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Analysis posted Aug 25 2012, 12:56 AM

Category: Economy

Source: InformationLiberation

Apple Wins, Consumers Lose

Chris | InformationLiberation

Prepare yourself, Samsung products are now going to be more expensive, as well as Apple's now that they've won $1.05 billion off their biggest competitor.

Incidentally, Samsung is also Apple's biggest customer. Isn't it neat the way stupid laws get people who are working in harmony at each others necks? The purpose of law is to avoid conflict, intellectual property laws only serve to create it, but same goes for most of the 800,000 laws and regulations on the books, so what's the big deal, right?

Via CNBC:

Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung Electronics on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.05 billion in damages.

[...]The verdict, which came much sooner than expected, could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding mobile computing market.

[...]In a statement after the verdict, Apple said, "We are grateful to the jury for their service and for investing the time to listen to our story and we were thrilled to be able to finally tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trail showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew ... We applaud the court for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

Samsung also issued a post-verdict statement, saying, "Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies ... This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims."

Apparently, the moron jury even awarded damages in cases where Samsung was found not to have infringed. This jury rushed through this case in only three days, despite being called to read 109 pages of instruction and decide on 700 different patent infringement claims. This was a billion dollar lawsuit determined by a bunch of people essentially drafted into slavery through the jury system who obviously did not want to be there, did not want to mediate this dispute, and simply sided with Apple because they foolishly assumed "copying" is "stealing" and they wanted to go home.

Apple said in their final statement, "We applaud the court for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

Yet here is what the founder of Apple and a young Steve Jobs once said, “Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy, great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Well, now they're being shameless about stealing over a billion dollars from Samsung and potentially banning them from the marketplace for "copying."

Of course, copying is not theft, but merely an act of replication, and it pays tribute to the creator, as the saying goes, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." The young Steve Jobs understood this, yet our archaic legal system, and your average American, do not.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

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Anonymous

Posted: Aug 25 2012, 7:56 AM

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203214

So, in your opinion it is OK to steal someone else's work. which involved millions of dollars of research and development? Oh, that's right - copy it. Seems fair. Now, let's see, what do you do for a living? A guy whom you trusted goes to your boss and says, "I can do his (you) work better and you can make more money using me." And your boss says, "OK;. You loose your pay check. But the guy only copied you. What's the big deal!

Stealing is stealing. No matter how bright and shiny and glossy you want to make it. Theft is theft.

I don't support Apple stealing either, by the way. AND Samsung conspired to copy and steal to reduce expenses of getting to the market quicker. But that's OK.

Chris

Posted: Aug 25 2012, 9:46 AM

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Yawn. No one owes you anything, the sooner you accept that the better off your life will be.

The example you use of a person competing in the marketplace for a job has absolutely nothing to do with intellectual property, in any way, according to any law, nor any interpretation of any law. Competing for a job is not stealing, I have no idea how you connected that with IP laws in your brain.

Stealing physical goods is stealing, copying infinitely reproducible digital data deprives no one of any property, it creates a new copy, the original creator loses nothing. If you could copy and paste food, not to do so because you're "depriving the original grower of his monopoly on said food" would be moronic to the extreme, yet that's the same line of logic which is currently striving to deprive people of the bounties which come from 21st century technology.

Listen to this speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSMDcm434B0

Bill

Posted: Aug 25 2012, 12:49 PM

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67212

I think your opinion is easy to have when it's two 800-pound gorillas duking it out and the winner is already (by some measures) the most successful company in the world.

But what about if it were a large company copying the ideas of a single person without billions of dollars in the bank? Something like that Greg Kinnear movie (never seen it but I'm familiar with the plot synopsis) where he invents intermittent windshield wipers, shows them to the big car companies, who say they're not interested and then turn around and start putting them on cars without giving him any credit or compensation. Is that still OK?

Do you completely reject the idea of patents and ownership of ideas?

Chris

Posted: Aug 25 2012, 1:33 PM

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The funny thing about patent law is the little guy can almost never afford to actually fight in court for his patents, whereas the mega corporations can put their little guy competition out of business with a mere accusation as the cost of defending yourself is astronomical. As is to be expected, despite the few instances where "the little guy" is victorious, the vast majority of the cases are the big guys crushing the little guys that are their competition by using the court system as a blunt object to hammer them with.

As to the "inventor" of "intermittent windshield wipers," just the idea is laughable on it's face. There were already windshield wipers, he just had the idea to make them run intermittently, gee whiz, what a freaking genius! Surely no one could have ever come up with such an "invention." LOL! Sounds like a textbook case of why patents are a complete joke and have nothing to do with innovation. Here's my idea: lets make cars which run faster. OMG someone made a faster car, pay up that's my idea!

Reading his wiki entry, the guy had to spend $10 million to win $30 million, he threw his life away filing suit after suit, as almost all these patent trolls do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

As with all ideas, execution is what matters, ideas themselves are worthless.

Anonymous

Posted: Aug 25 2012, 1:48 PM

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6464

Chris, re: the third paragraph in your first post. Exactly.
The entertainment industry has been trying to convince us that downloading music has the same effect as stealing a CD. A little bit of logic will dispel that notion. If a store has 10 copies of a certain CD and I shoplift one, they now have 9. That store is out the merchandise and the money it took for the store to obtain it. If I download that same album, nobody is out anything. Nobody has less of anything than they had before.
These "anti-piracy" ads, efforts, and statements put forth by Hollywood are so laughable and only a moron would believe them.

Bill

Posted: Aug 25 2012, 10:13 PM

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67212

So do you reject the concept of intellectual property altogether?

Peter

Posted: Aug 27 2012, 4:22 AM

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81161

This is what IP-law is being used for, shutting up people :
https://www.youtube.com/irancontrascumdid911
Irancontrascumdid911's youtube-channel was a collection of 9/11 and other State-crime news-clips, all sourced and posted under the fair-use clause .

No, Samsung did not 'steal' anything from Apple, they still have all their gadgets, do they not ?
What was stolen here was Justice . A Silicon Valley-jury in a Silicon Valley Court decided to side with a US-corporation against a foreign company .
Just to give you an idea of how insane the US patent-law is :
https://s3.amazonaws.com/phandroid/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/slide-to-unlock.jpg

Anonymous

Posted: Aug 28 2012, 2:20 AM

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58164

So just to be clear for people who may not realise, chris's views on property rights is that ALL things should be privately owned by someone, as that's the ONLY true way for all things to be FREE.
'ALL' things means the oceans, the moon, presumably air itself. However this does not include patents as patents being ideas are not actually things. Have I understood him correctly

Chris

Posted: Aug 28 2012, 3:52 AM

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Yes, I reject IP altogether. And yes I believe in total privatization (absent a state, of course, I do not support "public-private" partnerships) but I come at it more from an utilitarian point of view rather than a moral "natural rights" one.

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