By now you’ve probably seen that a Californian Jury has handed down their decision in the most recent legal saga between Samsung and Apple. Who was the big winner?
Nobody.
Neither side really came out ahead. Sure Apple was awarded more money, but both sides walk away with a mere fraction of what they wanted. Apple claimed Samsung infringed on five patents covering covering functions such as slide-to-lock, universal searching, quick linking, automatic word correction and background syncing. They were asking for $2.2 Billion, and the jury awarded them $120 Million. Samsung claimed Apple had infringed two of its camera patents, one related to video compression and transmission, and asked for $6 Million. It was awarded $150,000.
After a month long trial, which I’m sure was expensive for both sides, this ruling will do little to change the Smartphone market. Both manufacturers will continue to operate pretty much the same way, no products are being removed from the market, and if features have to be removed, it’ll only be a temporary situation until another software patch can restore similar functionality which circumvents the oppositions intellectual property.
For all of Apple’s posturing, and Steve Jobs’ infamous quote of going “thermonuclear” on Android, they still haven’t gone after Google. They continue to target the various manufacturers that utilize Android on their products.
We’re tired of lawsuits…
For a month long trial, the jury returned a verdict in a fairly short period of time. It only took them four days to deal with, what I’m sure was, a staggering amount of technical minutiae on smartphone operation. That, or they were exhausted by the proceedings, and didn’t want to lose another weekend to the case. Knock out the verdict on a Friday afternoon, and finally get their lives back.
The speed of this judgement, and the low dollar amounts awarded, reinforces the fact that we’re all a little exhausted by these legal shenanigans. The way software patents work today, they don’t feel like they protect innovation as much as they seem to be used punitively to try and prevent competitors from bringing products to market.
Cases like this will continue to be viewed cynically by the public in the future. No one feels like their side is a winner when giant companies sue each other for hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. We all kind of know that those lawsuits and judgments get rolled into the prices of our devices.
We could be watching companies profit from their IP with more reasonable licensing deals, instead we’re watching companies try to stifle competition. If we’ve learned anything from this recent legal outing, there wont be any victories for consumers until we get software patent reform.