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.
