Apple vs Samsung

[Fabrizio Giudici]

I completely fail to understand why we (and the rest of the blogosphere)
have spent hundreds of emails discussing the Oracle vs Google suite, as
something that could menace Android and thus the freedom to innovate,
while almost nothing has been said about the Apple vs Samsung, which is
just a proxy for Apple vs Google. BTW, Oracle has lost (at least the first
round) challenging on technical stuff, I mean something related to the
*implementation* of a VM, Apple has won on "pinch to zoom", which is 100x
absurd. My only explanation is a prejudice against Oracle (added to a
previous prejudice against Sun), which seems much stronger than the
prejudice against Apple.


--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
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[Ricky Clarkson]

Oracle case: Can you write a library that provides compatibility with someone else's library?

Samsung case: Can you copy your competitor's handling of finger-to-screen events?

The Oracle case was clearly more relevant to programmers.

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 11:30:45 +0200, Ricky Clarkson
<ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Oracle case: Can you write a library that provides compatibility with
> someone else's library?
>
> Samsung case: Can you copy your competitor's handling of finger-to-screen
> events?
>
> The Oracle case was clearly more relevant to programmers.

Right, thus less relevant to the technology adoption in general.

[Jan Goyvaerts]

Since when are laws concerning IP making much sense ? Since when is the law a synonym for justice ? That must be a long time ago now...

Absurd yes - but it's Legal Absurdity. And therefore, if they don't comply to The Law, they're criminals. And will be punished. But if they comply, they'll pay $1bn. And will be punished too. Nice, this Legal Injustice.

But to be honest, didn't *we* elect those idiots voting those absurd laws ? So maybe the law is such a mess because we'd rather not use our brains at the election.

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[Jess Holle]

We elected the idiots, yes.

Of course, position statements on patent law haven't exactly been front-and-center in campaigns.

In general, US elections have more to do with

1. Appealing to enough special interests to get loads of money to inundate the masses with campaign ads
2. Forming an image (not substance) that connects with their base and a few independents
   
3. Repeating terse, almost meaningless 60-second blurbs ad nauseum

Deeper discussion is too time consuming.  It's also too dangerous to the candidate as they might actually talk about the real complexity of issues rather than simple, pat answers.  No pure party line fully holds water when one takes a deep look at any issue.  Instead, real solutions tend to be complicated, nuanced, and involve some mix of ideas from a variety of sources -- something no US political party will really tolerate today.

I think Mickey Edwards (author of 'The Parties Versus the People') might be on to something (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/edwards_08-21.html) urging:

• No closed, single-party primaries but rather a primary taking all candidates from all parties with the main election being a runoff between the winners
• Today's closed primaries produce extremist candidates from all parties
  
• Huge reductions of party power and party separation in Congress
• Right now if you don't tow the party line you get no power in Congress, party-purity reigns supreme
  

--
Jess Holle

On 8/25/2012 6:09 AM, Jan Goyvaerts wrote:

Since when are laws concerning IP making much sense ? Since when is the law a synonym for justice ? That must be a long time ago now...

Absurd yes - but it's Legal Absurdity. And therefore, if they don't comply to The Law, they're criminals. And will be punished. But if they comply, they'll pay $1bn. And will be punished too. Nice, this Legal Injustice.

But to be honest, didn't *we* elect those idiots voting those absurd laws ? So maybe the law is such a mess because we'd rather not use our brains at the election.

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Ricky Clarkson <ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oracle case: Can you write a library that provides compatibility with someone else's library?

Samsung case: Can you copy your competitor's handling of finger-to-screen events?

The Oracle case was clearly more relevant to programmers.

On Aug 25, 2012 4:07 AM, "Fabrizio Giudici" <Fabrizio...@tidalwave.it> wrote:

I completely fail to understand why we (and the rest of the blogosphere) have spent hundreds of emails discussing the Oracle vs Google suite, as something that could menace Android and thus the freedom to innovate, while almost nothing has been said about the Apple vs Samsung, which is just a proxy for Apple vs Google. BTW, Oracle has lost (at least the first round) challenging on technical stuff, I mean something related to the *implementation* of a VM, Apple has won on "pinch to zoom", which is 100x absurd. My only explanation is a prejudice against Oracle (added to a previous prejudice against Sun), which seems much stronger than the prejudice against Apple.


--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
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[Jess Holle]

Apple's overall behavior is entirely relevant to programmer's, though.

Their walled-garden business model is really troubling -- as profitable as it has been for some.

• There is no alternative access to this market
• Apple has a monopoly on this access and you play by their rules and conditions or don't access this market at all.
• Apple takes a substantial cut.
• There's no competition on access to this market, so no market forces keeping this in balance.
• Worst of all Apple decides who can access this market -- does so after the product has been developed and can remove this access at any time for no reason.
  

To me this is a really troubling business model for application developers.  Sure, it can be profitable -- yet you're reduced to being sharecroppers surviving at Apple's whim and on Apple's terms.

Given that Apple is the most valuable US company ever (though not in inflation adjusted dollars), I think we're looking at the new evil empire.  Back to Java, Apple has used its power to say "no" to Java on many of their devices, whereas even Microsoft didn't do anything to prevent Java from working on most of their devices or to close off the ability to sell Java-based applications for them.

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[Andreas Petersson]

I just entered the following route to maps:

http://goo.gl/maps/CJ8zb
It is a 13 minute drive for one Party.
The other is 9000 KM away.

What should you expect from a jury of people living there.
If Samsung was a person it would be a very angry person. In my opinion
they got screwed for a trivial thing.
I really hope this does not carry over to europe, because right now the
patent laws for software developers are currently quite ok.

[phil swenson]

I was in Aspen Colorado a few weeks ago and noticed the brick pavers on the ground had  "patent 1901" on them.  You know the little paper roller at the bottom of a coat hanger?  Patented.

Perhaps software patents aren't any more absurd than they ever have been.

Perhaps the whole patent system is a mess?  I'm not sure….

To me at the very least, all these software patents should have a lot shorter durations. 7 years maybe?

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:02:44 +0200, phil swenson <phil.s...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I was in Aspen Colorado a few weeks ago and noticed the brick pavers on
> the
> ground had "patent 1901" on them. You know the little paper roller at
> the
> bottom of a coat hanger? Patented.
>
> Perhaps software patents aren't any more absurd than they ever have been.
>
> Perhaps the whole patent system is a mess? I'm not sure….
>
> To me at the very least, all these software patents should have a lot
> shorter durations. 7 years maybe?

The idea of patenting gestures seems illogical to me in any way, but I can
accept the timing thing - I've said already in the past - if Apple was
granted a patent for a couple of years for pinch and such it would have
been ok.

[Oscar Hsieh]

Calm down.  Current patent law is originated from Patent Act of 1793 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

That when any person or persons, being a citizen or citizens of the United States, shall allege that he or they have invented any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement on any art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, not known or used before the application, and shall present a petition to the Secretary of State,

http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/lipa/patents/Patent_Act_of_1793.pdf

The Act is written by Thomas Jefferson himself, hardly an idiot.

The problem here is with Software Patent, which tent to evolve much faster than other.

Also large part of the lawsuit is Trade Dress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress), which is about the look and feel of the device.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:31:15 +0200, Oscar Hsieh <zen...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Calm down. Current patent law is originated from Patent Act of 1793
>
> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
> States of America in Congress assembled,
>
> That when any person or persons, being a citizen or citizens of the
> United
> States, shall allege that he or they have invented any new and useful
> art,
> machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful
> improvement on any art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter,
> not
> known or used before the application, and shall present a petition to the
> Secretary of State,

The problem is how "pinch to zoom" can be treated as "art" (well, it's not
a machine, a manufacture nor a composition of matter).

> Also large part of the lawsuit is Trade Dress (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress), which is about the look and
> feel
> of the device.

Which is the one I wouldn't criticize (I reckon that original look & feel
shouldn't be copied), but if I'm not wrong Apple lost on this.

[bgoggin]

I think the reverse it true. At least in America, people have a visceral distaste for parties and really want to believe they are the source of all political evil, but I believe that the erosion of parties since the 70's has led to the rise of extremist candidates. Party bosses used to select more moderate candidates that could appeal across party lines in the general elections. As candidate selection has become more democratic, extremists have begun to win. I think this also goes too far with the pox on both their houses. I think one party in particular has taken the lead in reducing issues to misleading slogans, leading to great electoral success. That's not a problem of the parties, it's lazy voters.

Sorry to veer so far from Java, but I thought a counterpoint was needed.

[Robert Casto]

Former congressman Mickey Edwards has said this very well. It is a problem with the parties but us lazy voters need to do something about it.

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVwq_uNAYHA

BOOK: http://www.amazon.com/The-Parties-Versus-People-Republicans/dp/0300184565

TRANSCRIPT: http://www.ncoc.net/The-Parties-Versus-the-People 

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www.robertcasto.com
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www.lakotaeastbands.org

[Casper Bang]

But what can you do? As with so many other things, it seems very black and white in the US, where there are two parties to vote for which means it is going to be drawn out the extremes rather than anything moderate in between. To stay just a little on topic, it could remind a bit of Java vs. NET where everything else is reserved to non-influential grass-roots.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 22:27:39 +0200, bgoggin <wjgo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think the reverse it true. At least in America, people have a visceral
> distaste for parties and really want to believe they are the source of
> all
> political evil, but I believe that the erosion of parties since the 70's
> has led to the rise of extremist candidates. Party bosses used to select
> more moderate candidates that could appeal across party lines in the
> general elections. As candidate selection has become more democratic,
> extremists have begun to win. I think this also goes too far with the pox
> on both their houses. I think one party in particular has taken the lead
> in
> reducing issues to misleading slogans, leading to great electoral
> success.
> That's not a problem of the parties, it's lazy voters.
>
> Sorry to veer so far from Java, but I thought a counterpoint was needed.

I think that there's an increasing distaste for parties in all
democracies. This happens in my country and I see it happening, more or
less, in other european countries. Trying to keep the argument bound to
the topic, it's a problem of problem solving. We elect people to solve
problems that we *can't* solve ourselves. I mean, we could have an opinion
(hopefully an informed one) about problems, but it's not that we'd able to
solve them should we be nominated Prime Minister or President (also
because we can't have an opinion on *all* problems). Politicians are
supposed (should be) people with specific skills and a vision about
solving problems, and we elect them choosing a direction (left or right,
just to simplify). The process that leads to the formation of politicians
should provide skilled people and, looking at the higher profiles, people
with the leadership profile. Something has got broken, because I'm not
seeing politicians with a vision or leadership neither in the USA nor in
Europe for years. For what concerns patents, frankly I can't see it as an
argument that passionate people. I think that less than 1% of people have
an informed opinion on the topic or understand the impact (especially in a
crisis period, where priorities are different). What you'd need is a bunch
of politicians with a vision about the patent problem. Without it, big
corporates and the lobby of lawyers are facilitated in keeping things as
they are. Probably the solution will come at a certain point because it
will lead to such a high damage of the ecosystem that corporates are
forced to change their mind. I think it could happen, but not in the close
future.

[Jan Goyvaerts]

But what can you do ? Well, look to the news for some time and get an idea of what's happening in the country. And don't use the lame excuse you don't because you don't like politics. Nobody does. But if you want to keep on living in a democracy...

What is that quote again ? All evil needs is good people doing nothing. Something along these lines anyway.

In Bloody Belgium there are more than two parties. Way more. But without any clear majority. Which means the government is sometimes composed of four or five parties. You can imagine how constructive this is. Not to mention they're also fighting each other because they speak a different language. Even if they share the same idea's. Voting luckily is compulsory - but you hear people say "I'll vote extreme right to teach the government a lesson". *sigh* 

At the last elections we broke the world record of government formation: 541 days. But nobody cared. So, really in my country, I think we deserve what we get.

I just see somebody actually dedicated a wikipedia page to it. AND we're in the Guinness book of records.

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[Reinier Zwitserloot]

Actually, while samsung stock is way down, this is fantastic news for samsung.

* They can easily appeal here; the jury reached a verdict in 3 days. The jury instruction manual was something like 700 pages, so the judge is going to accept an appeal in about 5 seconds. The fact that various jury members made overtures that they see this as a 'slap on the wrist' for samsung, something the jury instruction manual specifically says is NOT their job (their job was to give fair compensation to apple, NOT to send a message to samsung). This keeps this farce going, and that's good for samsung, not just because they might get their billion back, but because...

* We now have a court-ordered claim that samsung devices are carbon copies of apple devices. Geez. That's quite a bold claim, and now _the courts_ are saying that this bold claim is, in fact, true. That's a marketer's wet dream, isn't it? A court-stamped and validated claim that your stuff is just as good as the top dog in the market?

* It's just a billion. I know, we civilized look at that and shake our head in disdain, but, it's like a week's worth of revenue for samsung. Contrast this to Microsoft, who, in a bid to stay relevant and try and make some leeway in the mobile phone business, bought skype for 8 billion. Let's put it this way: If I approached samsung 4 years ago with this deal: You can copy whatever you want from the device that is going to become the cornerstone of an entirely new market, and in doing so you'll actually outsell them, and all it'll cost you is the meager sum of a billion bucks. Oh, and, by the way, included in that price is a highly publicized court case which will highlight again and again how awesome your devices are.

* Their flagship phones that they are _CURRENTLY_ selling (notable the S3) are _NOT_ even in the list, meaning, if any motion to ban sales of their phones shows up for the US market, samsung won't even care much.

Now, is patent law as it applies to software and design a farce? You bet. The right answer is to abolish them entirely (not because this is the clearly most fair way to do it, but because the issue is clearly too complex for a law to handle, and abolishing them entirely leads to less economic damage to the IT sector than any other proposal I've ever heard about. Including Joe's various plans to try to make companies pay for getting their patent vetted for being actually novel. At the end of the day, taxing a law system to define novelty is a ridiculous proposal, think about it. Why should the government even be in the business of determining novelty? Why would anyone think that's actually going to work?). Would samsung be even happier if there was no patent case? I doubt they care. They got about a billion bucks worth of good press out of this I'd say. They can write this off as an expensive but effective marketing campaign if they want.

In the mean time, apple is focused on entirely the wrong thing (please, Team Apple: You need to be focusing on making cool devices and software, and crowing victory when said software/hardware combos end up being awesome in practice. The victory dance is for the home-run that are the 11" and 13" macbook airs, for example. Not for a legal verdict that is in the end quite meaningless, and a legally mandated cash windfall. I've been using an S3 for a month or 3 now and from my perspective this thing is as good as an iPhone. A little better, even, because google is still much better at the cloud thing compared to apple.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

Good analysis, Reinier.

While this is clearly a strong legal win for Apple, the more I think about it and the more its pyrrhic aspect strikes me.

Like you say, it won't make a little bit of difference from a money stand point for either parties.

The consequences for Samsung from a product stand point are probably going to be mild since they have already adjusted their line of devices to avoid the Apple patents, so they are most likely in the clear from now on (which won't stop more lawsuits from popping up, for sure).

The positive advertising effect for Samsung cannot be underestimated, though, take a look at this post to get a sense of what this verdict has enabled. This is just the beginning. Like you say, this verdict has completely validated Samsung as a valid and cheaper substitute to iPhones.

Of course, none of this changes anything to the fact that during all this time, Android has continued to increase its lead over the iPhone in market share and the experts seem to agree with my prediction last year that the market will stabilize around 70% for Android and 20% for the iPhone.

No doubt motivated by this verdict, Google has finally decided to switch to the offensive and sue Apple directly. What a strange world it would be if in just a few months from now, both iPhones and Samsung devices are banned from the US because of the lawsuit fallouts, uh?

Will Apple sue Google in response? This would require Apple to give a credible estimate for the amount of money that Google is making with Android, and with the operating system being free, this might be a tough case to make.

Finally, the trial has forced Apple to reveal more about its internal processes than it would probably have ever dreaded to reveal in a century and I can't imagine that Apple executives don't have a bitter taste in their mouth about that.

-- 

Cédric

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[Reinier Zwitserloot]

Both android and iPhone devices banned for sale in the US? That'd be hilarious :)

NB: Lighthearted banter enabled by, you know, not living there. I can imagine this is not quite as hilarious if you do.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 08:56:26 +0200, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> No doubt motivated by this verdict, Google has finally decided to switch
> to
> the offensive and sue Apple

> directly<http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/21/and-now-google-sues-apple/>.

> What a strange world it would be if in just a few months from now, both
> iPhones and Samsung devices are banned from the US because of the lawsuit
> fallouts, uh?

Somebody wrote that the thing could give an advantage to Microsoft, but I
seriously consider this sentence a funny paradox. Anyway that kind of
stall could be the desired outcome that I was talking in my previous
email, the only practical hope for the patenting system to be redesigned.

[Ricky Clarkson]

Perhaps I'm biased by being in a country where a general term for smartphone is BlackBerry (like Hoover for vacuum cleaner in the UK or duck tape for heavy duty Sellotape (hah!) in the US) but I think people would rather return to BlackBerrys than trust Microsoft not to do another Vista.

Practically it won't happen.  There's no gain to the US economy or its people if iPhone and/or Android devices disappear.  Even Microsoft would likely make less money than they do today. [Deleted section about offended latte-drinking goatee-bearded MacBook Air users, weasel words detected]

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[Kevin Wright]

I cured my other half of this illness by repeatedly asking her to Miele the floor, AEG the chicken, Amstrad tonight's episode of Dr. Who and Colgate her teeth.

Now we vacuum the floor, use sticky tape and glue sticks, and photocopy documents.  I feel it's important to not indoctrinate the kids in rampantly consumerist brand awareness, they'll get more than enough of that from peer pressure, if not from adverts on telly and in the school toilets.

It's not so bad when folks make money selling adverts that target adults, but when we start out training 1 year olds that "Hoover" is a verb - then something has gone badly wrong.

[Kevin Wright]

Finally...  Someone managed to capture my own opinion of the whole patent mess in a simple cartoon.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2718#comic

Fairly sure I'm not alone here in feeling that pretty much puts it into perspective.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:24:09 +0200, Kevin Wright
<kev.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Finally... Someone managed to capture my own opinion of the whole patent
> mess in a simple cartoon.
>
> http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2718#comic
>
>
> Fairly sure I'm not alone here in feeling that pretty much puts it into
> perspective.
>

The comic strip is fun, but it's a perfect way to greatly misrepresent the
problem, so to prevent people from understanding it, and in the end to
find a solution.