“Apple has now been suing Android device makers (initially HTC, a dispute that was settled in 2012; Motorola since 2010 and Samsung since 2011) for 49 months,” Florian Müller writes for FOSS Patents. “Yes, 49 months ago to the day, Apple filed its first Android lawsuit, and Steve Jobs, who called this a “holy war” in an internal email and according to his official biography was prepared to ‘go thermonuclear war,’ said the following: ‘We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions [or take action] […] [C]ompetitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.'”
“It’s true that a 50-patent jury trial wouldn’t be manageable, but there could be multiple trials in California and, especially, in multiple venues. Nokia asserted 50 different patents against HTC in seven countries.,” Müller writes. “Apple has not even filed a second ITC complaint against Samsung (while Nokia brought two against HTC, and Apple itself once brought a second one against HTC).”
“If you… want to wage a holy war, you need thermonuclear patents. And if you accuse others of ‘stealing,’ you firstly need to prove that you own what you say they steal,” Müller writes. “After 49 months of holy, supposedly-thermonuclear war and in light of Apple’s counsel claiming that Apple could have taken 50 patents to this trial and proved that Samsung infringes all of them, I can’t see, with the sole exception of ‘rubber-banding,’ a single feature — and I mean something that people would describe as a feature in a few words, not a small aspect of one feature — of which Apple has proven in court that it can prevent Android device makers from delivering it to their customers in a way that provides great functionality and an uncompromised user experience.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Until we see otherwise, and this goes for the company’s entire history, Apple’s lawyers – from those who are assigned to protect Apple’s innovations via copyright, patents and otherwise all the way to trial lawyers in patent infringement cases – aren’t worth a shit. Apple’s myriad legal efforts have wasted millions upon millions of dollars and hours upon hours to accomplish pretty much nothing of substance over the span of years (decades if you go back to Apple v. Microsoft over the Mac).
We continue to hope against hope for some sort of miraculous outcome that approaches justice for Apple.