“Whether the home field advantage was a factor or not [in the Apple vs. Samsung patent fight], the result was startling and unequivocal: a near-total victory for Apple. Almost all of Apple’s patents were upheld (the exception being their purported ownership of the basic concept of devices with rounded corners), and the jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion of the $2.5 billion they demanded from Samsung,” Andy Ihnatko writes for The Chicago Sun-Times.
“…If the decision stands, it’ll make it far, far more difficult, expensive, and risky to be a company that designs phones and tablets,” Ihnatko writes. “Samsung will be fine. The biggest losers here are consumers. If the verdict stands, then the costs of the judgment will be reflected in the cost of mobile devices. Furthermore, other manufacturers will feel the need to buy Apple’s official permission to build useful phones, passing down the possible $20-per-handset fee. And it’s possible that the next great phone, the one that shames the iPhone the same way that the iPhone buried the Blackberry, will never make it to market. Designing and selling an advanced smartphone just became a dangerous business.”
Ihnatko writes, “Friday’s verdict doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like the day when Apple lost a hunk of its public persona as sweet hippies motivated by excellence and freedom, who win by making the best products.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You see, because the “sweet hippies” at Apple are supposed provide free multi-billion-dollar R&D for the rest of the world or something.
If Apple really thought the way Andy imagines they do, why did Steve Jobs patent Apple’s iPhone innovations?
Andy’s treacle makes no sense.
Three decades of being ripped off with impunity are more than enough.
Today [August 25, 2012] was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.
Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than we knew.
The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.
I am very proud of the work that each of you do.
Today, values have won and I hope the whole world listens. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, August 25, 2012
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tom R.” for the heads up.]
sweet hippies?
I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that line.
I’m done with Andy.
Ok, who are you and what have you done with Andy.
My, how the mighty have fallen. I have always enjoyed his writings and never had much disagreement with him until today. He was a giant and now I can barely see him.
There he is standing behind the refrigerator. Oh, he is the refrigerator.
I kid, I kid, I love Andy.
Methinks Andy is being overwhelmed with hate mail right now. I’d write him too, I just don’t care enough about him to admonish him for taking a side contrary to Apple’s enviable position.
The heart of this for me, goes back to Bill Gates reverse-engineering the two Macintoshes on loan from Sculley and then had the nerve to tell the world he invented the Desktop and the Trash can.
I feel vindicated and validated by this decision in that Apple has always remained true to us, the 3-Percenters who kept Apple alive long enough for Steve Jobs to come back and save the company from certain doom. For our loyalty, Apple has rewarded us handsomely, don’t you think?
What I feel right now for Apple is, what a long strange trip it’s been.
Andy,
I know that back in the day we all downloaded music off the internet to build up our collections. But that was taking money out of the pockets of the rapacious Labels not the artists. Besides we had previously bought copies as 45s, LPs, cassettes, CDs and even 8 tracks. That paid the artists the first time.
Apple did all the work, all the research, all the design and leased all the patents they needed to revolutionize the cell phone industry.
Now the rapacious copiers are stealing from the innovators, the good guys. This is just wrong. Apple is the artist. The stealers and the telcos are the bad guys.
If Samsung can’t copy any more they will have to innovate or die. If they innovate, where is the downside Andy?
If they don’t innovate and drop out of the cell phone game, where is the downside Andy?
Hey Guys lets forgive (Andy) Because he and (Leo Laporte) seems to think that it is Ok to rip off Someone else’s IP, Because the ends Justifies the means. as SAMDUNG did, By all means Necessary. Who the hell cares about what these guys say anyway, they are all Bloviating Idiots. Fuck em all.
(Thumbs up to Steve Jobs 4 giving us such a great Company)
It amazes me that writer after writer sees this just verdict as somehow being bad for consumers. Since when is a company that steals IP from it’s largest business partner and sells it as it’s own good for anybody?
As an Apple shareholder and customer the only thing I have to say about suing Fandroid maker SameSong is why did it take so freaking long? HTC next, Google a little later on.
hey I should host my own website RIPOFF andy’s articles and podcasts and call them my own and get ad revenue.
if andy says samsung etc can do it surely he can’t deny me the same privilege?
Plagiarism is a perfect analogy for IP theft.
Robbing someone of their intelligence and putting your own name on it, is a failure on so many levels. Cheaters try and mask their weakness but they always leave forensic evidence.
Samsung’s designers were told by Google to back off and they still didn’t get the message; don’t shit the bed.
Even after Steve Jobs gave fair warning to the world, when he introduced iPhone, don’t copy it because “we patented the hell out of it”, what does everyone do, copy Apple.
What else is there to do but copy the most successful company ever in the history of companies, and they’re still breaking financial records everyday.
another perfect example of the stupidity breaking out all over the web about this. how, as AI suggests, will a mere $20 added to the price of Android smartphones harm consumers or stop new products coming to market? that’s just about 1% of the $2000 total you pay for a phone+2 year contract. $20!! talk about chicken-feed.
patehtic.
Great article…it’s satire right?
Well, it does read like it belongs at The Onion.
I would have to question the intelligence of anybody who takes this piece of writing seriously.
Does Apple’s win stifle phone and tablet design?
Sorry Samsung, it doesn’t. 🙂
Apple’s win has proved that Samsung was not involved in design, per se, but in copying Apple’s innovative designs.
Andy is wrong. He missed a key, key point: The jury found that Samsung WILLFULLY copied Apple and WILLFULLY violated its patents, not just that it happened to violate them. The jury foreman even said that emails from Google telling Samsung to stop copying so closely were critical to their decision.
This won’t stop development of other smartphones, but it will make phone manufacturers do their own work. Why do you think Microsoft Windows Phone looks so different from the iPhone? Because Microsoft’s IP lawyers are smart.
Ihnatko doesn’t get it.
This guy is an ass. Samsung stole, that’s right stole designs and made money from it. I guess in Chicago, theft is good. Hence all the scandals
What did anyone expect?
Andy is a self-important moron who couldn’t even understand major plot points of The Avengers movie. I lost all respect for the man when he outed himself as a doofus on a 5by5 podcast discussing that film.
He clearly missed major points of the movie, but rather than going back to see if he missed something, (which he clearly did) he climbed aboard the world’s most annoying high horse and spent the whole podcast focussing the attention on himself–prancing around like a huge know-it-all “Lord of the Geeks.”
He blamed the director and writers for not making these points clear enough, when my eight year-old nephew who I took to the film had no problem recalling the points, and the moments in the film where Andy’s questions were answered. I couldn’t believe the man was so daft that he couldn’t follow along with a comic book movie plot, yet was amazed at how he peacocked around the podcast like he had a superior opinion.
After that, the bloom really fell off the Inatko rose for me, and I can see him for the fool he is. Basically, if it isn’t printed in a Press Release for him, Andy can’t get it, and if it is printed out for him, he’ll run with it no questions asked.