By Brian X. Chen, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/technology/a-verdict-that-alters-an-industry.html
The federal court jury’s decision Friday in a smartphone patent lawsuit between Apple and Samsung is expected to alter the dynamics of the highly competitive mobile phone industry.
For Samsung, which lost on almost every count in the closely watched
trial in San Jose, Calif., and was ordered to pay more than $1 billion
in damages, the implications are more obvious. It will have to be
cautious in how it designs products to avoid being accused of imitating
Apple.
…
Apple has been the smartphone market leader. It defined the category in
the way phones look and how users interact with them. Most popular
smartphones today are a slab of glass and metal controlled through a
touch-screen full of icons arrayed on the screen. Because consumers are
familiar with that format, phones from various makers tended to look and
behave similarly.
Those similarities might be the first things to change. “Companies in
the future are going to have to consider how much they want their
product to look and feel like their competitors’ products in terms of
shape, size, the way it feels, the way it looks, how the icons are
similar, or will the icons be quite dissimilar” said Robert W. Dickerson
Jr., a lawyer who is the head of the West Coast intellectual property
practice for Dickstein Shapiro, a patent law firm not involved in the
Samsung-Apple case.
Microsoft and its main hardware partner Nokia, at the very least, should
have an easier time of it. Robert Barr, executive director of the
University of California Berkeley’s Center for Law and Technology, said
that the user interface — the icons and other features that users see
and touch — of the Nokia Windows phones look distinctly different from
the iPhone.
Nokia, a longtime maker of phones, also has a thick portfolio of
patents to protect itself. For Microsoft and Nokia, which are trying to
make a comeback in smartphones, this design distinction is a clear
advantage in the internecine patent wars sweeping the industry as much
as it is a marketing advantage.
Things could get tougher, however, for Google, or any phone maker using
its Android software. Android phones are the most common smartphones on
the market today. Samsung is the world’s largest maker of smartphones
and it has been quickly gaining market share. Collectively, the various
Android phones from Samsung and other makers easily outsell Apple’s
iPhones.
While Google is not involved in this case, Apple was clearly going after
Android all along, said Robert P. Merges, professor of law and
technology at University of California Berkeley School of Law. If other
handset makers using Android fear that Apple will take them on and win,
might they shy away from Android? “There are a lot more players in the
Android world who could be involved in the future in litigation,” he
said. “And it’s going to raise the cost of everyone in the Android
system if the damages stick.”
Shifting to a less popular software system, like Windows or even
Research in Motion’s operating system expected to arrive next year,
gives Apple an advantage in the marketplace.“It’s not good news for
Google,” Mr. Merges said. “Apple’s real target is the Android ecosystem,
the Android world, everything having to do with Androids. That’s really
what they are targeting here.”