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Journalism of Courage
In the mobile industry,intellectual property wars become business by another name
Apple has won this round,as a US court blocked Samsungs Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the grounds that it infringed Apples design patent,and held up the validity of the patent. In the last few years,companies like Apple,Samsung,Microsoft and Motorola have been warring bitterly,at great expense,across jurisdictions,over their products and features.
Software qualifies for both patent and copyright protection and patent-litigation has now become a cumbersome,innovation-sapping exercise. Each company amasses an arsenal of patents,and there is an entire industry of patent trolls,whose sole occupation is to search for evidence of any infringement. Every tiny little feature,like slide to unlock or an inbuilt spell-check,has been declared Apples own,which it zealously seeks to guard from Samsungs predations. While some of these may be genuinely new,the idea of owning the spell-check in this day and age is absurd. Besides,it turns its face against the very nature of technological advance imitating and bettering. The patents skirmishes are,of course,business by another name. These legal injunctions are meant to keep the competitors products off the market until they lose that space altogether. For the time being,the war over intellectual property is going to be as vigorous as the competition to develop the next new thing.
