“It’s all about integrity and respect: you have them, you show them,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “That’s Apple [AAPL] CEO Tim Cook’s unspoken message when he said he’d like to end the Android wars, but it’s going to take effort from Google to make this happen. It’s going to take an apology and an admission.”
“‘I would highly prefer to settle than to battle,’ Cook told analysts after last night’s Apple financial call. But that’s not an admission the company knows it can’t fight on, it’s the sad shrug of a reluctant warrior, prepared to fight, but ready to make peace,” Evans writes.
I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it. We just want people to invent their own stuff. And so if we could get to some kind of arrangement where we could be assured that’s the case and a fair settlement on the stuff that’s occurred, I would highly prefer to settle versus battle. But it — the key thing is that it’s very important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, April 24, 2012
“I read this as meaning that Apple wants to settle the outstanding patent disagreements, wants to reach a point at which it can be certain its competitors won’t emulate every user interface improvement, and wants compensation for previous hurts,” Evans writes. “I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position. Particularly since Apple’s enemies are attempting to use FRAND-type patents against the firm in a defensive maneuver. If the competition were secure in their positions they wouldn’t feel the need to break the spirit of industry-wide, standards-based patent understandings in order to defend themselves.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.