Saturday, September 15, 2012

Patent War



It seems like a great week for Apple. First, on September 12, 2012, Apple for the first time released their new iPhone 5’s design in San Francisco.  This could be one of the big news for many people.  PopSci estimates that it will takeabout 21 days for Apple to sell 10 million iPhone 5.  Moreover, after Apply won its battle against Samsung and Google on their new tablet’s bounce-back list feature, many Google products face challenges.  For example, GoogleMotorola is forced to recall android tablets in Germany.  However, on the other side of the world, Japan could not care less about Apple’s patent violating claim, andrejected its lawsuit gives one point for Samsung and Google’s android.  The battle between Apple and Samsung has been going on for a long time.  Apple first suited Samsung on the Smartphone design.  Then, Samsung counter suit Apple for 3G-network feature.  There are now over 30 lawsuits in 10 different countries.  Two biggest competitors in the Smartphone and tablet industry both want to dominate the market and a share of each other’s profits.  
As the technology improve rapidly, most technology appellations build on other technology.  There are going to be more and more patents filed for technology that may be apply to so many applications in our daily life.  From an engineer point of view, to have all technology available to use is the most efficiency way of developing technology.  Most productive researches and developments are built on other existing intellectual knowledge and applications.  From a business point of view, intellectual property is equally valuable as physical property.  Patents are designed to protect one’s intellectual properties through legal system.  If others want to use the property, they have to pay to the owner.  It worked great for many years.  However, as electronic applications get more complex and use more technologies over so many different fields, it becomes hard to develop an original product without using similar technologies, or we should say that it is harder and harder to even develop something that can be called original.  Therefore, the patent war begins.  After the long battle of lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, patent is more looking like a tool for big technology companies to eliminate competitors.  Apple and Samsung, who used to be business partners, now fight over patents not only for millions of dollars, but also for the Smartphone market share around the world.

2 comments:

  1. Many people see Apple as "the bully" of the technology world: taking every opportunity to sue their competitors. Maybe this is the mentality that Steve Jobs created at Apple or if it is purely a way to maintain the competitive advantage in the technology industries. For example, when you type in "Apple sues" into a Google search bar, one of the top recommended searched is "Apple sues everyone." So this is obviously a shared belief throughout the world. Do you feel Apple is wrongfully taking advantage of their competitors or they are purely just trying to profit as much as possible?
    Also, it is rumored that Samsung paid Apple $1.05 billion in nickels after their lawsuit. Fun fact!

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    1. I don't think Apple is wrongfully taking advantage of their competitors, because they are using patents for what it designed to do. I think it is the patent laws that need to be reformed due to the fast changes in technology. As I mentioned, applications are getting more and more complicated. If a company need to check or file patents for every single technology that it used in an application, like say smartphones. It would be really inefficient. If the company cannot use some really basic technology because of patent, like the swipe function on smartphone, they have to ether come up with some other ideas, when the best idea is already out there. It would be a waste of time and resources, which is not good for both economic and technical development. Therefore, I think patent office need to reform its law to adjust what can be file for patent and what can't .

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