As a jury has been selected for Apple and Samsung’s US based patent trial, one which has seen the a sales ban of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets and Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones in the US.
Meanwhile, Samsung’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Packingham has been speaking to Wired magazine (as seen in News.com.au) in depth about how Samsung and Apple are “fighting about rectangles” – and fighting, of course, about patents.
It’s about who has the rights to what technologies and what that means for the party then said to be infringing on those patents. It is a sales ban, a court imposed license fee when then “opens up” that technology by court order to anyone willing to pay what is presumably going to be a reasonable fee, something that Apple might not want to see happen as FOSS Patents recently suggested.
So, despite court cases in other parts of the world, most notably in recent times in the UK where a judge decreed Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 “not cool enough” to be mistaken for an Apple iPad and thus allowed to remain on sale, the court battle still rages in the US.
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The US battle is still to be fought with Reuters reporting in greater detail that a jury has finally been selected in Apple and Samsung’s near iGladitorial Droid-fight-fest.
10 jurors have been selected, with Google and Apple employees rejected, some holders of tech patents rejected too, with Reuters noting in more formal terms that an unemployed “video game enthusiast” was selected for the jury, as was a guy who sells insurance and a dude who works as a “project manager” for AT&T.
In theory, there’s billions of dollars at stake, as was the case between the Oracle vs Google trial over Java and Android.
While that case and its outcome has had no effect in Samsung getting its banned products re-instated any faster, the facts are that Apple’s biggest “co-opetitor” to date, Samsung, has become so good that its products are clearly inspired – and improved upon – by the clever Korean engineers, designers, manufacturers, processor experts, screen guys, battery guys and the multitudes more that are working at Samsung to create smartphones of the calibre it obviously can achieve – and which is able to fiercely and, as alleged by the patent disputes, unfairly, challenge and copy Apple’s iPhones and iPads.
Samsung has been able to make quick modifications to tablets in the past to get around some court imposed restrictions, showing Samsung’s power in being able to quickly re-tool itself and deliver a different, non-infringing design.
Apple, of course, gets smarter too in the way it tries to sue Samsung, in the hopes of making simple redesigns not enough to get around infringing behaviour.
In the end, all razors have handles, and all razors have blades. All cars have four wheels and most utes do have trays. TVs are square no longer, AA cells that grow ever stronger, keyboards keyboards everywhere, from the buttons-real to not really there.
Glowing screens of rectangular shape, most superheroes have a cape, all cars they do have steering wheels, they’ve much in common with look and feels.
Which company will win, which lawyers are enriched, which judgements are then made and which appeals are pitched – they’re all for a time still coming, they’re all for a judgement to be, before we know who is winning – and who owns what monopoly.
Samsung’s rebellious forces launched the Galaxy SIII rebel fleet against the gargantuan iPhone 4S “iStar”, able to destroy entire mobile networks with a single blast of new iOS editions, but with the flaw of not yet having the iPhone 5 for sale to a growing, hungry public waiting impatiently for a new iPhone 5 to appear while not purchasing iPhone 4S models in the same quantity as iPhone 4 models in the same time during the year previous, Samsung was able to sell 10m Galaxy SIII models as Apple’s sales dipped 30%.
Meanwhile, the Apple Empire is set to strike back with its new iPhone 5, a larger, more powerful iStar model that, even though it has not launched yet, is fully operational – and very soon to be complete.
Samsung must be counting its lucky stars that its SIII model hasn’t been banned as well, while moving on with sales of its stylus-equipped Note series tablets and phablets, including the upcoming Note 2 phablet follow the current original Note model.
So… the fight continues, with a carefully selected jury now with the responsibility of deciding who’s who in the patent zoo and who owes what to whom, when, why and how much. If at all.
Which is something we will see – in a trial that is supposed to take four weeks. I guess we’ll all see about that, too.
In the meantime, happy mobile computing on whichever smartphones and tablets of any type take your fancy, and may Samsung and Apple’s battles be tried fairly and with as much win/win as possible for both sides so that the focus is on genuine competition and ever improving products for all users.
