Apple has gone too far in its patent suit against Samsung Galaxy Tab
Richard Fieldhouse (11 August 2011)
There have been patent wars afoot between technology companies for years which have escalated over the last few months to the point where Apple has gained a temporary injunction in a German court preventing sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the EU... because it is apparently too similar to the iPad.
The court papers cite: "rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in width, a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners."
This is absurd. At this rate you could patent a pushchair, or a wheelbarrow, or even a wheel. The description above covers most of the tablets on the market, but, interestingly perhaps more closely described the (now discontinued) HP Touchpad than it does the Galaxy Tab 10.1. But Samsung has added two extra sins that aren't listed by name:
They have used Google's Android platform which, being semi-open source, attracts much ire from technology rivals... And
Samsung also commits perhaps the greatest sin of all by not being American.
This really has to stop. The idea of patent legislation is to stimulate innovation by rewarding those who develop novel and useful ideas. But here innovation is being stifled. Recently, patent legislation has been used far too often by very large corporations - market incumbents - to choke off rivals.
Google is right to say that patent legislation is overdue for reform. In particular,
Vague, all-encompassing descriptions like "uniformly rounded corners" should should be ignored.
The platform for a computer system (the operating system) is a product type where the largest incumbent in the market is substantially favoured naturally by the network effect. Look how we've all suffered from Microsoft exploiting their Windows operating system monopoly for perhaps a decade after they had delivered the bulk of their innovations. We must not repeat this mistake. Once an operating system holds above a certain share of the market, legislation should force its creators to make it open source and limit, and ultimately eliminate, licence fees paid for its use.
While deep shame should ensure that Apple withdraws this action quickly, it is important to draw lessons from the experience. In particular, the EU competition authorities should ensure that a ruling of this sort from a lower court in one state, arrived at apparently without even inviting submissions from Samsung, should be reviewed immediately. Samsung has invested billions here. There are also potentially around a hundred different kinds of tablet on the market, or in the process of coming to market. Most will have black boarders and rounded corners.
So... note to Apple:
withdraw the patent suit before it gets to the full hearing;
sack the patent law firm currently retained by Apple (Bridges& Mavrakakis);
