| I´m personally quite conflicted in this case: Apple has a point that Samsung was copying them. Pure, simple, stupid copying, not using elements of it and turning it into something new and great. On the other side, the ways of protection with patents of tiny bits of it is silly and broken. They are trivial and regard the overall design and should not be allowed. Famously the Mac itself is based upon the work of Xerox Parc. To the credit of Apple and Steve Jobs they put in a lot of work, made many concepts useable and re-developed the mouse to actually make a consumer product out of it. For me the morale right or wrong is the following: * make it your own:
While heavily using concepts existing prior, you´ll re-combine them into something way better than the thing you copy: That´s ok for me, it has creative value. * copy:
You simply dumbly copy things line-by-line without even understanding the basic concepts of why something is great and throw it on the market at a lower prive: That´s wrong and ripping of the creative work of others.
Samsung to me falls quite clearly into the copy category. I doubt that they have a deep understanding of UX design and the subtleties what actually made the iPhone great and delighted the users. It´s essentially all in the mostly miss-understood Picasso phrase "Good artists copy, great artists steal.". Although the phrase confusing most people more than it helps. * moral compass of creatives It´s got the basics though that has guided the moral compass of creatives:
If you take inspiration from me and turn it into something mind-blowing, it´s ok. I´m flattered to be a part of it.
If you just plain copy my stuff to make money with it, it´s not ok. * Legal System The Jury system in the US is actually well suited deciding complex moral questions and too much fine print hinders more than it heps, which was evident in this case. To me, instead of a patent office there should be a central online register to archive jury-understandable photos and descriptions or ideally videos of the stuff you do simply to have a validated reference of when you thought of it. And then patent/IP Law may simply should read soething like this:
It is ok to base any creative work on the work of others as long as the result is something new and great in it´s own right. It´s not ok to copy the work of others without significantly improving it simply for making money. Done. Plain Language. Everything else, the moral right or wrong would be left to a Jury with guidance from a Judge. Which they basically did in the Apple case. All that patent BS aside, I guess they descided on the basic morale question and started the paperwork. (That guess is based on the time it took them to come to the verdict. When actually reading all the paperwork produced they would have been there years.) What´s your take? |