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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSamsung-what a crappy company
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/06/apple-samsung-smartphone-patent-war.printThey took out 10,000 jobs at Pioneer. They did it to everyone. This is pure larceny of multiple companies.
The Great Smartphone War
For three years, Apple and Samsung have clashed on a scale almost unprecedented in business history, their legal war costing more than a billion dollars and spanning four continents. Beginning with the super-secret project that created the iPhone and the late Steve Jobs’s fury when Samsung—an Apple supplier!—brought out a shockingly similar device, Kurt Eichenwald explores the Korean company’s record of patent infringement, among other ruthless business tactics, and explains why Apple might win the battles but still lose the war.
By Kurt EichenwaldPhoto Illustration by Sean McCabe
READAPPLE, GOOGLE SETTLE WAGE-FIXING AND HIRING CONSPIRACY CASE
iSPY Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, who was convicted of tax evasion in 2008 and pardoned soon after, and the late Apple C.E.O., Steve Jobs.
On August 4, 2010, amid the bustle of downtown Seoul, a small group of executives from Apple Inc. pushed through the revolving door into a blue-tinted, 44-story glass tower, ready to fire the first shot in what would become one of the bloodiest corporate wars in history. The showdown had been brewing since spring, when Samsung launched the Galaxy S, a new entry into the smartphone market. Apple had snagged one early overseas and gave it to the iPhone team at its Cupertino, California, headquarters. The designers studied it with growing disbelief. The Galaxy S, they thought, was pure piracy. The overall appearance of the phone, the screen, the icons, even the box looked the same as the iPhone’s. Patented features such as “rubber-banding,” in which a screen image bounces slightly when a user tries to scroll past the bottom, were identical. Same with “pinch to zoom,” which allows users to manipulate image size by pinching the thumb and forefinger together on the screen. And on and on.
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Xyzse
(8,217 posts)I avoid the Samsung phones.
They do have great service on their products though.
TroglodyteScholar
(5,477 posts)Only gripe is that I had one phone that suffered from a swelling battery, but that was replaced without any trouble.
PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)I recently got the Razr MAXX and am very happy with it.
TroglodyteScholar
(5,477 posts)It was really cute! 
I've got the Maxx right now, too, and I absolutely love it. Its battery can go for 3 days under normal usage (phone, text, web browsing, listening to music and podcasts...etc)
I activated the pre-loaded battery saver feature one time, though, and the battery actually drained quicker when that was active.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)To watch one another.
Which is saying a lot, considering that the South Korean government is one of the most corrupt governments in Asia.
msongs
(73,663 posts)wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)apple did not have business practices like this. i work in the "legal community". What Samsung does is complete bullshit.if you knew who I know t would blow your mind.
Godhumor
(6,437 posts)Remind me of Nintendo v Sega's back in the day when either of those companies were relevant.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)it's everyone. they did this to Pioneer and cost 10,000 jobs. many in the USA.
Godhumor
(6,437 posts)And I read the article and it still books down to Samsung v Apple. Choose up sides and have at it.
Blue_Tires
(57,596 posts)and the cynic in me predicts the consumers lose either way
dilby
(2,273 posts)Say what you want about Samsung but they make a great product that lasts, after 2 years my phone was still perfectly fine and I only upgraded because it was free with my contract.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)
Xithras
(16,191 posts)That's a pretty laughable (and probably deliberately misleading) misstatement right there.
Yes, Samsung did steal one of their patents, but that had nothing to do with them shutting down their television division. Pioneer shut down their television division because they literally bet the entire wing of the company on plasma television technology. It was one of the most idiotic moves in electronics history, but they committed the entire division to the technology without any backup plan or escape route.
Plasma, of course, was an inferior technology. Yes, the picture quality is great (I actually have a Pioneer Kuro in my living room, which I bought when the Pioneer TV's were being fire-saled as they shut down), but they are heavy, fragile, suck a horrendous amount of electricity, generate enough heat to warm an apartment, and are expensive to produce and sell. LED's and LCD's beat plasma by nearly every benchmark, and the picture quality difference wasn't enough to overcome its faults. People just didn't care about "true black" that much. Today, plasma technology is a niche market at best, and the Pioneer television division lost its arse. Other companies like Panasonic and Sony took a more balanced approach and produced both types of flat screens...and you'll notice that Panasonic and Sony are doing just fine and are still producing televisions today.
Pioneer is entirely responsible for wiping out those 10,000 jobs on its own.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)and they were caught in price fixing by the U.s government. these are business practices you think are OK.
That they cause undo amounts of litigation in tying up the courts. i work in legal and this is absolutely bullshit
Xithras
(16,191 posts)I didn't say any of that and you know it. I addressed a single point in the article that was factually inaccurate. One does not equal the other.
I personally think that people who tie themselves into knots over what Company X did to Company Y are laughable dolts. Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, Intel, AMD...whatever. In the end, it's all just picking sides in turf wars between the 1%. There isn't a mega-corporation around that is actually worth one ounce of your energy.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)and i work in it.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)We each have our own perspectives, I guess.
Samsung is using our legal system the way it was designed by its creators. If the U.S. government thinks that Samsung's use of the system is abusive, it can change the system to prevent that kind of behavior.
There are people who believe that it's an abuse of our legal system to get criminals set free on legal technicalities. I disagree with them. If you don't like the legal maneuvering, get the laws changed to prevent that sort of thing. Don't complain about lawyers and technologists using the law the way it was written.
But you'll find that I'm pretty unsympathetic to the entire U.S. patent system anyway. 90% of these patent suits are filed over trivial BS that should never have been patentable in the first place (bouncy screens on smartphones anyone?)
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)I was just talking to a friend. we both work in the legal industry. He is a lawyer and we both agreed what a total abuse by samsung and what a scuzzy company.
tblue37
(68,420 posts)To say, "I work in the legal industry," without saying what your position is does not carry much authority. For all we can tell, you might be a court reporter, a lawyer's secretary, a paralegal, or a courier who carries documents between law offices and the courthouse. To convince readers that you have special expertise in a field, you need to be more precise about the basis for the expertise you claim.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)No one is to blame but the lawyers and the judges, since you collectively operate (and game) the system. It's all but impenetrable to non-lawyers.
Starting with legislators who are lawyers, writing the laws, rules and regulations. Then the lawyers who further abuse the system by lobbing for businesses to get sweetheart laws and tax breaks. Then onward to lawyers who file frivolous cases. To the judges who then deign to hear them, instead of throwing them out, and seeking to get those lawyers disbarred.
What are you and your fellow lawyers, and judges doing to put an end to lawsuits that "abuse" the system?
A jury ruled that both companies "stole" some of each others features, so Apple is not some poor innocent. And why do these tech companies spend so much time and money suing each other? Why don't they just cross-license their patents? The answer is they want a monopoly, and don't care what they have to do to get it. So, in that instance, screw all of them.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)and the abuse of counter suits as a strategy is one you approve of? just asking
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)I repeat..
If you and your fellow lawyers think this abuse of the system, what are you doing to put an end to such lawsuits? Are you actively seeking to have the lawyers who file them disbarred? Are you seeking to have the judges who choose to hear them removed from the bench?
And no, I don't consider counter-suits as a strategy I approve of. But then I also don't approve of tech companies suing each other at the drop of a hat.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)but I don't like companies that work around what is a system that can be great but in order to win in business you abuse the privilege. The lawyers only do what the client asks them to do. They don't advise them on their business strategy.
frylock
(34,825 posts)Godhumor
(6,437 posts)This is not a part of one. Apple and Samsung can continue suing each other for the next ten years and my outrage meter will move exactly zero.
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)Right in the first paragraph, an attempt to justify the ridiculous patents like rubber edges and pinch-to-zoom.
Competition is good for the consumer. Monopolies enforced by patriotic patent battles are horrible. Pioneer was in trouble before the Samsung suit. They just announced they're re-entering the TV market. This time hopefully they won't make the mistake of producing plasma TVs.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)you condone this. they counter sue to gain an advantage. this is just bullshit
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)the greater good.
http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-prize-winning-economists-call-death-software-patents-004525735.html
Patenting things like pinch-to-zoom is the equivalent of patenting the mouse when it first came out. Not that specific design, but the concept itself of a hand-operated selection device on a GUI.
hunter
(40,657 posts)I do my very best to avoid proprietary software produced by giant corporations. I do my very best to avoid our "consumer" society.
Heck, I do my best to avoid devices with computers in them until someone figures out how to jailbreak them. By then these products are usually in the thrift stores and dumpsters, which is where I get most of my gadgets. I don't want any computers at all in things like washing machines or refrigerators or motorcycles.
Innovators and artists ought to be paid for their work, and paid well if they contribute greatly to the common good, but that's rarely what patents are about in our global society. For every innovator like Tim Berner-Lee there are dozens of corporate sharks controlling the innovations of unsung people to be used as lawyerly weapons against their corporate competitors.
While Apple and Samsung are slugging it out, maybe someone I could respect will come along and make them irrelevant. Until then I'll just ignore whatever it is they are selling.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)The problem with software patents is that you can patent nearly any variation on anything, if nobody has written that specific code variation before. The idea that something has to be new and novel seems to have gone completely out the window. Pinch-to-zoom is actually a brilliant example of that. Pinch-zooming wasn't a new idea, and had existed since the 1980's in various forms. Pinch zooming on a multitouch touchscreen wasn't even a new idea, and had been first demonstrated in the 1990's. Not to pick on Apple (you brought up the example) but their great patentable invention was merely that they took an existing software concept and implemented it on a mobile phone. From a technical perspective, it wasn't even a particularly interesting hack. They essentially just ported existing software.
But, under the terms of the United States software patent system, it was a "novel idea", and therefore patentable and defensible. The ironic thing is that, while Apple got to make lots of money off of the patent for their variation, the programmers who actually created the original pinch-to-zoom concept got nothing. Under our law, because they did it on a computer, and not a mobile device, it was considered a different technology and the original inventors were left high and dry. Of course, as anyone who has ever written an application can tell you, there's no difference between the two.
Software should not be patentable. It's harmful to the economy, it's harmful to innovation, and the only benefit they serve is to prop up profits for the big corporations that can afford to litigate them.
politicat
(9,810 posts)Twenty years ago, I worked for Motorola, in their training department. (It was a slightly better job than waiting tables. Slightly.) Motorola had a world-class continuing education program, and allowed other companies to pay them to educate outside employees, for things like emergency management, ISO compliance, Six Sigma training, first aid. However, Samsung -- the whole company -- was on a permanent, comprehensive blacklist because of IP theft. That was in the early 1990s, before either company had much skin in the mobile market.
Lots of corporations have issues with each other, and Motorola was exceptionally protective of their ip, but no other company had such a comprehensive ban.
tkmorris
(11,138 posts)All of the accusations you level at Samsung could just as easily apply to any other major tech corporation, including Apple. I'm not saying they aren't true, maybe they are and maybe not, but unless you eschew tech altogether or you get your smartphone from Aunt Emily's Clean Green Fair-trade Certified Smart Phone and Granola Stand it doesn't mean a whole lot.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)i and a number of my friends all work in the legal system. This is just abuse of our legal system.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)This time it was U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915, which describes the way a user can "pinch-to-zoom" and differentiates that function from scrolling.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declared that the function was predicted by Patent No. 7,724,242, relating to gestures on touch screens and filed by W. Daniel Hillis and Bran Ferren in 2005.
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/apple-loses-another-patent-relevant-to-samsung-case-1169838
So either Apple was simply too slow off the mark or (perish the thought) the "pinch to zoom" was not their idea originally.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)this is what it is about
Auggie
(33,116 posts)I work in the creative field. Not high tech, but one in which original / successful ideas are still valued and can reward their creators professionally and financially. It takes a lot of HARD WORK and TIME to develop a truly original concept. When they are stolen so blatantly it is infuriating beyond words. I stand with Apple.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Auggie
(33,116 posts)read the fucking post
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)either you're against them all the way or not.
Auggie
(33,116 posts)To escape them one would need to live nearly 30 years in the past. Full resistance is futile, but branded resistance is not.
frylock
(34,825 posts)Auggie
(33,116 posts)and blatant patent / copyright infringement.
frylock
(34,825 posts)and how "It takes a lot of HARD WORK and TIME to develop a truly original concept."
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Proud Public Servant
(2,097 posts)Somebody alert the media!
(Now back to typing on my computer made by artisans entirely out of locally-sourced hemp...)
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)What's funny about these stories is that no matter how upset one feels like getting about the immorality of it all, one is (in practical terms) arguing that Apple should make more money and have an effective smart-phone monopoly.
And perhaps they should, legally.
But it's a weird sort of crusade to get invested in.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)are justifying a really bad business practice. This "business strategy" of stealing patents and counter suing until the last minute to gain an advantage is close to criminal.
Maybe I'm being a bit "patriotic" but i look at Apple as being innovative. Was job's a turd at times?, absolutely. But he did change the phone market like no one else. He did change the music business(with crappy sound mind you) and he did make the tablet something that people wanted. Did he really 'invent"them. No but his critical mass and his power of his person did get them adapted and used.
Samsung(which best i can figure) is not American has never done one creative thing in the world and hardly cares about us is being defended by many of you. It's a shit company and you only defend them because you hate Apple.
I respect people with vision and made it on their own. I respect people like Ellison and Jobs. Homegrown guys who came from nothing. I don't really care if they were liberal or conservative. I hate rich guys (Kochs and Trump) who came fro money and tell us how to live because they"did it".
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)you might want to come down off your high horse a little.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)"NOOO! You can't support that wrestler! He's the worst ever! He's done BAD things! You have to support MY guy because he's GOOD!"
If you read back through the comments, you won't find many Samsung cheerleaders or Apple haters. Just a bunch of people telling you that the entire game is stupid and rigged. They're all marketing companies, and they all rip each other off. Unless you're a billionaire yourself, picking sides in a squabble between billionaires is silly. Samsung, Apple, Microsoft...morally, they're all equals.
I don't hate Apple. I don't hate Samsung. My phone is an LG, and my tablet was made by HP, and I'm not a "fan" or a "hater" of either of those companies either. They're companies. Corporate conglomerates created for the sole purpose of generating profits for their stockholders. None of them are worth your emotional investment.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)
ileus
(15,396 posts)Time will tell.
My Samsung we got when the first Iphones were hitting the stores were solid little sliders.
I loved my old gen1 Atrix.
Riftaxe
(2,693 posts)is they should stick to phones if my Samsung blu ray player is any indication.
However Apple wrote the book on silly patent nonsense, and my Apple IIE kicked ass 