Which brings me back to the litigation with Samsung — the company that is coming to market with products that are every bit as good as Apple’s, and at a lower price to boot. This never-ending litigation is yet another sign that Apple is becoming a spent force. Suing each other “is not what innovative companies do,” said Robin Feldman, a patent law expert at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
Nor has the lawsuit been going smoothly for Apple. One document revealed during the trial was an internal Apple presentation, a slide of which read, “Consumers want what we don’t have” — meaning inexpensive phones with large screens, which Apple doesn’t sell. In the earlier trial, although Apple won a verdict against Samsung, the judge refused to force Samsung to remove certain products from the market, as Apple has demanded. Instead, the case had the perverse effect of validating “the Korean company as a worthy rival and supplied it with free advertising,” writes Kane.
These patent war cases can be — and should be — easily settled, as everyone in the business knows. Every smartphone company is now armed to the teeth with patents, and the most sensible way to deal with the issue is to cross-license the patents. Then the companies can get back to the business of innovating. Apple’s utter refusal to do so suggests that it has become less interested — or less capable — of innovating and more interested in protecting what it has already brought to market.
Or, as Apple’s former general counsel, Nancy Heinen, tells Kane, “When patent lawyers become rock stars, it is a bad sign for where an industry is headed.”
via www.nytimes.com
