Once upon a time, Steve Ballmer blasted Apple for asking its customers to pay $500 for an Apple logo. This was the “Apple Tax“, the price difference between the solid, professional workmanship of a laptop running on Windows, and Apple’s needlessly elegant MacBooks.
Following last week’s verdict against Samsung, the kommentariat have raised the specter of an egregious new Apple Tax, one that Apple will levy on other smartphone makers who will have no choice but to pass the burden on to you. The idea is this: Samsung’s loss means it will now have to compete against Apple with its dominant hand — a lower price tag — tied behind its back. This will allow Apple to exact higher prices for its iPhones (and iPads) and thus inflict even more pain and suffering on consumers.
There seems to be a moral aspect, here, as if Apple should be held to a higher standard. Last year, Apple and Nokia settled an IP “misunderstanding” that also resulted in a “Tax”…but it was Nokia that played the T-Man role: Apple paid Nokia more than $600M plus an estimated $11.50 per iPhone sold. Where were the handwringers who now accuse Apple of abusing the patent system when the Nokia settlement took place? Where was the outrage against the “evil”, if hapless, Finnish company? (Amusingly, observers speculate that Nokia has made more money from these IP arrangements than from selling its own Lumia smartphones.)
Even where the moral tone is muted, the significance of the verdict (which you can read in full here) is over-dramatized. For instance, see this August 24th Wall Street Journal story sensationally titled After Verdict, Prepare for the ‘Apple Tax’:
After its stunning victory against rival device-maker Samsung Electronics Co., experts say consumers should expect smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices that license various Apple Inc., design and software innovations to be more expensive to produce.
“There may be a big Apple tax,” said IDC analyst Al Hilwa. “Phones will be more expensive.”
The reason is that rival device makers will likely have to pay to license the various Apple technologies the company sought to protect in court. The jury found that Samsung infringed as many as seven Apple patents, awarding $1.05 billion in damages.
The $1B sum awarded to Apple sounds impressive, but to the giants involved, it doesn’t really change much. Samsung’s annual marketing budget is about $2.75B (it covers washer-dryers and TVs, but it’s mostly smartphones), and, of course, Apple is sitting on a $100B+ cash hoard.
Then there’s the horror over the open-ended nature of the decision: Apple can continue to seek injunctions against products that infringe on their patents. From the NYT article:
…the decision could essentially force [Samsung] and other smartphone makers to redesign their products to be less Apple-like, or risk further legal defeats.
Certainly, injunctions could pose a real threat. They could remove competitors, make Apple more dominant, give it more pricing power to the consumer’s detriment…but none of this is a certainty. Last week’s verdict and any follow-up injunctions are sure to be appealed and appealed again until all avenues are exhausted. The Apple Tax won’t be enforced for several years, if ever.
And even if the “Tax” is assessed, will it have a deleterious impact on device manufacturers and consumers? Last year, about half of all Android handset makers — including ZTE, HTC, Sharp — were handed a Microsoft Tax bill ($27 per phone in ZTE’s case), one that isn’t impeded by an obstacle course of appeals. Count Samsung in this group: The Korean giant reportedly agreed to pay Microsoft “between $10 and $15 – for each Android smartphone or tablet computer it sells.” Sell 100M devices and the tax bill owed to Ballmer and Co. exceeds $1B. Despite this onerous surcharge, Android devices thrive, and Samsung has quickly jumped to the lead in the Android handset race (from Informa, Telecoms & Media):
Amusingly, the Samsung verdict prompted this gloating tweet from Microsoft exec Bill Cox:
Windows Phone is looking gooooood right now.
(Or, as AllThingsD interpreted it: Microsoft to Samsung. Mind if I Revel in Your Misfortune for a Moment?)
The subtext is clear: Android handset makers should worry about threats to the platform and seek safe harbor with the “Apple-safe” Windows Phone 8. This will be a “goooood” thing all around: If more handset makers offer Windows Phone devices, there will be more choices, fewer opportunities for Apple to get “unfairly high” prices for its iDevices. The detrimental effects, to consumers, of the “Apple Tax” might not be so bad, after all.
The Samsung trial recalls the interesting peace agreement that Apple and Microsoft forged in 1997, when Microsoft “invested” $150M in Apple as a fig-leaf for an IP settlement (see the end of the Quora article). The interesting part of the accord is the provision in which the companies agree that they won’t “clone” each other’s products. If Microsoft could arrange a cross-license agreement with Apple that includes an anti-cloning provision and eventually come up with its own original work (everyone agrees that Microsoft’s Modern UI is elegant, interesting, not just a knock-off), how come Samsung didn’t reach a similar arrangement and produce its own distinctive look and feel?
Microsoft and Apple saw that an armed peace was a better solution than constant IP conflicts. Can Samsung and Apple decide to do something similar and feed engineers rather than platoons of high-priced lawyers (the real winners in these battles)?
It’s a nice thought but I doubt it’ll happen. Gates and Jobs had known one another for a long time; there was animosity, but also familiarity. There is no such comfort between Apple and Samsung execs. There is, instead, a wide cultural divide.
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53 Comments
Talking about the cultural divide…. Samsung’s CEO has been pardoned by the South Korean president TWICE after being found guilty of corruption….
I was looking forward to JLG’s considered take on the verdict. In the vacuum of the weekend (well done jurors, you caught the press off guard) there have been all sorts of ridiculous statements about the outcome and how Samsung is an innocent (with Groklaw seemingly thinking Samsung is purer than driven snow). The fact is, this should not have gone to trial. Apple knew that a jury looks at the big picture and calls a spade a spade. Samsung convinced itself that was a shining knight working for the good of humanity. Apple certainly doesn’t lack in conceit, but Samsung defined it in this trial. “Of course we didn’t copy, we were saluting Apple’s design ethic – they should be happy”. Samsung benefitted enormously from their strategy and this judgement is little more than a knuckle-rap financially. They will profit from taking the easy way forward while others stayed within the law and lost time and money. Hopefully, Samsung will show contrition and move on positively. But I am not holding my breath.
No one cared about Apple when it was the iPod music company with a sliver of marketshare for its computers. They were perfecting technology and understanding what consumers would desire while all the other competitors were fast asleep. Then the leap came to phones. Then they took the market by storm with the market having to react to Apple. Most of the negative publicity that Apple has received is competitor driven because it was the only thing they could do being so far behind. Of course all the competitors violated their patents.
The Apple Tax?
Is that what will appear in the accounts from now on? Scratch out R&D and just put in a payment to Apple?
The Apple Tax, as you put it, is the cost of original thought. Of having to actually hire talented designers and developers who have the imagination to think of something new. They cost a little more than engineers who just tear down a competitors product and rebuild it with the serial numbers filed off.
Since you also have some familiarity — again firsthand! — with the subject, I wonder if you’ll chime in one day on what HP’s patent portfolio from Palm means. With Amazon having recently bought patents, I wonder if Samsung would finally cave and buy the Palm IP (I doubt they’d do webOS devices, but let’s hope they’d leave the forked Open webOS alone for the rest of us).
Hello Jean-Louis,
Good analysis. Indeed, people talk about all of this without much knowledge about the intricacies of patents licencing, cross-licence agreements, and even what is such a patent (hardware, software, process, design ?).
Just wondering about some data : how can patents licences related to one mobile OS (Android) be similar to the cost of Microsoft’s own mobile OS ? $27 in the case you mention vs an average cost of $25 for Windows Mobile ? Well, none of these figures are official, so it’s just speculation.
I’m wondering about Microsoft earning $1B just with patents used by Samsung. That seems enormous. Is that detectable somewhere in Microsoft’s quarterly reports ?
Great post, and it has attracted fine comments so far. Kudos!
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There is an uncommented-upon mismatch here: as you note, a billion dollars isn’t quite real money to these two global megacorps. (Maybe even after any tripling for willful infringement, which the jury noted.) The real impact will be if Apple is able to land similar blows against other Android players.
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The “Apple Tax” argument assumes that as a fait accompli. But if that really were true, Androids will be near-absent from the marketplace this Christmas season, while Microsoft is trying to gain a foothold. Apple would seem to have the marvelous problem of making twice as many iPhone5′s as it planned a few months ago, because no competitive devices will be for sale.
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I think the transition will take more time. Apple’s lawyers are making progress against Androids but they clearly had a huge advantage here in that Samsung went out of its way to ignore Google’s counsel to not copy so slavishly. In this way, Samsung isolated itself, taking the mantle of greediness that so many put on Apple. An own goal. Apple will not have such a huge advantage in its battle with Motorola, for example. Even if the legal issues are largely the same, and even though Apple has learned a LOT about its strategy, Samsung clearly set itself up for this fall.
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If I ran Google, I would decide that after Kübler-Ross’s Stage 1 Denial (the Google PR line) and this weekend’s Stage 2 Anger, I had better get through #3 Bargaining and #4 Depression pretty quickly, and Accept that the current Android UI model is fast-dying; I need to come up with my own, equally-snazzy UI.
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But I don’t, and I imagine Google, with their dedication to “cleverness,” will instead try a kluge workaround that will only harden Apple in its resolve to protect its IP, leading to another year or two of high-stakes battles.
Mercedes has a commercial in the US which says
that they have 80,000 patents on the car. No one is crying
about that.
Windows Phone is already paying the Apple Tax. This tax grows with
each approval of patent.
Most egregious part of this whole thing is that Apple Haters use really bad prior art as evidence of obviousness of iphone. Don’t know the difference between design and utility patent. try to use prior art for design to invalidate utility patent.
Regards the Microsoft windfall from this: yes, there is a certain population that has heard or independently concluded that they should/will never buy from Apple, and so will buy WP8 phones.
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The other 99% of the world will have to evaluate the two lines the old-fashioned way, of deciding which product better meets their personal needs. And the Samsung decision does not say ANYTHING positive about how Microsoft’s products do that; it merely highlighted that MSFT didn’t slavishly copy Apple.
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People who identify closely with their corporate lives may find WP8 devices better-suited, but I’m having trouble seeing a one-on-one contest for consumers where Apple’s ecosystem (media, apps, reputation, retail presence, …) leaves much room for Microsoft.
Just to be clear about this matter :
Most of the infringed patents are related to Android, not to Samsung devices. Samsung didn’t copy Apple much more than any other Android mobile manufacturer (LG, HTC, ZTE, Huawei, Sony, …).
Samsung didn’t want to pay Apple for these patents.
But are we sure all of the others did pay Apple ?
@ Olivier Ezratty: There two kinds of abuses at stake here. One is of the trade dress category, i.e. copying the distinctive Rolex face and its (sometimes) serrated ornament around the glass. The other is patents, the implementation of an idea. In both cases, critics of ther verdict contend a lot of Apple’s stuff is “obvious”. Retroactively so, perhaps. But when the iPhone came out, it wasn’t: critics clamed the absence keyboard and other buttons, for example.
As for Google, not Samsung, being the infringing party, willful use of infringing software puts Samsung in trouble, as the jury found. Also, we know Google cautioned Samsung against copying Apple.
I know there are disagreement about the patent system, about the jury verdict (under Judge Koh, she’s from a Korean family) and so on.
But, again, where were the sages when Apple paid the Nokia Tax, or when more than half the Andoid handset makers pay royalties to MS?
For the $1B number in Samsung payments to MS, as indicated in the Note, it is predicated on 100M “MS-blessed” handsets. I don’t know when Samsung will reach that number, I merely use it for comparison to the amount in the verdict.
After writing this MN, I couldn’t but wonder why/how MS and Apple could make peace and Samsung and Apple couldn’t. Having seen Samsung at close range in previous incarnations, I have ideas, but not for this forum. See RobDK’s observation above for more on Samsung mores.
“Where were the handwringers who now accuse Apple of abusing the patent system when the Nokia settlement took place?”
The same I have been for the past few years — telling people that the patent system is broken, that patents should be abolished as a failed experiment, but that things will get much worse before that happens.
JLG
I love the article, as always, but I fail to understand why you are attaching so much significance to the result of this trial.
As you point out (or allude to),
1- there will be appeals, it is a jury decision, so it remains to be seen whether it will mark a huge shift in how these matters are assessed.
2- the amount awarded and the cost to avoid infringing these particular patents and other stuff is not that material
The MSFT AAPL peace agreement came when there was much more at stake
Regarding whether this is a judgement against Samsung or against Android, it is interesting to read Google’s response to the judgment:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/26/3270837/google-responds-apple-samsung-verdict
What about Microsoft’s super profits? I recall when Microsoft bought Visio the retail price of the software doubled or tripled just because it had Microsoft’s logo on the package. In virtually all aspects it was the same product. I would rather pay Apple $19.99 for Mountain Lion rather than hundreds of dollars for Microsoft’s updates!
It’s not so much the amount of money, it’s the chilling effect it will have on any would-be competitor. This is a first step towards enforcing (or trying to enforce) a playing ground with underdog competition.
Another point is also about what has been at stake during the trial :
are we talking about fundamental researches ? Hard science ? Invention of transistor maybe ?
No, this is about “trade dress” (now, rounded rectangle is “owned by Apple”) and pre-existing GUI concepts (touchscreen ? square ? icons ? virtual screens ? End-of-scrolling feedback ? Come on, are you sure you never seen that before 2007 ?).
Apple shamelessly copied from others to reach to its current result.
In fact Steve jobs himself was very proud of his capacity to “steal ideas” from others, starting with Xerox parc and Sony. That’s a weapon Apple uses for years to keep improving its products.
Notification system ? That’s Android.
Offline reading ? That’s Instapaper.
iPad 2 magnetic cover ? That’s from an iPad 1 accessory provider.
Application shop ? Valve was there years ago.
Facetime ? Never seen a video-conf before ?
Siri ? Hello Dragon dictate.
Virtual keyboard ?
And the list can go on and on.
There’s no problem with that. Any product has to improve upon existing ones, so obviously it has to borrow ideas and concepts from elsewhere.
Except that there is a double standard at play.
Whenever Apple “copy”, it’s “innovation” at play.
But should anyone else reuse the same concept, then its “patent infringement”.
That’s apparently a capacity they want to keep for themselves only.
@Cyan – even the most basic research would inform.
1. Xerox/Sony – technology was licensed and purchased. They bought the disk drives for the Mac direct from Sony. Xerox was paid 150M in stock for the visit that Steve and the team made to PARC. Which, if they had kept, would probably be worth a helluva LOT more now.
2. Notification system design was owned by the designer. Who works at Apple now. That’s an Aqui-hire. Apple does a few of those.
3. Offline reading? Try Avantgo a decade ago. And countless web archivers. Is this something protectable?
4. Magnetic Cover – third parties wouldn’t have had the ability to place magnets inside the iPad. Apple has been doing magnetic clasps on their devices for over a decade.
5. Facetime – they haven’t sued over this but they were doing this in the 90s. Apple and Netscape together.
6. Siri? Lots of dictation apps out there (including stuff built into System 7.5) but Siri itself is not voice recognition. You’re thinking about Nuance. Which they licensed.
7. Virtual Keyboard – again, is this something you want them to attach IP to?
The list can go on but not with this sort of uninformed knuckle-dragging.
When Apple create something new that becomes “obvious” then a lot of folk complain. Just remember that every company in mobile is suing every other company. This isn’t just Apple being aggressive. Apple pays Nokia for their tech. Apple and Microsoft sorted out their IP woes a decade ago. Samsung copied, cheated and, the biggest issue is that they did it willingly, despite advice from Google. They knew what they were doing.
Considering they’re dominant in the market now, a $1B judgement is probably worth it. It’s probably less than what they would have had to spend to become major in the market by developing their own IP.
Samsung is learning the lesson Sony learnt: as Jobs said, Apple is a company with creativity at its core and everything else follows from it.
When a business consists of competing parts, the divisions expend time, energy and resources on internal positioning, competition and squabbles. So even if Samsung had an original, creative idea (how likely?), it does not follow at all that it would be validated internally.
Of course, central to the copying approach is the advantage that one doesn’t copy loser products.
@Cyan, there is a profound difference between being inspired by what you see – stealing ideas like a great artist and making them your own – and cloning/ripping off a design. There is a profound difference between remixing and plagiarism; between trying to make your product as unique as possible and trying to make it as similar as possible as something already successful; between incorporating features and recreating combinations of features. The former increases diversity, innovation, and evolution. The latter decreases it. And anything in excess of a patently superficial analysis makes it impossible to confuse the two. No one will ever confuse Braque for a Picasso forger, or a Picasso forger for Braque. There is a reason Apple went after Samsung’s Galaxy series for trade dress infringement and not HTC’s One or even Motorola’s Droid… and that reason is not financial success.
Apple has engaged in “shameless copying” from time to time (iBooks vs. Classics being the most prominent example), but clearly not in any of the cases you describe. So you’re either being purposely obtuse, or you’ve tied your identity to the success or failure of one of the parties, facts and logic be damned.
> Is this something you want them to attach IP to?
That’s a crucial misunderstanding.
There is no reason to attach IP to it. This is the message.
The argument is quite different : Apple progresses by copying ideas from others, and is quite happy to do so. There should be no problem to that.
The point is : they refuse others to do the same. As a critical example, protecting “end of slide” GUI concept as a “patent”, this is, well, like protecting the “one-click” buy concept : obvious, inspired by prior art, but requires millions in bank and a professional dedicated team into court to fight against. So it acts as a deterrent.
> There is a profound difference between remixing and plagiarism;
Exactly.
And that’s why i believe that the “dress code” part of the trial could have been interesting.
I said “could”, because it was mangled with the claimed “patents” on frivolous concepts.
That’s a pity, it would have been a good and rare occasion to actually define what is a “dress code” for an electronic device, which is as far as i know is the first time it was used in such a trial.
For example, the Apple logo is obviously part of it. And was obviously not infringed upon.
Going beyond usual trademark, and pretending that a set of esthetic characteristics can be a “dress code”, and be protected, that part would have been very enlightening, for all actors in the industry.
Since, well, if defined too broadly, any of those (old) actors could have used this argument against Apple too :
http://www.osnews.com/img/26309/randompdas.jpg
As stated previously, it’s not the 1 billions dollar which matters, it is the chilling effect sent to any would-be competitor. Samsung can pay 1 billion USD, but who else ? Self-censorship is so efficient, this is the real prize of this trial.
> Just remember that every company in mobile is suing every other company.
That’s the sad part of the story.
The same can be said about war : it happens all the time somewhere in the world. So why not take advantage of it ?
@cyan – I would agree with you if Apple had patented the only way to do things. These ‘trivial’ things were arrived at by research and development. And the Gakaxy S3 shows that Samsung doesn’t have to copy. They chose to copy.
It’s not about having the same features. All devices have features. Similar features even. But in the exactl implementation – copying the exact implementation – was worth $8b to Samsung. And Apple has spent a lot of time telling people to find their own ways of doing things.
Samsung deliberately didn’t find their own way. They were warned by both Apple and Google. And they should pay the price.
@Cyan, yes, this has had a “chilling effect” on the notion that using Android somehow isolates you from the fact that Apple signaled 5 years ago that intended to aggressively protect its iPhone IP. Apple’s keyless UI, ridiculed as unworkable in 2007 indeed allowed it to break into the entrenched oligopoly. Without that unique feature, there would’ve been NO iPhones. Nobody would’ve bought an Apple device just to get the same kind of Microsoft or BlackBerry software that they were expert at. Apple needed something new and different. Life or death.
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During the subsequent 5 years, Google’s vaunted engineers haven’t managed to come up with a unique, home-grown UI of its own. They thought they could get away with incorporating Apple IP into their products, the same way that YouTube is now the primary way that kids get music-on-demand without paying the musicians a penny. Google fired up its PR/Disinformation Department and bloggers started demonizing Apple the same way that the RIAA was targeted. Alas for Google, they depended on firms like Samsung, which went out of its way to paint ITSELF as the bad guy.
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Oh, and re Siri: the patent is on a front end that “asks” multiple knowledge-domain engines whether they have a good answer to the user question, then picks what seems the best. Apparently, “weather,” yelp and the others get asked “how many ounces in a cup” and most say, “dunno.” That WAS the patented new wrinkle, not the fact that it was verbal.
@cyan, this was from one of Apple’s exhibits explaining its trade dress as originally filed:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/239768/1324/0.pdf
The SGS and SGSII pretty much hit on all of the points. There was a similar thing for iOS and TouchWiz, but I can’t find the link right now. Non Samsung/Galaxy phones (as well as the recent SGSIII), and non TouchWiz Android skins are different enough for a conviction to be highly unlikely against them. Neither would the iPhone be seen as infringing on Palm’s trade dress, nor something that looked like Palm’s PDAs infringe on the iPhone’s. Indeed, look at how similar Palm’s PDAs look in that picture (with the concave sides designed for easier gripping, and how the other PDAs take care to avoid cloning that feature).
It takes a lot of care and effort (but no imagination, innovation, or insight) to make a good copy. That care and effort was intentionally spent by Samsung for its SGS and SGSII. Discouraging copies does not chill anything. Literature and music are not worse off for the discouragement of thinly-veiled plagiarisms.
I don’t buy the argument that the Apple-Samsung case will result in an Apple Tax since ‘tax’ in this sense seems to imply some sort of extra payment that should not be necessary. In fact the people making the case for the Apple Tax are implicitly undermining their own argument.
First, the people making the case that this will result in an Apple Tax are implicitly agreeing that creating innovative technology is hard work and expensive (otherwise the ‘tax’ would be insignificant). In particular, they are saying that ‘look how much extra it would cost per Samsung phone if Samsung had to do its own R&D to create innovations’. So instead of calling this an Apple Tax it should be called ‘Cost-of-Good Resulting From Doing Your Own R&D’.
Second, the people making the case that this will result in an Apple Tax are implicitly agreeing that Samsung did in fact infringe on the patents in questions (and maybe many more patents) and that by infringing on these patents Samsung was able to illegally reduce its R&D costs. Once again this should be called ‘Cost-of-Good Resulting From Doing Your Own R&D instead of Infringing Patents’.
Final note – there is a big different between copying and infringing on a patent. Patents are protected by law and infringing a patent willfully or even accidentally is a violation of the law. Copying is a non-legal issue.
As this judgment has been announcedmI have heard of the Apple tax and the negative effect on consumers. What we are witnessing is an earth-shaking, disruptive technology the likes of which we have not seen since the advent of the personal computer. This is not a Microsoft becoming a monopoly on the basis of someone else’s GUI. A few short years ago Apple stock had little value. They then got into the downloaded music business which folded all around them but they did it right and survived. And then the jump from music to telecommunications. When I watched my children playing with their iPods I had no idea this jump would be made. If I did I would have bought Apple’s price depressed stock. There is no Apple tax. There is only a premium price on invention and innovation that has the competitors scrambling. Discussions that apply negativity to Apple are too a large part competition planted. What else can they do. They are getting their butts kicked fair and square.
Personally I have no desire to own any Apple or Samsung product. They do not currently interest me.
Once I started using one, I considered it an Apple premium and not a tax. A tax is extra you pay for nothing, and I only thought that when I was ignorant. Of course, I felt smug about using Linux too until I realized I needed to bite the Microsoft bullet to get work done. Then I used a Mac and really did find the best of both worlds, great hardware and the ability to run Linux, OSX (UNIX) and Windows side by side. I’ve torn through lesser notebooks in less than a year (or around the year mark) sometimes, but my macbook pro kept on ticking for years…
The big concern here is “was it just?” Other country’s courts have found in favour of Samsung in these patent wars. I can’t see how a jury is a good thing in these complex legal and technical wrangles. One also has to doubt the impartiality of an American jury on an Amercan company versus a foreign company. The jury even managed to award damages on a couple of counts that were clearly not proven. How does that give confidence to their verdicts?
The important thing to remember this is for the US only – some of these claims have been kicked out in other parts of the world – such as the UK. Plus a lot of the patents are software ones that are not valid outside the US.
Historically there was been nothing revolutionary about the iPhone/iPad Apple was just bringing together maturing technologies. Even the name iPxx moniker was not coined by Apple it came from the HP iPAC range of hand held ‘touch’ smart phones (or PDA’s then!).
Apple is a clever company but it’s not its technology(20% of it comes from Samsung anyway) that is ground breaking…..
Unless Apple can stop being stupid with lawsuits and start inovating agian then they will on a downward slope soon.
Note: I’m both an iPxxx and Andoid user and I know which is easier and less frustrating to use … and its not Apple!
“If Microsoft could arrange a cross-license agreement with Apple that includes an anti-cloning provision and eventually come up with its own original work (everyone agrees that Microsoft’s Modern UI is elegant, interesting, not just a knock-off), how come Samsung didn’t reach a similar arrangement and produce its own distinctive look and feel?”
Because doing all of that is hard work!
No one ever wants to acknowledge the obvious since the implication is ugly and shameful – and Samsung and the Samsung apologists should be ashamed. That so many people are willing to cook up excuses for them is what’s really sad. We have become addicted to our cheap crap and all too willing to demonize and rationalize what should be shameful behavior at the slightest threat to the disruption of it.
@Brian M: The iPaq required a stylus. Not multitouch a all (still have mine, thank you!). As for: “Apple is a clever company but it’s not its technology(20% of it comes from Samsung anyway) that is ground breaking…..” Er, you do realize that Samsung is primarily a contract manufacturer of Apple designs? “Unless Apple can stop being stupid with lawsuits and start inovating agian then they will on a downward slope soon.” – and this is hilarious. If the iPhone and multouch were so obvious, how come “innovative” companies like Microsoft, Plam, Nokia or RIM couldn’t break the mold and release something so completely different? Part of the answer is in that question…. Apple is in not danger of being on a “downward slope” any time soon as long as they continue to do the one thing they have always done – produce an awesome user experience that masks the “technology for technology’s” sake that consumes most tech companies and instead promotes “these are elegant tools that help you get what you want to get done while themselves getting out of your way”. As long as they KEEP doing that, no one is going to be able to touch them. The desktop market was lost – SJ pretty much said as much right before coming back to Apple – his “milk it for all it’s worth” comment about the Mac pissed allot of Mac users, including myself, off at the time. But he was exactly right. Why fight over contested ground? Go find the next big thing, get their first and so completely blow everyone else out of the water that they won’t ever be able to catch up before you loop the cycle and do it again. We saw it with the iPod, the iPhone and now the iPad. Finally – none of that happens without innovation. I would hope that’s so painfully obvious that it doesn’t need mentioning, but then looking at your comments one has to wonder. As long as Apple is willing to obsolete their own products well before their competitors and as long as they can keep it up, there is nothing to worry about. Just ask Microsoft how much fun it must have been getting all the kinks worked out with the Zune – deals with the record companies, decent hardware, software that didn’t suck and was actually somewhat innovative as compared to the almost tired looking iPod and then BAM – the rug is pulled out and instead of portable music devices the “game” is ultra-portable computers with integrated phones. No wonder Ballmer is known for his chair throwing!
@EricE
iPaq – The point being that moving from stylus to touch (finger) was a change in enabling technology, not some invention by Apple – even gesture existed way back before the iPhone. Have an IPAQ on my desk as a reminder – a product ahead of the implementing technology!
Unfortunately Apple have run out of real innovation – the iPad 3 is really only adding a higher resolution screen – more evolution and marketing cleverness and yes its nice but nothing unique.
Same applies to the MacBook Pro retina – yes it s light, high resolution, but it’s not using anything particularly clever just parts anyone could put together with that sort of selling price point, it’s an engineering compromise with the downside being lack of expansion and repair ability.
Still prefer my high end Samsung 17″ HD laptop as its more usable than the smaller 15.4″ screens Retina which is currently acting as a poorly functioning paper weight!
@ Brian M – iPaq as a precursor to iPad?
Are you on drugs? Right now?
That so unbelievably misinformed that it beggars belief. It actually hurts my noggin even trying to reconcile that series of events in any relation to what actually happened.
@brian M, there are MANY very important differences between a stylus and your fingers, but a key one is that you only have one stylus. I’ve never seen anybody use ‘em like chopsticks.
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Whereas many Apple patents are for “multi-touch” operations that were by definition impossible on resistive touchscreens and essentially impossible on any device that requires a stylus.
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Another important difference is that a stylus has a nice, well-identified tip, where your fingers are blobs that can touch many screen elements at once. Again, Apple’s patents include methods for deciding WHICH item you’re trying to touch, and what you’re trying to do. With capacitive screens, the system might detect several nearby points when in fact the screen just picked up the sides of your finger and not the middle for some reason. Making it all work well in real time: tricky.
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But anyway, what you’re telling us is that the patents are irrelevant or invalid because, [i]ex post facto,[/i] you can see the predecessor ideas and tack on what is now obvious to you to copy the Apple patent. You are using the very definition of the patent — a publicly-available description of a method or whatever — to argue that because it exists, it should not have been granted. Starting from an obvious contradiction, you go on to show you have no experience making calls as to in what our society deems original, obvious or useful.
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I don’t get it. The trial is over; arguments will move to injunctions, JNOV over-rides by the bench and appeals. You are providing flimsy justifications for a moot point.
“This will allow Apple to exact higher prices for its iPhones (and iPads) and thus inflict even more pain and suffering on consumers.”
Pain and suffering? These are luxury products, not basic human needs. Get some perspective!
#firstworldproblems
@Walt French
Patents should not be given for items that are an obvious way of doing something that is simply enabled by an evolving technology.
Nothing new in gestures take the pinch and expand gestures – typical human gestures to show this type of action for make it bigger/smaller- hardly original thought by Apple.
For information you can use gestures on single point screens and of course gestures have been used in many different products over the years.
I was using simple gestures many years ago using light pens to zoom in and out, very few things are truly new – Apple has virtually zero items to claim that are truly new.
Finally if the jury could not see the differences between the different between iPhone and SII then basically they really do need to visit an optician!
“Nobody Wins a Nuclear War” But “Success” is Possible. And by winning, he meant “achieving a condition wherein the enemy cannot impose his will on us, but we can impose our will on him.”
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http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb336/index.htm
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Now that the Mobile Patents World Wars have started, the winning strategy involves getting as many strong allies as possible.
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Samsung moves closer to MSFT, GOOG pairs up with INTC and APPL with QCOM and TSM.
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With the new QCOM restructuring, it will be better geared to fight a samsung LTE lawsuit, it if happens.
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Things get complicated when VZ, T pair up with samsung to kill S and CLWR.
@brian M, you haven’t read thru the patents. They’re actually NOT obvious, from the start of the notion of a consistent set of gestures (not patentable), through the drivers, etc that implement it (somewhat patentable) to the higher level of OS functions that distinguish one finger from two, an intentional two-finger gesture but where one finger touched first, etc.
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The patents (as I understand at least one or two) are actually at the OS level that deciphers the intentions based on a new vocabulary of what’s potentially meant, and the current document status. So I think they meet your test, although it appears that you want to set such a high bar that no Apple UI methods could.
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You could apply to go work at the USPTO if you think your ideas are so different from what Apple won, and won against Samsung with. But I don’t think you would be able to rule out the actual patents here, even based on recent Supreme Court restrictions on patent standards. Your view can have merit, but it ain’t going to matter much.
Once upon a time “Apple Tax”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_joqlunu-Y
^
including you Jean-Louis Gassée*:
– Jack Tramiel, we will never forget you!!!
for everybody that forgot…
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4x more ram, 10% faster procesor, 30% higher resolution, DMA ASCI port, colors… for 2.5 x LESS MONEY!
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*I know that you come to Apple after original Mac but…
Best Regards, I really enjoy reading mondaynote.com
…and keep up good work!
Patents should not be given for items that are an obvious way of doing something that is simply enabled by an evolving technology.
Don’t devices using 3G cost a Motorola tax that’s a percent of sales price, not even profits or how much of “their tech” is used, and doesn’t Android have a Microsoft tax? Because it’s Apple anybody can copy anything even if certain things are common sense now? I’m sure 3G is common sense to many engineers and manufacturers by now. Unless Apple users can stop paying Motorola and consortium taxes, why is it so much more evil for Apple to charge some back? I’m against all the “taxes” but attacking Apple separately about it pretends the others aren’t.
I guess 2.5% looks like what they’re asking.
http://www.tuaw.com/2012/02/04/motorola-wants-2-25-percent-of-apple-sales-to-license-patents/
I’m not sure what the 3g/4g general Qualcosmm level royalty “tax” already paid is, since it seems secret or hard to find, unless someone else knows where it is. There’s a lot of companies with “taxes” that get paid from Apple users too, sometimes for patents that anyone can call common sense or silly now.
“Patents should not be given for items that are an obvious way of doing something that is simply enabled by an evolving technology.”
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@Pejman, despite valiant efforts by people who want to deprecate Apple’s innovations, courts and the patent offices are indeed attempting to follow your dictate. It’s the law: patents may not be given for anything obvious.
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Go ahead and read some of these patents. They are not obscure, having been trumpeted by Jobs within seconds of announcing the iPhone, nor trivial, covering, for example specific ways of discriminating between multiple and single touches. They are, as befits a brand new technology, very complex; only small doses of them for me, thank you.
@A, Apple has only recently had its offer to license Moto’s GSM patents, accepted. I’m not even sure about the CDMA ones.
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Moto has acknowledged that the two have a license in principle, where Apple has agreed to pay a rate that the court determines to be fair. Conceivably, Apple and Moto will reach an agreement without the court’s intrusion, despite having failed to do so for 5 years.
@A, license terms are seldom published. They are available to the courts and usually kept under seal. Despite Apple having a contract with Qualcomm, it was confidential and they had to subpoena Qualcomm to disclose it to the court.
Actually, it wasn’t Ballmer who started the “Apple Tax” meme. It began as a Microsoft Tax, the unlisted costs businesses incurred due to the need for extra IT staff trying to keep up with all the problems of running Windows-based computers. This Microsoft Tax was described by several bloggers.
Following in the footsteps of the “me too!” Microsoft copyists, upset that their source of money was being exposed as costing businesses far more than Apple products when all costs, including this “Microsoft Tax” was included, started whining that there was an Apple Tax, too. The media, always ready to take Microsoft’s money and side, amplified the Apple Tax myth and it became a meme.
As an American living in Japan, I know a lot about South Korea. One aspect of that country is that they revel in making knockoff snack products based on Japanese snacks.
Some examples: a “parody” of Kit Kat (http://moe.vg/Tp5r8o) and knockoff of Pocky, a popular stick snack developed by Japan’s Glico (http://moe.vg/Tp5ocC). It’s clear that it’s a part of South Korea’s culture to rip-off stuff, just like China to a degree, with the difference being that Korea is competent enough to do it well. Everyone knows when you go to Korea you’ll see these parody products of Japanese brands, it’s accepted…but isn’t really okay when you’re talking about important, vital technology that someone went to a lot of trouble to develop.
It does seem like Samsung was a special case, that even by purging all emails over two weeks old Apple was still able to pull emails showing how deliberately they copied so much.
I’m still surprised in all the discussions there is very little mention of all the taxes Motorola (or google now) and the 3G/4G gang extorts from any device using 3G or 4G, their attempts to get another 2% or so of sales price (if that’s not more like a tax, not sure how apple could be accused of worse), Microsoft’s “tax” on android and all the other money these companies extract from others, including apple users, and the big hoo ha is a supposed uproar that apple might dare apply their “rights” the way all these other companies getting a free pass are doing.
@Walt French
My point was that there are already non-public royalties paid at the Qualcomm level, as part of Qualcomm’s agreement with Motorola. Apple was claiming since royalties are already part of the price of the chips they are purchasing, why should Motorola(google) double dip and also ask for a percentage of sales price (not even profit).
Interesting looking back at this post. With what now looks like a possible misstrial due to a juror possibly having previous issues with Samsung. Samsung wins over Apple in other judicial regions including a requirement for Apple to publish apologies. It’s clear that the only winners here are the lawyers more reason why the patent system is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be drastically revised.
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