...
Wow.
Apple won it all against Samsung - and will get $1.049 billion dollars. Samsung gets $0 dollars for its 3G/UMTS, photo sharing, & background music patents. All of the grueling details are here. Wow:
In South Korea, both companies were found to infringe and both had to pay, and I expected simliar results in the US:
Not so. Yes, I'm a huge Android fanboi that pokes fun at iPhone users, but I know that the 2007 iPhone upped the ante and shaped out devices in use to this day. Apple failing to innovate past 2007, which is why a homescreen for an iPhone 2G looks the same as the 4S & new iPad (which looks the same as my old Palm for that matter), has always been my issue, along with freedom to do what I want with my purchase. Not so with Android:
The fact that our patent system is so broken that rectangles with rounded corners & transparent context menus can be patented at all... and then enforced in court... is once again why innovation is so stifled (carriers don't help). I'm very disappointed that 9 random, non-technical people, decided its okay. Both sides are in the wrong, both sides should pony up. I wonder what phones each jury member carried... or will soon carry...? The Verge ran a poll, and given your average reader is pretty sharp - their results are quite telling:
It's not all doom and gloom - just as RIM's BlackBerry 10 & Microsoft shows it can be done different (though I challenge you to name 5 people with a Windows Phone, I only know of one) and battle for third place, perhaps this will actually get Google (patent haters) involved (backfired), or force others to do things completely different, especially Samsung. Oh wait, they already did - my Galaxy S3 design & UI is so far from my previous Epic 4G & iOS its silly, and there is no way on earth the iPhone 5 will be able to hold a candle to it, nor the HTC One X/EVO 4G LTE. All that said, in the grand scheme of things, it's just a phone, and surely the court resources could have been dedicated to something more pressing. It's still disappointing that the one thing I was hoping would come of this did not come into fruition - software patent law reform:
Better luck next time.
PS: I don't work for the Verge, but I've been reading it a bunch recently, heh. :) Next up is Part 2 of my thoughts on Google & Apple... a year in the making! ;-)
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