Serving a bit of their own medicine, Apple is facing an injunction for all their 3G iOS products in Germany, including all the iPhones and the iPad 3G versions. Apple can’t really be defended here as they are the ones starting the whole patent abuse mess by banning Samsung’s tablets in Germany, and trying to do the same in Australia, where the injunction has also been reversed in favor of Samsung. This week doesn’t look good at all for Apple.
If Apple didn’t try to push so hard the idea that their competitors products deserved to be banned from the market over some trivial patents or some silly design ideas, implying that their competitors can’t have a tablet with rounded corners or flat surfaces, maybe they wouldn’t find themselves in this situation.
They basically forced the Android manufacturers’ hand to try the very same strategy with them. And since the Android manufacturers are stronger together and have more patents in aggregate, this means that the whole thing is going to backfire against Apple. Apple won’t go down easily without a fight, but when the media will be increasingly more against them and the whole blogosphere, too, they will have no chance but to retreat and save whatever face they have left.
I’m hoping that once they are done with Apple, the Android manufacturers will go against Microsoft for clearly abusing the patent system, by trying to collect patent fees just as large as for their own whole OS with trivial patents that they are keeping secret, only to stop their competitor to rise in the market. If B&N gets the anti-trust commission to get involved in this, too, the manufacturers’ job will get a lot easier.
Of course some of them will still be reluctant to fight against Microsoft, because they are also using other Microsoft based products in other markets. Samsung for example is a notebook manufacturer, and this is probably the main reason why Microsoft could even get to Samsung with their “patent deal”. They most likely promised them some Windows license discounts in return for accepting to pay for the Android patents.
The win in this case for Microsoft is because Microsoft gets to brag to other manufacturers that “even Samsung agrees Android is infringing”, even though that may not be the main reason Samsung accepted to pay in the first place. Of course until Microsoft’s patent deals are fully exposed, we won’t know the whole truth. But I think this is the main reason why Microsoft would much rather prefer WP7 was dominating than to have to get licenses from Android manufacturers. This whole deal is on very shaky land, and it could eventually blow up in Microsoft’s face.