In what some are calling "the patent trial of the century," a federal grand jury in California last week decided in favor of Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung. In addition to awarding Apple more than $1 billion in damages, the jury found that Samsung violated several iPhone utility and design patents when it created phones such as the Galaxy S II and the Fascinate.
Following the verdict, Apple requested that eight Samsung phones be banned from sale in the U.S. A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for December. In the meantime, Samsung has said it will appeal the case. Many observers believe Friday's verdict could open the door to Apple pursuing litigation against other companies -- including Google, maker of the Android operating system used in Samsung phones and tablets.
To discuss the key issues of the case, Knowledge@Wharton turned to Wharton management professor David Hsu and Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Andrea Matwyshyn.
Edited versions of both transcripts appear below.
In the first conversation, Hsu talked about the case's impact on innovation as it relates to design and creativity.
Knowledge@Wharton: David, first of all, could you tell us some of the winners and losers as a result of the jury's decision?
David Hsu: Apple is the clear winner here, and the device makers on the Android system are the ones that are going to be scrambling and trying to figure out in what areas they're going to have to retrofit, or even redesign, their products. Of course, Google is kind of the company lurking in the background -- it isn't being attacked directly, but it's getting closer [to being directly impacted]. My interpretation of why Apple leadership was so insistent on pursuing this case to the end is because they feel strongly that the design elements in conjunction with the functional elements of their products really make the user experience, and they want to protect that. As a result, the likes of Samsung, HTC, Motorola Mobility (owned by Google) and the other large handset makers on the Android platform are the ones that will be trying to figure out their next moves.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are there other winners besides Apple? I know there's been some discussion that Microsoft, which makes the Windows mobile operating system used in Nokia devices, could get a boost from this decision because their product is so different from Apple/Android.
Hsu: I think that may be true in that this opens up the landscape of competition beyond just the functionality. Maybe it would be useful to take one step back and to analyze the patents that were under dispute here. A number of them were on the design side, so it's not protecting the functionality of the innovation, but rather the packaging of it. And then a few of the others did not go to the core of the operating system, but were about some of the more design-oriented aspects, [such as] the [feature in which pages viewed on Apple's iOS operating system "bounce back" into place when a user reaches the top or bottom] or the array of the icons on the grid.
I interpret it as a strengthening of design-related patents. Previously, it was the case that if you were a furniture designer and came up with an innovative design, that did not necessarily stop competitors from coming in and marketing say, an "Eames-like" chair, so long as they were clear that it was not the genuine product. [The Apple/Samsung case indicates] that there seems to be a broadening of the protection of design elements. And so this, I think, broadens the landscape for how companies -- including electronics companies or fashion design companies -- will seek protection of their creative efforts, their intellectual property.
For the direct competitors in the handset space, [the implications] will play out in terms of acquiring patents, as we've already seen over the last two years or so. There has been lots of interest in trying to acquire whole "patent portfolios" that surround smartphones. Obviously, the smartphone is going to be the Swiss Army knife of the 21st century -- it already is, and is becoming more so. And as a result, there is almost a land grab for the various kinds of more elemental patents in intellectual property that undergird that platform.
So to summarize my answer, I think that this case will broaden the landscape of competition. It may open the landscape a little bit more. You mentioned Nokia and Microsoft, and clearly they have their own operating systems for the smartphone hardware, and they may be kind of waiting on the edges. But it is pretty clear that the dominant competition, at least right now, is the Android versus the Apple operating system. So this is why the case was billed "the [patent] trial of the century," as a result of the two large manufacturers going head-to-head in this battle.
Knowledge@Wharton: So you don't think that one impact will be Nokia and Microsoft immediately elbowing out Samsung, HTC, Google and the rest of the Android-based phones? It would be for the number one space, since Apple phones are really number two in the U.S. market.
Hsu: No, I don't think that this is going to radically reconfigure the landscape because in this kind of platform-oriented competitive space, there tend to be tipping points. And there has to be enough of a critical mass of users, a developer community and support by the companies to really enable the critical mass because people are not necessarily just looking at today's functionality: They're trying to anticipate the functionality down the road as they decide to adopt one platform or another.
While I think that there's going to have to be some redesign [as a result of this case] -- not only in the smartphone market but also in the tablet market, where these operating systems naturally share a common code -- what we're going to see if anything, is perhaps more of a creative or innovative effort by the manufacturers of the Android platform to try to differentiate themselves.
But I do think that there's a window now, a little bit of a window of opportunity for Microsoft and Nokia to take advantage of this particular event. Whether or not they'll be able to successfully navigate that obviously remains to be seen.
rest at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3069
No comments:
Post a Comment