#7-8 Videos - Apple's Litigation Legacy & Patent Inefficiencies

Video 1 - Apple's Litigation Legacy

Video 2 - Patent inefficiencies

See you next time!

#8 - Apple's Legacy of Litigation Lives On

What started out as Apple's ambitious attempts to slow down its rivals in a series of litigation cases has turned somewhat sour on its reputation, and doesn't seem to have the intended effect.

Still, despite the lack of success, Apple's suing frenzy ensues after Job's departure. Despite the publicity brought to light of the Apple versus Samsung case, Samsung product sales are skyrocketing and in fact surpassing Apples sales. Overall, the Android adoption rate is outgrowing that of iOS, and now Apple is racing to patent even its most common features.

Admittedly this is a tough case to crack. While Apple seems to be playing the 'victim' since other phone manufacturers have simply copied its best features, it does happen that these features are industry-wide 'best practices.' In a competitive market like smartphone devices, why wouldn't a rival look toward 'best practices' to improve upon its own products?

The other qualm I personally have about these litigation cases is this: While companies like Samsung are actively looking to improve its own products, such as by tailoring its products to international markets and making successes there, and looking to reinvest in the product development based on feedback, Apple would rather spend its cash balance on litigation. Those billions of dollars, in my opinion, would have much better gone to improving its own products rather than trying to stop others from selling their existing products. In the technology space, turnover of new ideas and products is fast. Therefore it is conducive to look toward the future rather than focus on what's done.

#7 - Patents of Wars and Trolls

An interesting column in the New York Times caught my eye (the article can be found here). Posner, a je udge for thUS Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for nearly three decades, has volunteered his time to sit in patent litigation trials on order to learn how to rectify the existing messy system. The article uses words such as "desperate," "time-consuming," and "prideful" to describe the need for a new process.

The existing patent system at the USPTO is, according to the article, understaffed yet overwhelmed with needless patent filings. There exists such a thing as "patent trolls" who spend their time creating patent portfolio in order to extort fees from companies that use the idea behind the patent. Billions of dollars have gone in litigation cases over patents, of which the one in the spotlight as of late seems to be Google's $12.5 billion dollar spend on Motorola Mobility to get their hands on the patents.

There is often the argument that patents protect innovation, and a clear example of it may be in the pharmaceutical industry in which firms are forced to develop better and more effective ways to solving the same problems. In the technology industry on the other hand, products are short-lived and there is the idea that you can let others develop the technology first. For technology giants, this means to sit aside and watch the little guys come up with the brilliant ideas, then to use their excess cash flow to buy out the small guys to scale the technology.

It's a clever tactic, but is it a sustainable strategy, and does it hinder innovation?

#5-6 Videos - Apple & Samsung Patent War Continues; Design Patents

(1) Apple & Samsung Patent War Continues!

(2) Design Patents for the Mobile Wireless Device Makers!

See you next week!

#6 - The Symbiotic Relationship between Friend and Foe: Apple & Samsung

The heat rises, the heat falls, and the end is at the horizon!

It seems that the proclaimed 'patent war' is finally reaching its stalemate. According to a recent MSN news article, it appears that the prospects of any major confrontation are slimming by the day. (See the article here)



Beyond recent activity, what has been interesting throughout Apple and Samsung's heated patent dispute has been a long-standing 'symbiotic' relationship, so to speak. This relationship starts with Samsung's highly diversified corporate level strategy in business lines such as chips, multimedia devices, and more. The firm's manufacturing edge has given it the supplier power in serving Apple's products with its flash memory chips. Highly reliant on these parts, Apple should have had a bit of reluctance in its attack.

Interestingly enough, Apple really set the stage for the advancement of its wireless mobile devices, thereby creating the space and testing the waters for Samsung to fully leverage its own core competencies in entering with strong products. Given the tested space and tested products, Samsung is perfectly vertically-integrated to produce and deliver products that are on par with Apple's products.

The patent war introduces an interesting implication for the relationship of these longstanding partners and rivals. Despite their different business level strategies in the mobile device space, they manage to bump heads to compete for the same group of customers. Apple pursues a broadly differentiated strategy, whereas Samsung tweaks its products to meet local tastes with strong market penetration in developing countries.

As their rivalry ensues, the only certain thing is that patents will serve to be valuable in claiming 'first-to-market' ideas in which the device makers strive to create network effects by this advantage.

#5 - What is Patent-able & Nokia Lumia's Revealing Design Patent

Our class detailed the defined classes for what is patent-able in the wireless mobile device area. Aside from different class types such as machine, composition, and process, it is interesting to think about what is NOT patent-able.

As we discussed in the last class, a design such as the rounded corners of Apple's products is a distinctive look that the firm has claimed. Aside from design, I'm curious what other categories can be classified for patents. I'm thinking along the lines of function vs. design, but perhaps there are more divisions.

Speaking of design patent, the Nokia Lumia's mystery design was revealed through a patent that the firm followed. (Read more here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/8/3967082/mystery-nokia-lumia-design-revealed-in-patent)

The shape features a flat front-screen and a reverse concave back that will offer many different colorful plates. I trust that the angled back will provide utility to users holding the phone for long periods of time since the rounded shape will fit more comfortably in the palm of a hand.

I suppose my question at this point it: what controls are in place to stop a company from patenting just about every conceivable idea out there as it sprouts in their R&D labs? Or, is this even a concern for anyone? Further, I pose the question of how different patents have to be from each other in order to be considered an infringement. For instance, if I had chosen to round out the top corners of a mobile device but not the bottom two corners, would Apple chase me down as well?

This remains a gray area, so I hope to fill in this knowledge in coming weeks.

#3-4 Videos - Exploring IP and the Race for Patents

Video 1: Exploring Copyrights and Trade Secrets!

Video 2: Race to create: Nokia's Heat Concept Phone

See you next week!

#4 - Patents for unproved concepts - Nokia's Heat Phone

I discovered upon chance an article in a tech enthusiast's blog about Nokia's concept heat mobile phone. Essentially the phone is able to capture heat from any external source, whether it is your body, the heater, or even your car driving wheel if it manages to get hot enough, and transfer the energy to charge your phone.

This is a very forward concept that addresses the issue of poor battery life. The concept itself aims to solve the issue of not only battery life, but also to not have your phone die on you (in case you need the time or need to send one last text before meeting someone).

http://mobilepatent.tumblr.com/post/1303402511/nokia-concept-heat-mobile-phone



The backside of the phone resembles a cork or dried land, and that is the part that works to take the heat energy from your surroundings. Imagine just sitting down and having your phone charge without an external charger!

The interesting idea that this brings up is that companies will often experiment with very forward ideas like this and then patent it. I'd guess that most companies have cabinet fulls of patentable ideas that came out of their R&D labs, and they are waiting for the prime time when the technology systems and the demand will support the ideas. In this case, I think it's a close step toward the direction that wireless mobile phones are headed. More than being able to access networks wirelessly, don't you think it's time that our phones charged wirelessly too?

#3 - All Different Kinds of Intellectual Property!

I was enlightened to learn about four different types of intellectual property, both unprotected and protected types. The ones I found particularly interesting include the following plus their eample

(1) Trademark

I was surprised to learn about the different types of visuals that could be trademarked. Many mobile device makers take care to build their brand equity around the ubiquitous presentation of their trademark stylizations. Google, for example, is distinguished by its

(2) Copyright

Interestingly enough, Copyrights are something that we all have access to. Something interesting I learned about individualized 'copyrights' is that you can share the right to use your work through "Creative Commons" license. This is an interesting concept of claiming ownership of your work, but allowing others to use your work when properly crediting it to you. For example, if I put a Creative Commons license on a sound track that I create from scratch, I will enable download on the song and allow others to use it for mash ups and videos as long as they credit me somewhere in the process. It's an interesting concept to share your work but still retain the credit for it.

(3) Trade Secrets!

What I'm slightly concerned about with 'trade secrets' is how long and how feasible it is to keep a 'formula' or 'recipe' secret for long. If, for example, Coca Cola believes that its recipe is truly secret, I am thinking, why not just patent it? First off, some employee somewhere is going to leak information regardless of whether they pledge their alliance to the firm or not. And secondly, in this day and age, I'm not sure that it's too difficult to reverse engineer the components through looking at its contents under microscopic lens (I have butchered scientific terminology there, so pardon my language).

Rather, if Coca Cola had chosen to patent their formula for success, they would have legal protection for it, and hence inhibit competitors from making the same formula. I think this would be great for innovation as well, since competitors would race to develop something better (maybe carbonated juice--oh wait, oops. That already exists...)

There are so many ways to coin your intellectual property. I'm interested in the cost-benefit analysis a company goes through to determine which is the best route to take.

#1-2 Videos - Self-intro & Why I am taking IEOR 190G

Self-introduction behind the cut:

And I go into why I am taking the patent engineering course:

See you next week!