With injunctions being granted left, right and center these days it seems that big players in the industry are only interesting in getting money for what they believe is theirs in the form of patents, having innovation suffer as a result. Recently, the Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 have suffered at the hands of so-called patent infringement and forced off of shelves. Motorola and Apple before that met in court again, over patent infringement and the judge residing the case wasn’t exactly amused with the two companies. In fact, Judge Posner had this to say on Apple’s patent on video streaming that was at the center of the case “it’s not a claim to a monopoly of streaming video!”
In a recent interview with Reuters, Richard Posner had this to say about patents in general, “it’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries” expressing his view that patents in the mobile industry aren’t always a good thing, he then went on to liken the industry to that of a jungle saying that, “the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted”. This is no more true than it is of Apple, out of all the major players in the mobile market they seem to be the most blood thirsty and whilst it’s arguable that they are only protecting what’s their own it’s hard to see whether or not Apple’s revenue is hurt by products that apparently infringe on their patents.
Something has to be done about the constant in-fighting of the mobile giants as innovation is a real victim but, more so is the consumer. I’m sure very few would agree with Apple when asked if the Galaxy Nexus copied elements of the iPhone and I wonder if people really think the Galaxy Tab 10.1 looks just like an iPad, that has a completely different screen shape. If there’s a take away from this it’s that there’s at least one Judge out there that has his head screwed on firmly and isn’t afraid to speak up on today’s broken system.
[Source: The Verge]