http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and ... us-1056508

Couldn't we just whack a few lawyers?

Good luck Apple.

Seems to me Apple only want to stop the competition

Reminds me of another IT company

Personally, I think Samsung's strategy is flawed anyway. As long as they make phones that look iPhones and Apple keep coming after them, it's adding to the cost of Samsung doing business for I'm not sure what gain. Samsung should be looking at creating their own brand, not continually being accused of being (whether true or not) a copycat merchant. Apple seem happy to let say Sony and RIM get on with it, because their phones don't look like iPhones but you can spot a BB or Experia if someone's holding them in the street. It's like.. car manufacturers have started to make parts their whole range of cars distinctively shaped, so in the street people can tell at a glance that a given car is one of theirs. IMO, Samsung should get into that game, rather than having to play continuous legal whack-a-mole with Apple. Regardless of the result of the law suits, it's costing Samsung as much to defend them as Apple to start them and Apple has more money than Samsung to throw at it (and continues to make more money than Samsung's mobile operation, so they're not going to run out of money first). In a war of attrition I don't see how Samsung can win.

As the saying goes, sometimes the best way to win the war is not to fight the battle.

Should Apple be so litigatious? Probably not. Should Samsung start trying to build their own brand identity? Absolutely. In the long term Samsung has much more to gain from that than trying to ape Apple and paying a continuous cost to do so. It's not as if designing a distinctive phone casing is beyond them.

Jon

How does the Galaxy Nexus even resemble the iPhone? It doesn't have any physical buttons on the front for a start, not to mention being much larger & a different colour.

It doesn't tbh

It's the "slide to unlock" function the Apple's going after.

Which has masses of prior art, besides in my mind being a case of "patenting the bleedin' obvious". Seriously - how many simple gestures are there you could use, and what is the simplest and most obvious?

Apple patent "drawing a line". FFS it's absurd. It's the patent lawyers who should be on the firing line here, and I'll volunteer to pull the bloody trigger.

Given that there is prior art in the form of the neonode n1m, I'm not convinced the patent should have been given and definitely should be invalidated.

Look up Marconi and his initial radio patents. He did much the same thing.

All fair enough (I particularly agree with JJ) but the fact is the patent is there. Everyone knows this. Default Android doesn't infringe on it, either with the basic unlock or the 'draw a pattern' unlock - I assume so anyway otherwise Apple would be suing everyone who makes an Android phone and they aren't, although they'll get there eventually the way they are going. So why do Samsung choose to do something in their interface which leaves them open to litigation? As I say, it's not as if it's hard to come up with a way to unlock a phone that doesn't infringe on the patent. I'm sure we could come up with half a dozen. So why did Samsung choose one that did? Either they decided to do what Apple have patent over and just assumed Apple wouldn't care - which I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together could have told them was a stupid idea - or they did it deliberately to provoke the lawsuit.

So which is it? Are Samsung stupid, or do they like poking snakes with sticks? I can't fathom it. I can only assume they're doing it deliberately, but I'm not sure what it gains them. The vast majority of people probably don't care enough to know it's happening and those that do care enough to know have probably already decided which of the two campfires (Android/iOS) they plan on sitting by. It seems an utter waste of effort and money. Both of which it strikes me Apple has more of to burn than Samsung...

And at the same time, Samsung supply components to Apple.

This seems to be the American way of doing business. It's not letting the marketplace decide what products fail and which flourish (which is a more European way of doing it), the American way is to litigate your opponents into the ground. The fact that their patent system seems to allow this shows how idiotic the system has become.

Samsung would have looked at the patent and their lawyers would have come to the conclusion that it's one that can be successfully challenged. The American patent system iirc is one where you have to wait until the patent is granted before you can challenge it, whilst the European system you can challenge before it's finally granted this in the American system you get so many parents given that dont stand up. It's a system that demands you have deep legal pockets but to the winner comes the rewards.

Absolutely, which makes Samsung's decisions all the more puzzling - Apple have now apparently moved a lot of their components away from Samsung, unsurprisingly enough - talk about biting the hand that feeds you!!


Would other potential component partners be so willing to work with Samsung now they know the kid of tactics they operate? I doubt it.

Or why would component supplier want to work with Apple knowing if they start to compete in a common area they will then try and sue you into oblivion and move to another supplier? Samsung can survive without Apple.

I don't think it's the competing in a common area that's the problem here, I'm sure Apple wouldn't have objected as strongly if Samsung had not copied certain parts of the software/hardware (for which they hold patents, rightly or wrongly).

Samsung must surely have signed a contract as part of their agreement to being a supplier, and Apple will surely have had disclaimers in place to cover this type of thing occurring. It just seems an odd decision to take, why put a business partnership at risk when they could have avoided it by making their product different enough? I guess they did their sums and figured that they could earn more money by selling their own iPhone clone, even if that meant losing a customer as a result.

I should say that I don't agree with all these patent actions, I think if you make your product good enough the consumers will decide for themselves. But once these things are in the hands of lawyers, it just escalates into a farce. It makes me angry when I think of all this money being wasted on legal fees, just think of the good that could do.