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Is it just me, or is this Judge Koh a few sandwiches sort of picnic? Blocking the sale of one of the few successful competitors to Apple's iPad hardly seems to be in the interests of consumers. At most Samsung should have to pay Apple some reasonable fee to license that D'889 patent.

On the other had, Judge Posner's recent Apple v. Motorola decision shows good sense. Here's how Forbes reported it: "Posner complained that Apple's attempt to get an injunction restricting the sale of Motorola phones would have 'catastrophic effects' on the mobile device market and consumers. He further criticized Motorola for trying to use a standards-essential patent to get an injunction against Apple."

Thousands of patents are involved in any complex device. One of them, even if valid, shouldn't be allowed to keep a product off the market, particularly a market currently so heavily dominated by one company, Apple. We need competition in the marketplace not in courtrooms.

Judge Koh has already gotten in trouble with an appeals court with a similarly lop-sided decision. This may happen again. The judge simply doesn't understand patent law and stubbornly refuses to learn.

Personally, I suspect with historians write of what happened to the high-tech industry in this era, their central theme will be these recent moves to substitute patent litigation for innovation.

Inkling, on 27 June 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

It is interesting that in some recent studies it's been shown that most companies spend more money litigating patents than they spend on the research which led to the patent. The only places this isn't generally true is some areas of chemistry.

Inkling, on 27 June 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

Do you even recognize that you are basically arguing that a company which has patented an innovation should not have the right to choose how they profit from that innovation? Apple does not wish to license their patent... they wish to sell products based upon it. Your argument would have any patent holding innovator (in this case, Apple) being required to license their patents to all comers, and would destroy the innovator's ability to differentiate their own products through innovative design.

Sounds to me like you are the one who doesn't understand patent law.

Inkling, on 27 June 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

This would be on the grounds that Apple has in interest in licensing the patent to Samsung which I highly doubt it would. Samsung just needs to make their own devices look like their own devices. I think competition is great, but if consumers can't tell the difference, it's wrong.

zarmanto, on 27 June 2012 - 07:35 AM, said:

The problem is that with advances in technology, the average product has a huge number of potentially patentable aspects/components. If sales injunctions are taken as the standard relief, then innovation becomes very, very hard. This is because it is not at all obvious exactly what patents might be infringed upon by a product (patents take years to be granted, which can be several iterative cycles in the tech world and often the same thing is covered by multiple conflicting patents). Allowing companies to hold up innovation for decades was less of an issue in the past (and technologies were simpler with less patent coverage), but in todays world decades are forever in terms of technology.

So while the patent law is what it is, the patent office doesn't seem to be capable of fully vetting patents. They have largely ceded this responsibility to the legal system. That being the case, the legal system has to do something beyond simply blocking one product or another in every case. It gets very murky because the system is not working the way it was intended and even as intended wouldn't fit today's environment.

This post has been edited by Stewsburntmonkey: 27 June 2012 - 07:53 AM

Stewsburntmonkey, on 27 June 2012 - 07:47 AM, said:

I won't argue with you on that... indeed the patent system is probably going to have to undergo a significant overhaul in our lifetime in order to become relevant going into the future... but that isn't what the original poster said. He was stating that Judge Koh doesn't understand patent law. I would speculate that -- in its present form -- she probably understands patent law at least as well as your average patent examiner, if not better.

"It's very important that Apple not become the developer to the world."

- Tim Cook, 4/24/2012, on FYQ2 earnings call

Inkling, on 27 June 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

The problem is that patent holders have the right because they designed what is referred to in the patent to license it or not to license it. If what you wanted to happen was true there would be no patents at all and anyone who wanted could use anyone else's intellectual property. Thats hardly fair to those who spent billions designing a product and thousands of man hours getting a product like the iPad to market, to then see a competitor copy that product and sell it without any of the cost of designing it.

What you propose is horrible and companies would be out of business.

Also the patent your referring to is a design patent. Apple patented the design or the look of the iPad, why would they license there design or look of the ipad to samsung. Samsung should build there own damn pad without copying and that is the reason for this lawsuit. Microsoft just came out with there surface design that looks nothing like an iPad and so have many others. Also this patent is a private patent meaning not a standards based patent so apple does not have to license it if they dont want to.

Also this is not about consumers its about one company copying an others design. You can sure bet that if samsung came out with a design and apple copied it samsung would sue in a heartbeat.

Apple's only way to differentiate themselves from others in the same market is to patent there designs, so that when you the consumer looks at an apple product you know because of the way it looks that its built by apple.
With the galaxy pad you could hold an iPad up and a galaxy and really cant tell the difference. Judge Koe and even samsungs own lawyers could not tell the difference when they were shown and iPad and a galaxy tab in court side by side. Lol.

This post has been edited by Diesel50: 27 June 2012 - 04:32 PM

FlopTech, on 27 June 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

Well Put

This is the entire point I was making in my post lol. Tim Cook is spot on.

This post has been edited by Diesel50: 27 June 2012 - 04:35 PM