[ThePherocity]

Apple is a company compelled to be greedy. It's actually the law for Apple to make as much money as possible given any legal and ethical way it can. Suing another giant tech company over legitimate patents is ethical. The system is designed so that a trial determines if the patents are legit. This is what happened. If you don't like that, then fix the fucking patent system. Quit whining that your favourite tech company lost.

Companies are not teams, they are simply the manufacturer of a product that you either bought or chose not to buy. If you don't like the way a company is legally and ethically running it's business, then change the law. Don't boycott the company who is succeeding best at working within the framework provided.

[mistercow]

>It's actually the law for Apple to make as much money as possible given any legal and ethical way it can.

A corporation has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of its shareholders, but I think this fact is greatly overstated. Since "best interest" is such a flexible and uncertain concept, most cases where people bring this up are not really the "legal imperative to be assholes" that they believe. By suing Samsung over this, Apple has risked triggering an all out patent war between the major players in the mobile market which could end up costing them tremendous legal fees and may wound them grievously if any of the ensuing lawsuits were not decided in their favor. Suppose Apple had not taken to Samsung to court over these patents. Does it really seem plausible to you that the shareholders would sue Apple's board of directors, and win?

But assuming that corporations are legally expected to perfectly predict the future and optimize for their shareholders' interests, a boycott would still be warranted. If we let companies see that acting like a bully will hurt their bottom line, then those companies will be legally compelled to act in the interest of their shareholders by not being bullies.

[gregsq]

Speaking from the UK perspective, the false idea that maximisation of profit is inferred in any way by corporation law is sometimes more easily seen when examining the case of 'Private' companies. These are companies still limited by shares, or stocks, but where the director, the single shareholder, and the employee are all one and the same person.

It can be a valuable example because it is easy to show how a director making decisions that maximise benefits to the shareholder are not necessarily in the best interests of the company entity, and in fact are viewed with suspicion by regulating bodies.

The best interests of the company include many other considerations besides shareholder return. One of those has to be long term viability for a long lived corporate entity. Eroding goodwill and reputational or brand damage go directly to the heart of the concept of director responsibility.

[statictype]

Suing another giant tech company over legitimate patents is ethical

If you don't like the way a company is legally and ethically running it's business, then change the law. Don't boycott the company who is succeeding best at working within the framework provided.

You seem to be confused about the difference between 'ethical' and 'legally allowed'.

[ThePherocity]

No, I'm not, and the reason you think I am is because you're not looking at the whole picture. Apple invests it's shareholder dollars in R&D on the promise that they will return on that investment. Apple spent years getting it right, and then Samsung copies the work and spits out a competing product in a fraction of the time. Apple is suing because Samsung stole ideas, and Samsung is leveraging it's business on Apples R&D.

Now, I don't think ideas or design should have a monetary value. But if you live in a world where ideas have currency, then stealing ideas is theft. We need to change the laws so ideas are free to all men. Apple isn't the problem, it's simply the best at navigating the problem.

[vetinari]

Galaxy S3/Note/Nexus have nothing in common with Apple R&D. Just because Samsung is providing better mousetrap to the market does not mean that it is riding on Apple.

Btw, the first cellphone was made by Motorola. The first cellphone with MP3 player was made by Samsung. Is Apple riding their R&D?

[_djo_]

That's incorrect, the first cellphone with MP3 playback functionality was the Siemens SL45, introduced in 2001. I used to own one, it was a fantastic phone for its day.

The Samsung SPH-M100 (aka, the 'Uproar') was the first cellphone that could play MP3s from internal memory, as the SL45 required a MultiMediaCard, but it was beaten to the market by Siemens.

That said, this all comes down to FRAND vs non-FRAND patents all over again. I truly believe that this distinction is something that needs to be clarified or even completely removed if we're going to make any progress on patent reform.

[ThePherocity]

Of course they are, but they are paying licencing fees to use the features that they are. Otherwise they would be sued.

[warfangle]

Apple is being sued by Motorola. http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/motorolas-new-patent-lawsui...

[bane]

They were sued and the jury found the U.S. case found no violations at all.

[sanxiyn]

"Samsung is leveraging its business on Apple's R&D."

Samsung is leveraging its business on Google's R&D. With Google's consent. Fixed that for you.

[ThePherocity]

Well, absolutely, Samsung is leveraging Google's, and many companies R&D. But R&D isn't cheep, intuitive, or obvious. Blackberry decided not to copy Apple very much, still created some great phones from a product view and they died. Nokia copied not at all, and they're not doing too well. HTC copied a little, and they are doing okayish. Samsung copied a lot more and is doing the best. My argument is all ideas should be free. We should adopt the good ideas globally so every phone copies the best ideas. You get an inventors monopoly for as long as it takes to reverse engineer. In our current product cycles, that's ~2+years. All problems solved.

[esolyt]

Just be clear: Large 720p screen, curved design, stylus are all characteristic iPhone features on which Apple spent years getting it right and then Samsung copied?

Because these are the devices that are being sued here.

[ThePherocity]

I don't know, I'm not a patent lawyer. I'll let the experts figure it out.

[john61]

So you think executing and leveraging wrong laws is excuseable?

There are lot of examples in mans history where this was not the case. This is another one.

[ThePherocity]

Not only excusable, but encourageable. It's a LAW. It's maliable. If it's wrong, fix it. The reason we have them is to govern what we can and should do.

[john61]

So executing the Nuremberg Laws was encourageable?

[statictype]

You're missing my point. I'm not really arguing about which billion dollar company did or didn't copy trivial/non-trivial patents from another billion dollar company.

You seem to think that anything legally allowed is ethical. That if Apple has an obligation to their shareholders to do X and X is legal, then it's totally ethical for Apple to do X.

That's not what ethical means.

[ThePherocity]

Since ethics isn't fixed, then what watermark do you suggest to define a universal ethics. It's like euthanasia, is it ethical for a doctor to commit murder if it's to stop terrible suffering? It was ethical to own slaves, but not ethical to have them work on a Sunday. Nowadays, having staff work Sundays is ethical (although your probably a jerk) though it's no longer ethical for them to be slaves.

[vetinari]

> If you don't like the way a company is legally and ethically running it's business, then change the law. Don't boycott the company who is succeeding best at working within the framework provided.

"Vote with your wallet" is a valid strategy. Just because the company you like is at the receiving end, does not change it's validity.

[Bill_Dimm]

It's actually the law for Apple to make as much money as possible given any legal and ethical way it can.

What law says that? I seriously want to know.

Don't boycott the company who is succeeding best at working within the framework provided.

Why not? As a consumer, am I not entitled to buy (or not buy) from whoever I want? Am I really not allowed to take any other factors into account beyond the legality of the company's behavior?

[gregsq]

There is no law that obligates the directors of a company to maximise profit, at least under the Corporations Act that I know of in the UK. There is a statutory requirement to act in the best interests of the legal entity that is the corporation, and what these obligations are has been further defined under case law.

There is no such law here in the UK. I will leave the US corporation law context to someone else with specific knowledge.

[danmaz74]

On the contrary, your own logic would imply that a boycott is the only logical action to take.

You say that it is "actually the law for Apple to make as much money as possible given any legal and ethical [sic] way it can". So, the only way to help Apple management back off from the use of preposterous software patents without the serious risk of breaking that law would be to enact a boycott and create a serious damage to the company image for doing so. A damage that could make that course of action not the one to "make as much money as possible".

[LVB]

Even if it is "actually the law for Apple to make as much money as possible" (please show me that law), over what time frame? It's not unreasonable that this aggressive policy could result in a diminished Apple image/reputation that could negatively affect long term profits more than any alleged patent infringement.