[josh2600]

With OXO and quirky, we're in a realm where hiring a team of $700/hour lawyers would wreck both companies. For Samsung and apple, the cost of legal advice is a rounding error.

While you make great points, the cost/risk of designing a cutting board or a dustpan is orders of magnitude lower and the response should be commensurate.

I don't think it's wise for Apple to not defend the things it believes it has patented but that's an argument for a horse of a different color.

[lmg643]

The fact that Apple's products are more profitable on a unit basis, and can fund more expensive lawyers for longer periods of time, does not mean it is a good strategy.

I can't see any real benefits that have accrued to apple from their patent wars. The shortest evidence of this is that Android has now >50% market share. if the patent wars were a good strategy, this would not have happened.

Having more money does mean you can afford to waste more money, but it still doesn't make wasting money wise.

[Zakharov]

Not really relevant to the patent issue, but your second point is a bit of a fallacy. It's possible that android would have even more market share without a patent war, or that the patent war was a risky strategy which had positive expected value at the time it was begun, but which didn't pay off.

[lmg643]

My frame of reference for this statement was prescription drug patents. Manufacturers can get 18 years of exclusive sales of their product. Whatever one may think of the ethics and behavior of the drug companies, it is a very effective use of patents. Other drug makers can copy what the drug is intended to achieve, but not the drug's exact composition. That seems like a reasonable parallel for how things should work in the smartphone market.

I am not sure that positive expected value was really ever the intent here. From most accounts, Steve Jobs felt personally affronted by the competition, and that is not necessarily a rational place to initiate a major action. I think the best case to make is that it delayed the growth of Android, but even that seems questionable. Android has copied them in virtually every respect, rolled out devices with little encumbrance, and shows no sign of stopping.

There's also the aspect of the patent wars where conflict become self-destructive. For example, a flame war in comments where people get increasingly nasty and lose sight of what they were even talking about. Google bought Motorola for defense, a patent portfolio. Counter suits are now possible.

Dissipating the focus of an organization's executives on rent seeking instead of innovation carries its own costs.