Should Apple stop its patent war? How about Intellectual Ventures? Should Microsoft stop taxing Android makers?
Some arguments paint with too broad a brush. Where patents are concerned, especially software patents, the arguments are far too narrow. Of course Apple should end its patent war. Unlucky for Apple, if it ends its patent war while Microsoft continues to extract tribute, Apple loses. And Microsoft should end the war. Oops, it loses too.
In the end, everyone who unilaterally stops playing the game loses. So everyone should end the war. And I don’t mean, “Return to an uneasy oligopoly where new entrants are forced to pay tribute to the existing patent-hoarding overlords.” I mean, abolish the patents. beat the swords into ploughshares.
p.s. Exercise for the reader: If technology patents are eliminated and anyone can do anything, does that mean that everyone will instantly engage in a copycat race to the bottom, and the only winners will be companies that have a service that can’t be copied? if so, why aren’t Google and Facebook spending billions lobbying to end patents? It seems like they would be the big winners if the price of phones, tablets, and computers fell to nearly zero.
That road leads to the dark side. It won't be long before they notice that while the profit margins on tablets are great, the profit margins on settlements are even better, and if you sell fewer devices, you pay fewer taxes yourself while raking in the cash from people who actually make and sell things.
The author seems to think Apple's "war" is a recent thing. But it has been going on since 1985, when Apple sued DRI over the look & feel of GEM (anyone remember that?). Apple has been aggressively suing over look & feel for 26 years. This is firmly entrenched in their corporate culture, and anyone who thinks they're going to stop any time soon -- regardless of whether they ought to -- is being a little naive, I think.
If you look past the catchy headline and put yourself in Apple's shoes, and try to understand their point of view as a design-focused firm, you can come up with a different analysis of the situation:
> the manufacturers on the losing end need only modify their design to get around the imposed restrictions.
And that's precisely the point for Apple.
> The problem is that many of Apple’s patents focus on look, feel, and design, which means they can be worked around, as in the cases mentioned above. As a result, Apple could have a hard time securing lasting, sticky restrictions that would permanently prevent its competitors’ products from being sold in individual markets, let alone worldwide.
And Apple doesn't care because that's not the point.
Despite the Jobs quote saying he wanted to sue Android out of existence, Apple does not really want to drive Android (nor other competitors) itself into oblivion, Apple wants people to stop copying their design. They want to force the copycats to differentiate, if not innovate.
> Despite the Jobs quote saying he wanted to sue Android out of existence, Apple does not really want to drive Android (nor other competitors) itself into oblivion, Apple wants people to stop copying their design. They want to force the copycats to differentiate, if not innovate.
So Apple is suing everyone because they want their competition to differentiate, innovate, and, in general, become better?
No, Apple is suing them, with or without merit, in order to make it harder for competition to compete with them, to make their lives harder, and to ensure own leadership position as long as possible.
In addition, it's not fair to call someone copycat just because it has square screen on square phone. What they had to do, to put round screen on triangular device?
Apple is not suing everyone, only a bunch of Android devices, though I never said Apple's not suing them to make their life harder, only it's always good to gain some perspective. If anything it could very well be both, that's not incompatible. But arguing they're trying to ban every single competitor is ridiculous. Apple does not aim for market share dominance, they aim for margin, and they make boatloads of profits through margin already.
> What they had to do, to put round screen on triangular device?
We're not talking about the general shape, which is obviously constrained (and would be like saying a Ferrari 456 and a Lada Niva look the same because both have two doors and four wheels), we're talking about design (which does not restrict to looks). Still, Nokia Lumia 710 and 800 look nothing like an iPhone (neither hardware nor software), even with bad eyesight. Same for Palm/HP devices, or a Nexus One, or HTC Evo or Legend. Squint a little and you can't make the difference between an iPhone 4 and a Galaxy S2 laying on a table. I'm not even talking about the Tab 10.1.
Some arguments paint with too broad a brush. Where patents are concerned, especially software patents, the arguments are far too narrow. Of course Apple should end its patent war. Unlucky for Apple, if it ends its patent war while Microsoft continues to extract tribute, Apple loses. And Microsoft should end the war. Oops, it loses too.
In the end, everyone who unilaterally stops playing the game loses. So everyone should end the war. And I don’t mean, “Return to an uneasy oligopoly where new entrants are forced to pay tribute to the existing patent-hoarding overlords.” I mean, abolish the patents. beat the swords into ploughshares.
p.s. Exercise for the reader: If technology patents are eliminated and anyone can do anything, does that mean that everyone will instantly engage in a copycat race to the bottom, and the only winners will be companies that have a service that can’t be copied? if so, why aren’t Google and Facebook spending billions lobbying to end patents? It seems like they would be the big winners if the price of phones, tablets, and computers fell to nearly zero.