A lawsuit Armageddon appears to be brewing between consumer electronic companies such as Nokia suing Apple, Apple suing HTC and countless others all over patent infringements on certain smart phone projects. Is there a real point to all of this? These companies all copy certain features off each other, they have to, to stay in the realm of competition with the each other. Each company has things they do better than the other, and certain features have become standard. If one company was to have patents on multiple features that are considered industry standard, then they would dominate sales and a monopolistic issue would most likely form.
What these become are a big waste of money. They take years to settle if they ever even get settled. Plus, everyone has moved on to something new and more exciting by the time the dust settles on the lawsuits. I could not find a lot of information on how much is exactly paid out on particular suits. Apple just was ordered to pay $208 million to a company called Mirror Worlds who had a patent out on how documents are displayed on a computer screen and Apple's Cover Flow technology was also supposedly an infringement. Is Apple really writing out a check for $208 million tonight. I doubt it. I will find out more information on how this works and share my findings in the near future.
The customer once again is hurt in this situation. I realize some companies that are on a downward spiral file lawsuits just trying to get anything they can when their company is failing, but many of these are just greed lawsuits, wanting a larger piece of the market share or sometimes even disguised motives. Some have speculated that Apple is currently suing HTC hoping to protect the IPad by scaring off potential tablet computer competition in the future. Their hope may be to prevent companies from looking at Apple products, and then creating a similar product with a few improvements or new features. This happens in every industry all the time. Research and Development is more critical than ever and Apple is afraid that being the first ones to come out with a particular product they may suffer from other companies making improvements. Ugh, is all I usually have to say about Apple, but in this case I do have to see their side. If they are the first one's to put out a useful product in a particular market and invest to take the chance on it, then they should have a time period of protection. They are paying to see if there is going to be a market and if there is, then it becomes flooded with alternate options after it seems to be safe. I think Apple has had that time period, and this is the true point of a patent, but I think picking at every piece of the product and trying to protect everything is a little too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment