[polldaddy poll=”5449659″]
Earlier today, Apple won a big victory against Samsung in Europe, after a Dutch court agreed to an injunction against Samsung’s popular line of Galaxy Smartphones, banning them from sale in the EU.
Do you think in suing Samsung over their Android tablets and smartphones that Apple is going too far? Answer our poll and, if you feel like it, we’d love for you to elaborate more in the comments.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
47 responses to “Do You Think Apple’s Going Too Far Trying To Squash The Competition? [Poll]”
John – The premise and wording of your poll question is flawed. Apple isn’t defending their patents to squash the competition. Apple is legally obligated to defend their patent portfolio. Not defending would leave Apple open from a shareholder lawsuit. This isn’t about Apple being a mean corporate big brother. This is Apple fairly and correctly defending their intellectual property that they spent significant money to create.  Look, webOS and Microsoft Win 7 Phone was able to create a new smartphone without ripping off Apple’s IP, why not Samsung?
Samsung ripped off Apple’s UI design. Â That’s plainly obvious.
I don’t think the bloggers at COM actually understand free market capitalism. Â That will explain the wording of the poll.
Nobody allocates the amount of money Apple puts into R&D. This is Apple’s competative advantage.  If Apple invents a better hardware or software design because they spend this money nobody else is willing to spend, they should be able to reap the benifits iof it.  Which means they should be able to patent and defend these designs (within reason) against their competitors. Nobody made a smartphone that looked like an iPhone before 1997. Now they all look like iPhones save a few swoopy oddities. Had Apple never made the iPhone it is doubtful whether any of these companies would make phones that looked like they do today because they simply don;t have the conviction and the corporate culture that would allow them to do so. To most of these companies, design is an afterthought, something you slap onto a product.
There is an argument to be made that any touchscreen phone will inevitably take on the form of a slab with a glass front.  But Samsung takes cloning to new levels with the design of their Android OS skin. Even the speaker and button shapes on the Galaxy S and the edge design is a direct rip off.  So Apple is rightly making an example of them.
i agree apple is the patent  holder and they have every right to defend its intellectual property, i like how other companies spin this into apple doing the wrong thing, “they need to be innovative” thats googles response, as well as samsungs,,, um my answer is,, they are the  innovators,, you are the stealer,, hence apple is mearly defending its innovationsÂ
I would have zero problems with Apple going after Samsung legally, as ultimately douche-chilling it might be. But then doctoring images, that’s totally crossing the line.
Sigh, Apple simply implemented a touchscreen interface. You can’t claim you own unique patent worthy IP for a tablet computing device where the entire device is basically one big touchscreen. That would suggest that nobody could invent tablets. If this were actually the case then Apple shouldn’t be allowed to manufacture laptops because they of course weren’t the first to the market.
I do agree that their Galaxy S phones and TouchWiz are copycats of Apple products why is the Nexus S also in the lawsuit.Â
1. It doesn’t run TouchWiz
2. Samsung has no control over it
3. It looks nothing like the iPhone
Also this site explains why the judge denied the other two Apple patents:Â http://www.osnews.com/story/25…
I think this whole thing is below Apple. They are acting like they are losing money.
I think this whole thing is below Apple. They are acting like they are losing money.
I hate that they think doing something right means you invented it.
it’s a dichotomy for me. on one hand, i’m fearful that apple may – in future years – become the new microsoft behemoth – which is unnerving! on the other hand, all i can remember over the past 15+ yrs is us [apple] being the underdog to the point where we were everyone’s bitch in the computer world. now, it’s the other way around, and i’m glad to finally be on top – for a change!Â
Exactly.
What about a glossy touchscreen, a slab design with rounded metal edge trim, an oblong slit at the top for an earpiece, a centered rounded button at the bottom, and an OS skin with a grid of icons including a green phone icon, a orange gradient music note, etc, etc?  Its very telling that with all the interesting ways Samsung could have innovated (a word they love to throw around like badge of honor) they chose to copy so much from Apple. The grid 10 interface from fusion garage is innovative. Samsung just steals. There is no honor in that at all.
Apple isn’t just defending it’s intellectual portfolio, it’s targeting litigation in countries and areas that hit Samsung’s distribution chains the hardest if they are successful. Also, we are not simply talking about patent infringment here, but also the more squishy idea of ‘design copyright’. These are new tactics and they are designed to keep Samsung products off the shelf. Part of the problem for Samsun is that iPad came out and Samsung had to shelf existing products because they were too similar. It’s very difficult to be totally different in all details. It happens by accident that two tech companies arrive at a similar solution to a problem. For example, there are just so many ways to display icons. But Apple actually used a reconfigured icon arrangement in the 10.1 lawsuit to make it look like Samsung was using the same screen and icon layout, when actually Samsung were using a different style home screen and even app page (different number of columns). Apple have stretched the similarities. When a competitor is taken off the market because of a similar icon, I’m starting to think that this is complete litigious overkill and I start to be rather peeved with Apple for taking away the consumer’s choice.Â
Mark, Intellectual property is intellectual property. It doesn’t matter if it’s a design patent on the “looks” or a technical patent. It’s not hard at all to be different. webOS and Win 7 Phone were much different. Even Android 1.0 was suitably different. You’re just wrong.
No one doctored any images. You would have to be an idiot to think that Apple’s lawyers were that stupid as to obviously shrink down a photo when the actual offending products would be in the courtroom. You obviously don’t know anything about patent law and how attorneys show evidence like this. The whole point was to show that once scaled down to the same size as the iPhone the Samsung unit was a derivative copy. There was nothing underhanded about the scaling. If Samsung came out with a 2 foot high iPhone wannabe Apple would have done the same thing. Scale down the image of the big phone copy to show that the design was copied and when viewed at similar sizes the Samsung version was lifted from the iPhone.
Interesting that those design similarities didn’t “happen by accident” until after the iPod and the iPad had been released.  I’m sure it was just serendipity on Samsung’s part… as well as RIM’s, and Motorola’s.
Funny how nobody does anything “right’ until Apple does it.  Maybe the iPhone and iPad weren’t so obvious after all.
This voting poll is flawed. What other answer would anyone on this site would even think of being the “winner”? Duh.
I voted “Definitely. It’s not like Apple invented the whole idea of touchscreen phones and tablets!”
agreed
For me the iPad isn’t as right as my Asus Transformer.
:-P
I dont like the idea of Apple getting a little abusive of it now dominant position like Microsoft did and does. I don’t want Apple to become “evil” or greedy, and I even love Apple I like to see others trying to compete but hey… if you’re going to compete try actually doing something for yourself, don’t completely rip off the iPhone like Microsoft ripped off Mac OS for years. So even I would like Apple to have competitors so they don’t ever stop trying to be #1, Samsung deserves it
I believe that it would serve apple more to get some money for their ideas. Why not sell the ideas anyway? No one can do smartphone like the iPhone