions rather than fact and evidence. They cannot justify each and every patent claim in the trial for each of the plantiffs based on their answer. There are contradictions to the results based on their method of deliveration which is NOT follow the judge's instructions.
It actually is an embrassment to the American people that the verdict turns out this way. It shows the plain incompetence of the average person and an inability to follow instructions laid out in front of them.
If there were clearly or unanimously a correct decision on infringement, then the judgement amounts can be estimated. This process ought to be done by judges supported by accountants to determine the damage amounts on either side. Yes, each plaintiff DID infringe on one or more patents or trade-dress.
If that was directed at me, I've traveled the world and I regularly travel to Central America and the Caribbean. If anything, traveling as much as I have has given me a greater appreciation for my own country's legal system (however flawed it may be, it's still better than anything else out there).
if you think you're going to have a "world government panel" take over part of US Federal law, and you consider me a "petty narrow minded nationalist", you ain't seen the real conservatives that will come out of the woodwork and derail this effort. You'd be the cause célèbre of the decade. This country was built on freedom and independence, and taking away American sovereignty to be replaced with a European or International panel of judges runs counter to everything this country stands for. It would be instant political suicide.
Assuming you could actually repeal US IP law and replace it with an international alternative, that repeal is going to run afoul of the US Constitution (that's the "Copyright Clause" I keep referencing) and the US Constitution is the ultimate law of the land. So your "international patent" law is declared unconstitutional, and gets thrown out.
So you'd now need to repeal a key section of the original Constitution, which is intentionally hard to accomplish. Now everyone who interprets the Constitution literally (do a search on "Originalism", two SCOTUS justices openly hold this view) or holds the Constitution dear (remember, this document also contains our Bill of Rights) or doesn't want it tinkered with unnecessarily is mobilized against your little fantasy.
And you still haven't determined which country's view of software patents is going to be implemented by the world patent court, and who will administer that law, and (hopefully) what redress is available in cases of infringement or judicial bias/corruption.
So, as I said, feel free to invent a fantasy world in your head, just so you and Knight can buy cheap Samsung knockoffs of Apple products, just understand it's never, ever going to happen. I always find it cute to gauge the level of naivete of young idealistic twentysomethings.
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Regardless of the patent system being broken or not and regardless of the matter of if Apple should have a patent on something or not, if Apple has the patent then another company shouldn't use the patented technology without a license to use it from Apple; that isn't the way to get the patent changed to public domain. If you think that the patent should be public then challenge that if you can, I don't know the laws on how that works but I think that would be a better way to do that instead of just trying to copy someone's technology. just my thought.
just my thought.Wow, what a great example of shut-uppery. Outside of an argument of simplicity for subjugating the US legal system (with respect to patents) to an international body, you indicate a lack of desire for honest debate by simply commenting that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot nationalist.
But, I'll ignore that and give you a little food for thought.
First of all, what happens if the international body comes up with standards that are not effective and ultimately damaging? If you've agreed to comply with those standards, how would you go about fixing a system that is broken in your country, but for some reason the international community is unwilling to change? And if you can simply choose to not comply, what value was enforcing those standards in the first place?
Second of all, why is it that the US must change its standards to adapt to Europe/Asia? What the US might feel works and, for the most part, have shown to work with regards to patents is likely not the same as with Europe or Asia. Just because we have a global economy, does it mean that the US has to acquiesce to European/Asian standards all for the goal of simplicity? For as long as the US' market reigns supreme, the US standard is the de facto international standard (with some caveats for other relatively significant markets). Why would the US suddenly take a position from where it leads and comply with standards for which it does not have total control? And for as long as the US is still effectively the leader in invention and entrepreneurship, isn't there something to be said about the US having a better set of laws and a better environment for this? It's far from a perfect system, but I find it hard to believe that others are better and even harder to believe that an international body could even come remotely close.
Thirdly, countries have treaties. The US would be better off negotiating intellectual property treaties with a couple other countries of significance and the rest of the world would have to basically comply. And for as long as the US market reigns supreme, Europeans would not want to prevent its citizens from selling products in the US by not implementing patent standards that are compatible.
Fourthly, if the US believes one of its citizens has proper rights to some IP, why should it necessarily enforce a global patent for a citizen of another country that would hurt its local economy (e.g., instead of producing the product itself, it would be forced to import it instead).
Finally, while a US citizen has the right to have his/her intellectual property protected in the US, why must another country comply? The US should do the best job it can (within reason) to ensure patent protection globally, but other countries are sovereign and if they choose to steal our products, there is little we can do about it. Moreover, those countries uninterested in enforcing US patent rights will be uninterested in complying with an international body anyways.
I realize you might not be a US citizen. My arguments above are simply why the US should seriously consider against a global set of IP standards.