Apple's Legal Battles

In this paper I am going to give my insight on some of Apple's legal battles with several other companies over patents infringements and how all these legal processes may be contributing to an infinite protectionist war that can lead to a roadblock on technology evolution in general. I will also provide my insight on Judge Posner's view about the system of patents.

A patent is "an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted". (The United States Patent and Trademark Office, 2010). In order to qualify an innovation must be novel, useful and non-obvious.

Apple has been involved in a considerable number of lawsuits on patent violations. First, I am going to explore Apple's battle with the technology giant Samsung. The article "Apple vs. Samsung-Apple's victory in its epic legal spat with Samsung has raised eyebrows among techies and lawyers alike" describes on what basis Apple has sued Samsung and won for $1 Billion in damages. It is said that Samsung violated some of Apple's utility and design patents related to interactive gestures such as double–back scrolling or tap-to-zoom functionality as well as the round corners look of the product "iPhone" (The Economist). Utility patens are related to a "new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof" and design patents are associated to the invention of "new, original and ornamental" design. (The United States Patent and Trademark Office, 2010). Ultimately the case resulted in Samsung having to pay $1 billion in damages to Apple.

Another known instance where Apple was involved in a lawsuit for patent infringement was in the "Apple vs. HTC" case. In this case, apple sued HTC, a Taiwan-based company, over 20 patent infringements related to hardware, software design and graphical user interface. Apple ended up winning this case and the court ruled that some of HTC's products would have to be banned from public sales. (Business Insider, 2011)

These cases make me think that there is a thin line between what is a new invention and what is a standard feature for a phone and how the failure on distinguishing these two things may affect the patent system. This will be discussed later on.

In the article "Apple Google case- Judge Posner's Opinion" which was part of the course readings, it was possible to read that Judge Posner presided over a lawsuit between Apple and Google. The phone making companies were suing each other for patent violation and were seeking damages compensation and injunctions, while trying to stop the sale of the competitor's smartphones. An injunction is a court order that obliges or prohibits a certain act after a court hearing. In this case Apple stated that Motorola created smartphones based on Google's Android operating system, which imitated some of the iPhone's features related to touch-screen technologies. Motorola also accused Apple of violating its patents related to cellphone technology. (Palozzo & Jones, 2012)

Judge Richard Posner directed that neither Apple nor Samsung deserved an injunction and that both companies failed to ask for a responsible and plausible compensation of damages in case of wining trial. Also, Judge Posner understood that technologies that have become standard in the industry shouldn't be on the base of winning injunctions (Posner, 2012).

This case opened a discussion around the United States on whether the existing

System of patents is broken. Based on what I have read on Judge Posner's way of thinking about patent related lawsuits, I will give my insight and my opinion about the system of patents. I will provide pro arguments as well as cons for having the current system.

The first advantage of patent law is that it is an incentive for invention. Meaning, if a patent is easier to acquire, inventors will have a motivation to create and thus more inventions will be born. Another great benefit is that granting Patents protects the inventor from having his ideas and inventions stolen.

But there are also disadvantages on having a system that grants individuals or companies the right to protect its creations. Granting patents can reduce the competition among companies like Apple and Google in a sense that with a significant amount of patents a firm can monopolize its market. Furthermore, the costs and resources associated with patent granting and with solving the disputes that arise in the process are tremendous and can be seen as a form of social waste.

Besides the disadvantages already mentioned there is also a negative phenomena that arose with time and that is becoming gradually noticeable. As it is possible to verify in the several examples given of Apple's repeated attempts of suing other companies, filling for a lawsuit over Patents is becoming increasingly common and almost too easy. It seems