[Volpe]

Did they turn it into this minefield? Or do they just play the 'evil' game better than others.

I'm don't like to split things into 'Good' and 'Evil' (as they are inherently subjective). But the patent system seems to be the problem here, and until it is removed one has to work within it.

[talmand]

They are not the only ones turning it into a minefield, but they most definitely participate in making it a deadly game to play. If they were using their patents in a defensive way I would have a different attitude but it seems to me they are rather aggressive in using their patents to go after people they feel are a threat.

[halostatue]

Yet they're also stepping up to the plate to defend their platform developers in the Lodsys dispute.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/court-allows-apple-to-i...

As with most of life, this is not the black-and-white situation that people make it out to be.

Samsung clearly did everything they could to make a bunch of their products seem like Apple products and increase customer confusion.

Apple clearly got patents for things which seem to be fairly obvious or which under better analysis would not have been granted. It's also easy for me to say that something is obvious…five years after it became widely available to the public, and seven years after most of us first saw similar stuff shown in a TED video.

Gooterola (Moogle?) clearly is abusing FRAND obligations on some of their standards-essential patents. As far as I can tell, Samsung is trying to abuse some of their FRAND standards-essential patents, too.

    Mercutio:
    I am hurt.
    A plague a' both your houses! I am sped.
    Is he gone and hath nothing?

[icarus127]

  Gooterola (Moogle?) clearly is abusing FRAND obligations 
  on some of their standards-essential patents. As far as I 
  can tell, Samsung is trying to abuse some of their FRAND   
  standards-essential patents, too.

This is probably true but looks a lot like of case of "when someone attacks you reach for whatever is at hand". Samsung and Motorola clearly believe that those patents are the best thing they've got to counter Apple's attacks. Unfortunately it seems that because those patents are standards-essential Apple's absurd patents have more legal power than patents that are actually interesting.

[halostatue]

…except that when you introduce a patent that's standards-essential to a standards body for use in that standard, you are making a legally binding pledge not to weaponize that patent and to make it available to everyone under the same Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory rules.

Apple hasn't done that, except with some of the patents it has that are part of H.264.

[talmand]

The Lodsys dispute has nothing in common with what I was saying. Lodsys overstepped by trying to sue individuals for patent infringement when they were covered because Apple already licensed said patent for their platform.

Plus the fact this isn't Apple using a patent defensively, or in fact has anything to do with Apple having patents in the first place, they are defending developers that are part of their ability to generate profit. You can say they are stepping up to do the right thing by getting involved but it doesn't excuse their antics with being aggressive with their patent lawsuits.

I agree that Samsung copied aspects of Apple products, my dispute is whether there was anything technically wrong with them doing so. I say in many cases it was not, regardless of whatever patents they may have.

I like Moogle better but I'm betting Rowling would sue since it's so close to her creation.

[halostatue]

I wouldn't have posted what I did if I agreed with your assertion that there's nothing in common. I also disagree with your assertion that what Apple's doing with patents is 'antics', but I know what you are saying.

This whole patent mess is, as I was trying to imply, complicated. A lot of it is up for interpretation. As I understand it, a lot of people are focusing on two things supposedly from the Apple-Samsung trial result: the obviousness of pinch-to-zoom and the trade dress stuff.

Regarding pinch-to-zoom being 'obvious', Steve Wildstrom[1] covered this nicely two days ago—it wasn't asserted at the trial. Nilay Patel also pointed out[2] that Apple doesn't have an exclusive patent for all pinch-to-zoom implementations, just theirs. So, the patents (ignoring, for the moment, the trade dress patents) that Apple asserted are in question. Apparently, there are alternative implementations in Android, but for whatever reason, Samsung decided to implement something else that was ultimately found to infringe.

On the trade dress…as I understand it, we don't allow copyright on object shapes, nor can you trademark it, so to allow for distinctive object appearance the concept of trade dress patents was created. Agree or disagree with them, these exist. There are some fairly interesting tablet and phone designs out there, and Samsung, for at least a couple of versions of tablets and phones, fairly slavishly copied Apple's appearance. They deserved to be slapped for this. There's a term for this: knockoff. Most people who recognize a knockoff deride it—yet Samsung was praised.

I am…slightly more in favour of trade dress patents than I am in favour of software patents in general (my general opinion on those is that they're bad or that at a very minimum they require both a deeper prior art search and/or a stricter test for non-obviousness).

Getting back to the whole "it's complicated" bit…Apple isn't an innocent here, and I think they are taking a risk with this sort of litigation that simply kicking competitors' asses in the marketplace (like taking the majority of the profit out of the smartphone market…) would do just as well. I think Apple's risk is brand tarnishment (they really don't want to be seen as the 400 kilo gorilla) and increased governmental oversight (look at what happened to Microsoft).

[1] http://techpinions.com/pinch-to-zoom-and-rounded-rectangles-... [2] http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/30/3279628/apple-pinch-to-zoo...

[Osiris]

I cannot believe that anyone that bought a Samsung phone thought they were getting an iPhone. As much as they may have tried to make it look or act similar, it's still not an iPhone. Now if they made a phone like those Chinese knock-off iPhones that literally looks exactly like the iPhone, then sure, they violated trademark or something. But the whole idea that Apple lost sales to Samsung because people were confused an thought they were buying an iPhone is crazy.

[halostatue]

It's not crazy. Just because you can't believe it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

People will think that Samsung is just selling a version of Apple's iPhone. After all, that's what a lot of phone manufacturers do. HTC sells a version of an Android phone. Samsung sells…you get the idea.

People not steeped in geekery tend not to understand manufacturer licensing.