Apple Wins, Consumers Lose

Chris | InformationLiberation
Aug. 25, 2012

Prepare yourself, Samsung products are now going to be more expensive, as well as Apple's now that they've won $1.05 billion off their biggest competitor.

Incidentally, Samsung is also Apple's biggest customer. Isn't it neat the way stupid laws get people who are working in harmony at each others necks? The purpose of law is to avoid conflict, intellectual property laws only serve to create it, but same goes for most of the 800,000 laws and regulations on the books, so what's the big deal, right?

Via CNBC:

Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung Electronics on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.05 billion in damages.

[...]The verdict, which came much sooner than expected, could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding mobile computing market.

[...]In a statement after the verdict, Apple said, "We are grateful to the jury for their service and for investing the time to listen to our story and we were thrilled to be able to finally tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trail showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew ... We applaud the court for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

Samsung also issued a post-verdict statement, saying, "Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies ... This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims."

Apparently, the moron jury even awarded damages in cases where Samsung was found not to have infringed. This jury rushed through this case in only three days, despite being called to read 109 pages of instruction and decide on 700 different patent infringement claims. This was a billion dollar lawsuit determined by a bunch of people essentially drafted into slavery through the jury system who obviously did not want to be there, did not want to mediate this dispute, and simply sided with Apple because they foolishly assumed "copying" is "stealing" and they wanted to go home.

Apple said in their final statement, "We applaud the court for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

Yet here is what the founder of Apple and a young Steve Jobs once said, “Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy, great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Well, now they're being shameless about stealing over a billion dollars from Samsung and potentially banning them from the marketplace for "copying."

Of course, copying is not theft, but merely an act of replication, and it pays tribute to the creator, as the saying goes, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." The young Steve Jobs understood this, yet our archaic legal system, and your average American, do not.
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Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.