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Samsung's 'Infringe First and Stall as Long as Possible' Strategies Are Nothing New

Surely they can only successfully do this is the courts ignore past infringements; is there really no way for judges to take that into account and sentence based on past offences as well?

I mean, I can understand why they might get away with it a few times, but you'd think the damages would keep going up and up to the point it ceases to be a valid tactic.

Anyway, looks like I'll be adding Samsung to my list of do-not-buy companies; no big loss for me (or them I suppose) since I only really bought the occasional Samsung hard drive.
 
The ultimate true is that when the iPhone came out, everyone were blown aways and went back to the drawing board ending ultimately with the same core ideas about overall software experiance and product design. Thats the main problem here, not that a funcionality or two like slide to unclok, pinch to zoom, etc was directly copied.

No matter how ignorant you are, you cant deny the above, especially if you pretend to have a wider look over the industry for the past decade.

What Samsung and othe manfucturers had to do is say: "We bring you the same iPhone experiance on different, more open platform which can be customied according to your needs and is much cheaper." and that would be an honest confession.
 
Came in here to say, I wouldn't put it past the Koreans to do this kind of thing. So I'm not surprised. They were always behind the Japanese and since the iPhone came out, the Americans.

I remember my first LCD tv purchase way back in 2004ish. It came down to a 26inch 720P Sharp panel. I'm sure many of you recall back then, Sony was like the Apple of home electronics and Samsung, at least in my case, would not have been considered in any electronics purchase (same with Hyundai for vehicles, but now thats changed lol). Fast forward to now and they DOMINATE the LCD business and Cellphone business and I guess now we know how they did it. I'm sad they were in some ways responsible for the exit of Pioneer from the plasma business. I still kick myself for not buying that 50 inch Kuro at bestbuy for $1400 back in 2009 :(
 
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Very biased of macrumors to use in an article the doctered pictures . A samsung S is bigger then an iphone butw as photoshopped to heighten the resemblance .
 
mesmurized said:
It's been said many times: innovate not litigate. The only way to truly win !!
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It's a quite naive point of view actually. Of course one has to innovate but innovation cost money. For the sake of the argument lets assume a company A doesn't protect its IP but, whenever it gets copied, it tries to innovate around the copied IP. Company B just waits around until company A has innovated and produced another new shiny product, and just blatantly steals it. Now who does all the investing and who doesn't? In the end company A's businessmodel just doesn't hold up and it goes bankrupt. Company B though is the real winner. It has to invest 0$ and comes up with a nice marketshare. It only has to be able to act quick.

So in short, I don't agree with you. At least for a short period of time a company has to be able to protect the investment in its innovation. Otherwise no one will ever be able to innovate.
 
nikaru said:
The ultimate true is that when the iPhone came out, everyone were blown aways and went back to the drawing board ending ultimately with the same core ideas about overall software experiance and product design. Thats the main problem here, not that a funcionality or two like slide to unclok, pinch to zoom, etc was directly copied.
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And that is absolute BS.

screen-shot-2012-07-26-at-3-11-00-pm.png


lgprada.jpg

both from 2006 and there and there were others , all going in the same direction .

Tech moved on plenty of companies were going that way and apple made the best phone of the bunch .


No matter how ignorant you are, you cant deny the above, especially if you pretend to have a wider look over the industry for the past decade.
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Then I doubt you have that.

Plenty of launchers for Windows mobile that gave simular experience and hardware was no different over the phones .

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flappah said:
It's a quite naive point of view actually. Of course one has to innovate but innovation cost money. For the sake of the argument lets assume a company A doesn't protect its IP but, whenever it gets copied, it tries to innovate around the copied IP. Company B just waits around until company A has innovated and produced another new shiny product, and just blatantly steals it. Now who does all the investing and who doesn't? In the end company A's businessmodel just doesn't hold up and it goes bankrupt. Company B though is the real winner. It has to invest 0$ and comes up with a nice marketshare. It only has to be able to act quick.

So in short, I don't agree with you. At least for a short period of time a company has to be able to protect the investment in its innovation. Otherwise no one will ever be able to innovate.
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Too simple an example, its more a b c d and e all have simular ideas, F G and H created new/better/smaller hardware

X Y and Z take all those ideas add some new and all create products that looking at same ideas and taking simular hardware resumbles each other .

Y is the most succesfull in sales and PR and tries to convince everyone else is copying them after they released their unique product.





Btw I do think samsung copied apple, just like apple copied others trying to have good and bad guys in such a situatio is simply stupid.
 
Dr McKay said:
Aaah the comparison photo where they felt the need to manipulate the dimensions of the phone to make it look closer to the iPhone. Just like they did with the S2 and galaxy tab
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The laws regarding Design patents rightly disregard variations of size and color.
Samsung's copies are blatant and should have lead to immediate banning of sales. I know that nobody cares, but my personal way of protest is to boycott all Samsung products; I owe this to myself.
 
k995 said:
And that is absolute BS.
Image

both from 2006 and there and there were others , all going in the same direction.
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You know what is really hilarious? They had to have the display switched off on that PRADA phone (and the other one) and use the same hand image through photoshoping clone tool to compare it with iPhone :) Btw, I had that device for a few months and it was probably the worst I have ever used. It had a touch interface (not multitouch) and it was absolutely dreadful to use it. It is really insult to the original iPhone to compare it with that PRADA phone.
 
k995 said:
And that is absolute BS.

Image

Image
both from 2006 and there and there were others , all going in the same direction .

Tech moved on plenty of companies were going that way and apple made the best phone of the bunch .



Then I doubt you have that.

Plenty of launchers for Windows mobile that gave simular experience and hardware was no different over the phones .

----------



Too simple an example, its more a b c d and e all have simular ideas, F G and H created new/better/smaller hardware

X Y and Z take all those ideas add some new and all create products that looking at same ideas and taking simular hardware resumbles each other .

Y is the most succesfull in sales and PR and tries to convince everyone else is copying them after they released their unique product.





Btw I do think samsung copied apple, just like apple copied others trying to have good and bad guys in such a situatio is simply stupid.
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You seriously think that the Prada phone has any similarity to the iPhone? Ive had both, and both are completly different phones. And comparing the early Windows Mobile to the iOS is a complete lack of objectivity. You seriously must be joking with me...
 
kas23 said:
I'm fine with widespread patent infringement between large corporations. It's how progress is made and only leads to more innovation in order to get ahead. If it wasn't for Android, we'd still be without MMS (a "dying" technology, remember that argument 5 years ago?) or copy/paste. In the end, the consumer is the one who benefits.
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No, it does not. Up to a certain point, patent infringement is the corruption of the business world. A small percentage of patent infringement/copying/using others' ideas is the oil that greases the engine. Samsung however doesn't use coping of IP to further its own IP. It is the parasite of the tech world. It waits until a successful idea comes along, copies and uses it to the fullest until no further $ can be made of it. And then it jumps ship to another idea.

In the end this is really bad for the consumer. If every company uses this tactic no company will be able to compete since real innovation takes real dollars. And if anyone tries to 'innovate' but the leeches of the world just steal it away, shareholders will shy away from the innovators because there's no profit to be made from an innovator. For that reason companies must have the right to protect its IP for a certain amount of time.
 
BvizioN said:
You know what is really hilarious? They had to have the display switched off on that PRADA phone (and the other one) and use the same hand image through photoshoping clone tool to compare it with iPhone :) Btw, I had that device for a few months and it was probably the worst I have ever used. It had a touch interface (not multitouch) and it was absolutely dreadful to use it. It is really insult to the original iPhone to compare it with that PRADA phone.
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You missed my point, that prada and the iphone resemble each other quite a bit, and they use simular hardware .

Both from companies who had no idea what the other was doing. Neither copied each other and still they came up with a very simular design.

Again its simple tech that moved on and companies using it not , as some like to pretend here, apple designing something unique hardware and software which other reverse engineered and copied .

----------
nikaru said:
You seriously think that the Prada phone has any similarity to the iPhone? Ive had both, and both are completly different phones. And comparing the early Windows Mobile to the iOS is a complete lack of objectivity. You seriously must be joking with me...
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/if-android-is-a-stolen-product-then-so-was-the-iphone/

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innova...was-pissed-about-android-copying-iphone.shtml

http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/26/samsung-says-apple-stole-iphone-design-from-sony/

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672799/5-ideas-apple-gleefully-stole-from-google-twitter-and-microsoft

http://mashable.com/2012/10/27/apple-stolen-ideas/

...

I never said iphone copied prada or both were the same, I said they resemble and nobody putting the 2 next to eacht other can deny that.

Even the design ideas behind the software were largely the same.

Apple did it a lot better thats certainly true but my point isnt that prada made a product just as good its that created something very simular in design, ideas and hardware completly independent from apple .
 
Konrad9 said:
I get that you guys need to play to your audience, but to claim any level of journalistic integrity and publish a story with that title is just outright pathetic.

Of course Samsung copies. So does Apple, so does Microsoft, so does Activision, and Ford, and Toyota, and Lenovo, and Costco, and Boeing, and every single other company in the world.

I am in no way defending Samsung's actions nor am I suggesting they are defensible, but that title is insulting to Samsung, it's insulting to Apple, and it's insulting to your readers and your fans.
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Just because you can't handle it doesnt mean its not true.
 
mesmurized said:
It's been said many times: innovate not litigate. The only way to truly win !!
Click to expand...

Yes, but innovation costs millions upon millions, and to then have that innovation slavishly copied just ain't right to any reasonable and thinking human being, not to mention supporting those shameless copycats is a very shortsighted policy.

If the innovators can't make money, or at least recoup their R&D investments, what incentive do they then have to continue research into, and development of, future great products? And who is going to advance the state-of-the-art then?

Whether they like it or not (and I strongly suspect most companies detest the spectre of a protracted IP lawsuit), if a company spends untold resources on product development and innovation, they are between the proverbial rock and a hard place, and have little choice but to protect their IP.

Those companies who are knowingly and willfully copying, do all of us a big disservice, by the sheer fact that millions of dollars that could have gone to product development, are now going to legal fees instead.
 
k995 said:
Too simple an example, its more a b c d and e all have simular ideas, F G and H created new/better/smaller hardware

X Y and Z take all those ideas add some new and all create products that looking at same ideas and taking simular hardware resumbles each other .

Y is the most succesfull in sales and PR and tries to convince everyone else is copying them after they released their unique product.

Btw I do think samsung copied apple, just like apple copied others trying to have good and bad guys in such a situatio is simply stupid.
Click to expand...

But in this case it is this simple. Samsung is the perfect idea-parasite of the world. I do agree that idea-leeching is quite a valid mechanism to stimulate/improve innovative ideas. In this case however Samsung doesn't innovate. It waits until a successful idea comes along and jumps ship. It did that with Sharp, it did it with Blackberry, with Nokia and now with Apple. At around '07, just when the original iPhone got introduced I had a Samsung phone, the i780. It was a perfect Blackberry clone. And possibly the worst telephone I've ever had btw. Now I was already dying to get my hands on an iPhone but they didn't sell that in my neck of the woods. So I had to wait. Had Samsung come up with an iPhone look-a-like I'd most certainly had bought one. But they didn't. A year later though, when the iPhone had proven successful, they switched and released iPhone look-a-likes like there was no other.

So in short, at some level stealing ideas can further progress and innovation. Parasitic behaviour however is not positive attribute of doing business however and should be dealt with.
 
SlCKB0Y said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

"It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done, and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. I mean Picasso had a saying, he said 'good artists copy, great artists steal', and we have, you know, always been shameless about stealing great ideas".

Steve Jobs - Hypocrite, 1996 interview.
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I've seen that regurgitated and miscontrued so many times, i just had to correct you.

That quote was taken from Picasso, an artist, and it wasn't meant to be taken literally.

Good artists copies a subject and represents it in their art, just like a photo whereas great artists steal the very essence of that subject and creates a masterpiece where it could very well be the subject itself.

hence Steve Job's quote was meant as a pursuit for perfection, to create masterpieces that "steals" the very essence of what they had envisioned, rather than merely creating a soul-less copy of it, this philosophy is reflected in Apple's products that focuses so much on the actual user experience rather than merely copying and having a specs and feature race.
 
nia820 said:
Bit dramatic aren't we? All cooperations at some point have to sell their soul. If you are worried about integrity then make you own mobile phone and os. I can assue every big tech company has done some shady stuff before.
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As far as I'm concerned, Samsung have no company values or ethos. They're only concerned with what piece of plastic crap they can release next and whose designs they can steal to make it.
 
macs4nw said:
Y

Those companies who are knowingly and willfully copying, do all of us a big disservice, by the sheer fact that millions of dollars that could have gone to product development, are now going to legal fees instead.
Click to expand...

Apple is the biggest culprit here by initiating all the lawsuits. Worse is Apple (in cahoot with kangaroo US patent office) allows it to hijack and patent other's innovations or prior art (slide-to-unlock copied from NeoNode, universal search from almost everyone, hyperlinking from text) and using those ill-gotten patents to sue and stifle its competitors. Why doesnt Apple use other patents that are more innovative to sue? Because it doesnt have any that was not copied from others or prior arts.
 
matjamca said:
How the hell are Samsung being allowed to get away with this? Something needs to be done to stop their incessant infringement of other companies valuable, innovative patents.
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You mean how apple and Microsoft stole the whole UI thing from IBM? Oh. THAT. Got it. :D
 
Too much drama in this thread. People are acting like samsung stole the cure for cancer. Copying from other companies isn't new. Apple isn't immune from being copycats either. Microsoft has done it. Chrysler has done it. Every big company has one time in time copied another company.

Stopped acting like you care about ethics people. If you really cared about ethics trash your macbook, your note 3, your windows desktop, your lg tv and your ps4.
 
kas23 said:
I'm fine with widespread patent infringement between large corporations. It's how progress is made and only leads to more innovation in order to get ahead. If it wasn't for Android, we'd still be without MMS (a "dying" technology, remember that argument 5 years ago?) or copy/paste. In the end, the consumer is the one who benefits.
Click to expand...

The law and the inventors of the patents disagree with you. If there was no patents or they were easy to infringe upon, no one would invent anything, as there would be no incentive to make anything as the competitor would reverse engineer your products and make cheap knock offs in no time.

What you say is true. But it's a double edged sword. With infringement you have people improving upon others tech. But if this infringement is too easy then people will not invent such tech in the first place.
 
flappah said:
But in this case it is this simple. Samsung is the perfect idea-parasite of the world. I do agree that idea-leeching is quite a valid mechanism to stimulate/improve innovative ideas. In this case however Samsung doesn't innovate. It waits until a successful idea comes along and jumps ship. It did that with Sharp, it did it with Blackberry, with Nokia and now with Apple. At around '07, just when the original iPhone got introduced I had a Samsung phone, the i780. It was a perfect Blackberry clone. And possibly the worst telephone I've ever had btw. Now I was already dying to get my hands on an iPhone but they didn't sell that in my neck of the woods. So I had to wait. Had Samsung come up with an iPhone look-a-like I'd most certainly had bought one. But they didn't. A year later though, when the iPhone had proven successful, they switched and released iPhone look-a-likes like there was no other.
Click to expand...

Thats simply not true

samsung_presentation_leak_101-580x435.jpg


Samsung was designing simular devices at the same time of apple .

have they put more focus on them and no doubt copied what was working in the iphone? Sure but samsung itself was already working on those .


Sorry but trying to made samsung into some sort of evil copy paste company is simply wrong. They have their own design/innovation .
 
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