“Apple Inc’s increasingly effective patent war against rivals like Samsung Electronics may mask its real target: arch-foe Google Inc.,” Poornima Gupta reports for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, ya think?
“The maker of the iPad and iPhone has sued three of the largest manufacturers of Google’s Android-based devices — Samsung, Motorola and HTC — for multiple patent infringements across multiple countries, pointing out ‘slavish copying’ of design and ‘look and feel,'” Gupta reports. “And the courts are beginning to listen: recent success in blocking sales of Samsung’s latest Galaxy tablet in most of Europe and Apple’s challenges to the Korean giant in Australia reflect an aggressive effort to defend its top position in the red-hot mobile market from the runaway success of Android.”
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Gupta reports, “Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co, said Apple is starting to flex its patent muscle with some early success but its real battle is with the Android software. ‘Apple doesn’t really care too much about the actual OEMs.’ …Any injunction won by Apple, if enforced, could mean that Android may be forced to take out the offending feature from its software design. ‘That would make it less attractive and people would go elsewhere,’ Laurie said. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said rivals are responding to Android’s success with lawsuits ‘as they cannot respond through innovations.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Schmidt left off the rest of his sentence: …because we appropriate them as quickly as possible, patents be damned.
Gupta reports, “A less visible benefit of Apple waging and winning patent battles against the likes of Samsung, HTC and Motorola would be that Android may effectively no longer be free because of potential licensing costs that need to be paid to Apple… ‘All this will end up making Android less ‘free’, Jean-Louis Gassee, venture capitalist and a former Apple executive, said. ‘But by how much? Five dollars a handset, no problem. Fifteen dollars — then it is trouble.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]