Story The fight began last year when Apple sued Samsung in multiple countries, accusing the South

Korean company of slavishly copying the iPhone and iPad. Samsung countersued. Apple had sought more than $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung, which has disputed that figure. The companies are rivals, but also have a $5 billion-plus supply relationship. Apple is Samsungs biggest customer for microprocessors and other parts central to Apples devices. Apples charges that Samsung copied its designs and features are widely viewed as an attack on Google Inc and its Android software, which drives Samsungs devices and has become the most-used mobile software. The trial on Apples home turf the worlds largest and most influential technology market is considered the most important. Samsungs attorneys maintained Apple had no sole right to geometric designs such as rectangles with rounded corners. They called Apples damage claim ridiculous and urged the jury to consider that a verdict in favor of Apple could stifle competition and reduce choices for consumers. The South Korean company also didnt believe Apple could or should be allowed to claim patent protection on design elements like the form of a rectangle, or the front flat surface embodied on the iPhone. Apple, for its part, considered its feature and design patents to be very high up on the intellectual property food chain and demonstrating their validity was critical to a much wider war against Android. Apple hoped its relationship with Samsung would make filing an actual lawsuit unnecessary. Yet instead of wilting under Apples pressure, Samsung instead pressed its own patent claims, including a critical one relating to how mobile products send and receive information over wireless networks. But Samsung had committed to license its wireless patents on fair terms to competitors over the years, in exchange for the technology becoming part of the industry standard. The jury did not completely grant Apples demand for at least $2.5 billion, Hogan said, but they wanted to send a message to the industry at large that patent infringing is not the right thing to do, not just Samsung. The NDCA verdict starkly contrasts decisions made by courts in a number of other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Korea, which have previously ruled that we did not copy Apples designs. These courts also recognized our arguments concerning our standards patents.

Apples Arguments: Apple claims that Samsung has violated three of its patents: actionable linking, slide-to-unlock, and touchscreen word suggestion. If found guilty, Samsung would be forced to remove these features from its devices. Apple also claims that Samsung ripped the feel of the iPhone, meaning the rectangular shape with rounded corners. The Cupertino-based, giant wants more than $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung for these alleged violations. Apple has more arsenal to back up its claims that Samsung ripped off its designs intentionally. According to tech website, AllThingsD it seems Apple is going to use Samsungs own office documents to prove that Google had told them that the design was too close to the iPad. Samsungs Arguments: Samsung has accused Apple of copying the design for the iPhone from Sony. MacWorld reports that according to internal Apple documents submitted to a California court on Wednesday, these reveal that Apple relied heavily on Samsungs design. Samsung has also claimed that Apple violated patents on mobile communications systems, as well as features like taking a photo on a phone and seamlessly emailing it. The Apple-Samsung trial might look like a fight between two big, bad corporate kings who are unwilling to compromise, but the truth is that if either side gets a win, the people who will suffer the most will be consumers. If Samsungs devices are banned, consumers can say goodbye to choice.

What Apples win signals? Apples clear victory in its patent battle with Samsung in the US is a huge short term loss for consumers everywhere. Samsung has emphasised the loss to consumers after its defeat, while Apple has talked about the gain for the American patent system and innovation. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in-between. The loss for consumers is temporary, since the rivals will now redouble their efforts to beat Apple ensuring innovation and better products. But there is no denying the short-term loss to consumers. Samsung will have to fork out $1.05 billion to Apple, but the customers of both Apple and Android devices will end up paying more for their products: the old premium in the case for Apple products will get reinforced, and users of the latter will pay higher prices as other device manufacturers pay Apple more licensing technology they already use. Instead, in the near future, as several Samsung and Android devices go off the market, the consumer will also see a shortage of choice.

First, the world does not like monopoly. It likes choice and competition. The verdict has the effect of reducing choice and competition. This means the losers will now band together more often to beat Apple in whichever way they can. Apple has thus put itself in the same category that Microsoft saw itself in around 10-15 years ago, when everybody from consumers to antitrust activists went after its operating systems monopoly.

In favor of Samsung: How on earth can a rectangular shape with rounded edges be patented. At this rate a company just has to patent all kinds of shapes & then no one else can make a cell phone. This is atrocious. Some Judge in the same land, in a dispute between Motorola and Apple, just 2 months back, wondered how such patents are givable on shape and size and dismissed. San Diego Jurists are Patently erred and the Wrong Will sure be re done or to be done in the interest of common consumers. Let apple sell only to Rich and Aristocrats ONLY. Its Simple...its not Apple vs Samsung but its US vs rest of the world. US wants to retain the monopoly so that they can keep raking in money, which otherwise was going to Korea (Samsung Makers)

In favor of Apple: It is very easy to criticise sitting hear in India. Do you know the extent of investment they make in research. By this std you will also approve cheap immitation of all indian and international brands by cheap immitators from Ulhasnagar and Delhi. It is like mother carrying child for nine months and sombody runs away stating to be her child. The amount of risk that is taken ( many lives / careers would be at risk) shall be of gigantic proportion. In the first place, no one dares to do such huge investments, if he knows that it can be snatched or copied by somebody very easily. Apple is right. No country / economy can help. Apple has won rightly. I am glad. Justice prevails. However, the idea behind this article is really good. The questions really make lot of sense. Things like $1.05 billion penalty is shit. Its negligible. Samsung has made 10 times this so far and continue to make. If the true justice had to prevail, Samsung must permanently stop making smart phones of all the violated features as found in the decree. Is this applicable to global market or only US market? many questions are there. Hence the phrase ' Patently absurd' is just apt. Also Coming to cheaper alternatives that country like India needs, yes, we need them. But within the framework of legality only, it must be achieved. Cannot help. When there is market, alternatives arise. I think some more light must be thrown on 'what samsung cannot do from now onwards, due to this decree' & so on.

The benefit to public is never a justification for taking away private property, the question is whether products\designs belong to their inventors. The emphatic answer to that is yes, there is nothing that can belong more to the creator or innovator than the products of his creative mind. It is not for us to sit here and debate whether it should be his for 3 years or 30years, it belongs to him in perpetuity. What will have been left to share had apple not created the phone in the first place? Patents are the biggest incentive for innovation and that is what has driven US to become the innovation hub. Nobody innovates in India, because there is no incentive due to lack of strong patent system. So is the future of the country where only political connections win and survive.

What Apples victory in its patent dispute with Samsung shows is that the legal system guiding patents in the US is woefully skewed in favour of inventor companies and against the consuming public at large, for whose welfare patents have been instituted, the theory being that temporary monopoly for the inventor of useful innovations would promote a slew of innovations that collectively enrich the consumers. Samsung is unlikely to be significantly hurt by the fine of $1.05 billion. The potential sufferers are people on the wrong side of the digital divide, all the would-be users of inexpensive smartphones to access high-speed data. If patents make most smartphone technologies too expensive for manufacturers of cheap handsets to incorporate into their products, the masses at large would be deprived of what promises to be one of the most potent sources of mass emancipation from ignorance and poor access to the mainstream world. The real questions that arise from the verdict are as follows. Are any of the Apple patents that Samsung is found to have wilfully infringed integral to the Android platform, or are these only Samsungs violations, which it can get rid of in its next iteration? Should patents in the world of fast-changing microelectronics and information technology have a much shorter life span than the 20 years patents have in general? Would three years be enough? Does any member of the digirati carry a phone that is more than three years old? Should any company keep profiting from a patent to a degree that makes a technology that is obsolete from the point of view of all high-end users still beyond the reach of the less affluent?