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Jury Members Discuss Thought Process Behind Apple vs. Samsung Verdict
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If you hate Apple so much, why would you even want to run their OS?
You're taking a principled stand by running their software -- in violation of the license? Srsly?
Why not run Windows or Linux or BeOS or a Chromebook?
Samsung at this moment. Also, people talking about the fundamental unfairness of the patent system as a whole.
All this talk about how this hurts competition are either trolls or lack the necessary capacity for processing information and coming to logical conclusions about it.
Look at what Microsoft is doing. Now that's competition. Competition is coming up with your own ideas and running with it on the fair, open market. We'll see how well Metro does in the mobile space. I don't particularly like it, personally, but I respect Microsoft for the choices they made, and for doing their own thing. Apple won't be suing them. Apple has no grounds for suing them, under the law or under common sense.
What Samsung has been doing is not even close to competition. The copying was blatant. The copying was willful. We know this from Samsung's own internal documents. It was Samsung's goal to create cheap clones of Apple's products, rush them to market, and take advantage of Apple's efforts in R&D and marketing to coast along.
Competition is fair, the winner chosen strictly on the merits. Microsoft spent their own money on R&D, and they're spending their own money on advertising their products. That's fair, and if Windows 8 does well in the mobile space, they will have earned it. Samsung spent no money on R&D, copied Apple's hard work, and coasted along into the market on the wake of Apple's advertising. That's not fair at all, Samsung clearly has an advantage in cost-to-market. If Samsung does well, it's because they made their product cheaper through stealing designs from their competitor, resulting in lower carrier subsidies and greater push from those carriers in the stores accordingly.
Apple is a pretty confident company, I would wager. I believe them when they say they don't mind competition, because they believe that on a level playing field they can win. They just want everyone else to make their own stuff.
Consumers should want everyone else to make their own stuff too. That's how we get interesting new ideas like Microsoft has been working on (and, wow, who'd have thought anyone would be able to say that with a straight face?). If every product looks like an iPhone running iOS, what, exactly, is the advantage to the consumer? I can't think of any. This verdict isn't going to hurt the consumer one bit, it's just going to result in more companies doing their own thing and coming up with actual new ideas.
Look at what Microsoft is doing. Now that's competition. Competition is coming up with your own ideas and running with it on the fair, open market. We'll see how well Metro does in the mobile space. I don't particularly like it, personally, but I respect Microsoft for the choices they made, and for doing their own thing. Apple won't be suing them. Apple has no grounds for suing them, under the law or under common sense.
What Samsung has been doing is not even close to competition. The copying was blatant. The copying was willful. We know this from Samsung's own internal documents. It was Samsung's goal to create cheap clones of Apple's products, rush them to market, and take advantage of Apple's efforts in R&D and marketing to coast along.
Competition is fair, the winner chosen strictly on the merits. Microsoft spent their own money on R&D, and they're spending their own money on advertising their products. That's fair, and if Windows 8 does well in the mobile space, they will have earned it. Samsung spent no money on R&D, copied Apple's hard work, and coasted along into the market on the wake of Apple's advertising. That's not fair at all, Samsung clearly has an advantage in cost-to-market. If Samsung does well, it's because they made their product cheaper through stealing designs from their competitor, resulting in lower carrier subsidies and greater push from those carriers in the stores accordingly.
Apple is a pretty confident company, I would wager. I believe them when they say they don't mind competition, because they believe that on a level playing field they can win. They just want everyone else to make their own stuff.
Consumers should want everyone else to make their own stuff too. That's how we get interesting new ideas like Microsoft has been working on (and, wow, who'd have thought anyone would be able to say that with a straight face?). If every product looks like an iPhone running iOS, what, exactly, is the advantage to the consumer? I can't think of any. This verdict isn't going to hurt the consumer one bit, it's just going to result in more companies doing their own thing and coming up with actual new ideas.
Eh? Apple has a proud record of innovation, but they sure as hell didn't invent the personal computer. The Apple 2 was one of the first and most successful 'appliance' PCs that didn't need a soldering iron and a spare teletype to get working, but there were a whole bunch of others around the same time: Tandy TRS 80 and Commodore PET, for example. There was also the generic Z80/CP/M platform, descended from the Altair (which had a better claim on being the first PC) and available from scores of manufacturers.
If the IBM/MS PC was a copy of anything it was those CP/M machines, not Apple.
That might have had something to do with them failing to produce a decent follow up to the Apple 2: the Apple 3 was a total turkey and the Lisa may have been revolutionary but it still tanked. By the time the Mac came out, IBM/MSDOS was already dominant (hence the famous 1984 ad). IBM/MSDOS managed to steamroller every non-IBM-PC, including systems like the Amiga which made the PCs look like a toy, without needing to copy MacOS. Windows didn't hit the big time until V3.1 in the early 90s.
Wow this is so embarassing. Calm down.
The concept of intellectual property still originated from Europe. The Venetian Statue of 1474 to be exact.
Sorry dude. Apple DOES play well with others...see Microsoft and how they came up with their OWN unique looking phone and Metro interface.
This has NOTHING to do with INNOVATION. It has to do with copying Apple's successful looking designs and UI. They aren't INNOVATING anything...they are COPYING. Understand the difference because there is a huge one there. Samsung spent NOTHING in R&D and years of research and understanding what worked and didn't work on a phone UI that was about to change the industry.
INNOVATION would be saying..."damn...look what Apple is doing...lets go beyond that and make our own unique product and UI"...a.k.a. Microsoft and Metro/Windows mobile.
That is why MS even tweeted after the verdict...<i>Windows Phone is looking gooooood right now</i> and they are right...they didn't copy anything...they made their own unique UI and phone and licensed what they needed from Apple.
At least someone here understands the difference between innovation and copying.
People on this thread seem to be making many good points on both sides of the fence, so to speak, about this case and even about patents in general. The main thing that I feel many here are liberally omitting is the information in the article about the emails that pretty much sealed the deal concerning blatant infringement. Seems to me that Samsung shot themselves in the foot by sending emails pretty much saying what ideas they want to steal for their own phones.
The impression I get is that the constitution was written by near demi-gods, rather than ordinary men, some of whom were slave owners.
Manuel Ilagan, that is NOT evidence in regards to what you were supposed to decided on.
Apparently Coca-Cola should sue Pepsi for Sierra Mist because they decided they want a lemon-lime soda like Sprite.
/facepalm.
Talk about oversimplifying.
It would be more like Apple was the first to come up with the 2-liter bottle idea and Sprite, and wanted to tie all that together as a unique product image, and protected it all with patents (something I doubt Coca-Cola did.) Meanwhile, the rest of the industry--which has sold only cola in silver-colored aluminum cans up to this point and mocked the idea of selling Sprite in 2-liter bottles until it proves wildly successful--suddenly starts selling 2-liter bottles with Sprite-like soda designed and packaged to look just like the original.
That's closer to what was litigated. And yeah, all that sounds sort of ridiculous, but then so is your overly simplistic analogy to begin with.
The question of intellectual property doesn't go back nearly as far, but I think there was some protection in Europe before it was written into the constitution.
As for the constitution, books have been written on it, here's my nickel version.
The United States just came out of a war with England where, because they wanted to, the English government (at the command of King George) had violated all the rights they had come to expect. It's also worth pointing out that we were 13 states with huge differences among them - slavery was the most mentioned but others nearly as fundamental.
So when we won our independence, the first national government was basically "you guys get ready to do things in case we get attacked again but otherwise the states can all do whatever they want". This proved unworkable, and a constitution was written. There needed to be a national government, but there was still concern about an overbearing national government that both could run roughshod over the rights of the individual citizens and the powers of the states.
The constitution set up the organization of the federal government (a congress, an executive branch led by a President, and a supreme court). In theory their powers were pretty constrained - in the section of Congress, there was an enumeration of what Congress could do and it is pretty short (but over time, loopholes have been created to drive almost whatever truck they want to). The President only executed the laws that Congress passed from that brief list of areas, and handled foreign diplomacy. The courts both handled those laws passed, and settled disputes between the states or citizens of different states.
The original thought was that the constitution was so restrictive, there was no risk it would infringe on the rights of its citizens, but there were those who called for a list of amendments respecting specific rights of the citizens. The language in most cases is specific, and matches the language of the Declaration of Independence - these are not rights granted by the government, the government is recognizing that as free men the citizens have these rights and will not infringe upon them. Given the loopholes that have been opened in the restrictions in the enumerated powers, this was a smart thing to do.
As for passing laws - the expectation was that the states can regulate almost anything they want, so long as they don't violate the rights set forth in the constitution. So even in those areas where the courts are still telling the federal government "You have no authority to act in these areas", the states can act. The areas where the congress has authority to act has expanded so far that it rarely comes up. But they can't do anything that violates the restrictions in the constitution, mostly in the first ten amendments, the bill of rights.
The constitution can be changed, but it's very difficult, and requires an overwhelming level of support. It was intended to be that difficult, so a Congress couldn't respond to the whims of the moment and say "We don't like those people who protest at funerals, so anyone who says what they say will be locked up".
For the record, Shaun, unless you've met all 315,000,000 of us, this comment is just as offensive as the one you were responding to.
It was written by some extremely extraordinary men - men, with the imperfection of men, but still extraordinary. Even if they didn't always live up to their ideals, and even if they had to make compromises to get the constitution and the declaration of independence passed, they built into it the basics of liberty that showed the hypocracy of those worst compromises and where it fell short.
Did i say i hate apple NO. I did not. I like the OS and computers but i can not validate overpaying for a computer. I know it is in violation of the license. But I paid for the software so I will use it as I see fit. the only reason apple does not allow there software on other computers is due to greed. I worked for apple for many years and I know how managment are.
The reason Apple does not allow their software on other computers is because a large part of the price of the OS is built into the price of the hardware.
BTW, the relevance to this discussion is the same as the patents. You want all the advantages of what Apple has done, you want to take advantage of all their development work, all their user testing, all the brilliant people they have working to make this stuff work like people would expect. But you don't want to pay the price for it, so you take it.
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I kinda knew when the head Samsung designer said the phone design was inspired by a bowl of water they were going to slammed...bowl of water...bwahahahahahahaha
This isn't a "win" for consumers by any stretch of the imagination, guess who is going to be paying for this lawsuit & all the fines that go with it. The cost will be passed onto American consumers.
Edited to say that I totally get the need to protect intellectual property. Just saying here that this entire mess is NOT a good thing for consumers, particularly American customers going forward. Welcome to a world where a flagship android phone will cost $400 with a 2 yr contract and an iPhone will run you a cool $500 with contract.
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I am not surprised.
I am Singaporean (so don't go accusing me of being nationalistic), have been following the court case ever so often, and actually arrived at the same conclusion as the jurors, for pretty much the same rationale.
All this time, Samsung did not really deny that they were copying. Instead, they seemed pretty proud of that fact, and even tried to justify their own actions by giving flimsy rationalisations like how Apple did the same, or that they had no right to patent such features. Their attitude was effectively "Yeah, I knowingly copied Apple. You have a problem with that?"
Even after the court case, they even tried to get to the high moral ground by claiming how this is a loss for American consumers. Like a Korean company cares about American values? If they did, they would have respected American copyright laws in the first place.
Excuse me, but that is as good a confession as any in my book. I don't see how, given the facts in this case, a sane and neutral person could have ruled in any other way.
I am Singaporean (so don't go accusing me of being nationalistic), have been following the court case ever so often, and actually arrived at the same conclusion as the jurors, for pretty much the same rationale.
All this time, Samsung did not really deny that they were copying. Instead, they seemed pretty proud of that fact, and even tried to justify their own actions by giving flimsy rationalisations like how Apple did the same, or that they had no right to patent such features. Their attitude was effectively "Yeah, I knowingly copied Apple. You have a problem with that?"
Even after the court case, they even tried to get to the high moral ground by claiming how this is a loss for American consumers. Like a Korean company cares about American values? If they did, they would have respected American copyright laws in the first place.
Excuse me, but that is as good a confession as any in my book. I don't see how, given the facts in this case, a sane and neutral person could have ruled in any other way.
Comment all you want
Are you saying that Samsung did not copy the Iphone?
Yes I am saying that. In the tech world everybody is looking at what everyone else is doing and taking inspiration from that. I think Samsung took inspiration from what Apple was doing but I don't think they outright copied them. I have an iPhone and a Galaxy S2. Apart from the fact that they both have icons they look and feel very different to me.
The Constitution was written by imperfect, yet extraordinary, men who created a form of government that managed to survive long enough to bail our European neighbors out of two world wars.
So your S2 doesn't use the same touch gestures as the iPhone, doesn't do the "bounce back" after over scrolling?
And Google was wrong when they warned Samsung their phones were looking too much like the iPhone?