Samsung vs. Apple: Part II

 Computing  No Responses »
Aug 292012
 

Quite an amusing Internet rumour came about today: That Samsung had paid their fine to Apple by sending around 30 trucks filled to the brim with nickles (which is apparently a 5¢ coin). Of course it eventually transpired that this was all an amusing hoax, which makes more sense – after all Samsung is hardly going to pay Apple until after they have tried appealing.

But the popularity of this story may be some small indication that Apple’s victory in the US courts over this patent dispute is not really seen as fair by most.

Apple, Samsung, Intellectual Property Rights, and That Trial

 Computing  No Responses »
Aug 252012
 

So apparently a US court with a US jury found against a Korean company and in favour of a US company. Well that is a surprise! Who would imagine?

There are several aspects of this trial that should require closer inspection before making any judgments :-

  1. The jury only spent 48 hours deliberating when the available evidence amounted to “hundreds of questions, 109 pages of jury instruction and the most complex muddle of law on the planet”. Given the mind boggling complexity of this case, I would not be at all surprised if the jury colluded in coming up with a snap judgment that at least gets them out of jury service rather than a properly considered verdict.
  2. The judge kept advising the two companies to come to a negotiated settlement but obviously Apple and Samsung ignored this.
  3. This is just one legal battle; Apple and Samsung are fighting tooth and nail in many cases: As of December 2011, Apple and Samsung are fighting more than 20 cases in 10 countries. It would seem that it would be better by far if someone were to band the respective CEOs heads together and force both companies to make a negotiated settlement.

It is easy for an observer who does not pay close attention to technical matters to consider Apple to be a radical innovator in the smartphone arena; certainly at the very least the iPhone was a game changer. But not because itself was a dramatic innovation in technological terms, but because it brought previous technical innovations together into a well designed and easy to use product. And frankly a comparatively limited one – much smartphone functionality present in the original iPhone’s competitors was missing from the original iPhone.

If you look at the list of patents that Samsung supposedly infringed, you will come across numerous examples that someone in the technical field will wonder if it should really be a patent. Or maybe at most should be a ‘half-patent’ (if there were such a thing). Some of the features that Samsung supposedly infringed :-

  1. The “rubber band” effect that occur when you scroll a list by touch and hit the end of the list. This to a limited extent falls foul of the “obviousness” test – if you had used a scroll by touch interface without the equivalent of this, you would think “Hey! Someone ought to come up with something that tells me when the end of the list is”.
  2. The gestures “pinch to zoom” and “twist to rotate”. I’m sorry but these really are too obvious to patent. Certainly “twist to rotate” is merely aping what we do in the real world to rotate – ever “twisted” a plate to rotate it so that the food you are going to dive into next is closer? And similarly “pinch to zoom” is effectively a touch-screen equivalent of dragging out a box onscreen using a mouse to zoom in on that particular area.
  3. Touch to drag a document? Ever used drag and drop with a mouse?
  4. The other elements in the list are in relation to physical design of the handset, but is a rectangle with rounded corners really so radical ? I’m pretty sure almost all of my phones have been rectangular with rounded corners since well before the original iPhone.

The trouble with this judgement is that whilst it may protect innovation to a tiny degree, it will also have the effect of limiting choice to the consumer in the US. Because Apple is going to look to ban imports of Samsung devices as soon as it can wheel a lawyer into court. Wouldn’t it be better by far for the court to decide that yes Samsung has infringed the pinch to zoom function, so they should pay for a license for that patent at a rate of 10¢ per device? Rather than insist on Apple being paid a ridiculous amount of damages and allowing Apple to set a ridiculous license cost for use of the patent.

The whole issue of intellectual property rights is a complete mess, and I’m not sure that even the judge in this case would disagree. Patents were originally developed to protect inventors from companies simply stealing their ideas and going ahead and making money whilst the inventor gets nothing. They were not designed to stop competitors from using the ideas of an inventor – they would simply have to pay a fair price for the idea. And patents were not supposed to be blindingly obvious either.

It is also worth pointing out that Apple have already lost pretty much the same legal battle in the UK, Germany, and South Korea. So we have the ridiculous situation where Samsung “stole” ideas as decided by a US jury, but also didn’t as decided by court victories elsewhere in the world. Who is right? Who knows?

Intellectual property rights are long overdue for a radical overhaul :-

  1. Make the UN the deciding body for patent infringements. This will eliminate all the conflicting decisions that go on around the world, and reduce to a minimum conscious or unconscious bias that a US jury (or a US judge) might weigh against a South Korean company.
  2. Review each patent rigorously to examine whether they are too obvious to patent.
  3. Use an independent party to decide licensing fees, and make licensing fees a percentage of the final purchase price of the product. Want to make a Rolex replica exact in every way ? Well, the panel might decide you can do so … as long as you pay Rolex 100% of the purchase price. Want to use “pinch to zoom” on your device ? Expect to pay Apple a tiny amount like 0.5% of the purchase price.

Of course none of this is likely to happen. Intellectual property rights are too much of a cash cow for IP trolls and IP lawyers for any big changes.

The Sun: The Prurient Porn Rag

 Media  No Responses »
Aug 242012
 

So the Sun have decided to print naked photos of Prince Harry claiming that it is about ‘freedom of the press’. Well maybe.

Now I’m hardly an ardent royalist – it is a really daft way of picking a head of state, but it does at least have the advantage of keeping politicians out of the role. And of course helps the tourism industry.

Bear in mind that if a photographer makes images of a person for commercial purposes, then they need to obtain a model release form before publishing the photos. There are of course public interest exceptions (plus artistic and personal use exceptions). But is re-publishing Harry’s naked pics, news?

We all know that Harry was caught at a party by a photographer naked, and that those photos have been published on a web site (or two) in the US. So whatever the Sun was doing couldn’t be called breaking news, where there might be a justification to publish the naked pics just to demonstrate that they do in fact exist. Hence there was no call to publish the photos to tell us that Harry was caught partying naked.

So if this item published by the Sun isn’t news, then what is it ? Well it’s just porn designed to increase the circulation of the Sun “news” paper – or in other words these photos were published for commercial reasons. So they really need the permission of Harry to publish them. I somehow doubt they have that.

Perhaps Harry could sue the Sun for publishing these photos without permission!

And is it really proper news anyway? The fact that he was partying naked might seem shocking to some of us, but let’s be honest – he’s of an age where he’s going to be a bit of an arse from time to time. And most of us were just the same at his age. Royals (at least the males – Kate perhaps needs to redress the balance slightly) have a long history of partying hard, and that is hardly surprising.

I don’t see this story as real news; a proper newspaper might well publish a story about Harry partying naked and add some po-faced opinion about how this is no way for a royal to behave, but there is no reason to publish the photos. Which pretty much demonstrates that the Sun no longer has the right to call itself a newspaper – it is merely a pornographic periodical concentrating on unauthorised photos of celebrities.

Julian Assange and Pussy Riot

 Politics  2 Responses »
Aug 182012
 

Last night I caught someone droning on about the similarities between the case of Pussy Riot and Julian Assange, and that with the right of freedom of speech comes the responsibility for responsible use of that right. I very quickly turned off as any comparison is ridiculous.

Pussy Riot are in prison today as a direct consequence of their attempted use of their right of free speech; whereas Julian Assange at most is facing legal trouble as an indirect consequence of his use of the right of free speech. Certainly on the face of it, Julian Assange’s legal troubles have nothing to do with the Wikileaks website.

It is certainly true that Pussy Riot’s actions inside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was to some extent ill-advised. They could well be guilty of some sort of aggravated trespass crime, but it would seem to me that they are being punished for something else – their imprisonment for 2 years is by far out of proportion to what they have done. And it appears that even the victim (the church) also believes this is excessive as they have asked for leniency.

It is true that insulting someone’s religion in their place of worship is perhaps going too far for a protest, and perhaps should be punishable by a couple of days in prison. But sending them to prison for two years looks to everyone like an excuse to put them away to stop them protesting against Putin‘s autocratic rule. The funny thing is that Putin’s minions could not have done something more effective at demonstrating that his regime is a repressive one.

Julian Assange on the other hand is effectively charged (the UK courts have made it plain that he can be regarded as being charged with the crime even though a peculiarity of the Swedish justice system means he hasn’t as yet been charged) with some sort of sexual misconduct. Which on the face of it has absolutely nothing to do with his Wikileaks activities. Whilst there may be some oddities about the case, the only possible action for an honourable man would be to go to Sweden to answer the charges.

The conspiracy theorists would argue that this is all just a way of the US getting their hands on Julian Assange to rush through their own court system to punish him for “treason”, espionage, or some other crime. It is highly unlikely that Julian could be legally extradited for treason (which is likely to cause a considerable amount of laughter considering that Julian is no a US citizen) or espionage (which is after all at an international level purely a political crime). But it is just about possible that there is some US involvement in the charges he faces in Sweden – perhaps simply as a way of harassing someone whom the US government has a certain amount of anger with.

It is really rather extraordinary that Julian is claiming political asylum with Ecuador in preference to relying on the justice systems in the UK and Sweden; frankly he has better protection in either Sweden or the UK from any US actions than he would do in Ecuador which although has granted him asylum for publicity reasons is far more likely to let the US quietly grab him in exchange for a few billion in foreign aid.

Those Really Annoying TV PIN Codes

 Media  1 Response »
Aug 172012
 

In their infinite wisdom, the government long ago decided to insist that TV programmes recorded after the “watershed” should require a PIN code before viewing. Now I can see the justification for this – it’s to protect the children. But …

There’s no children here, so why can’t I turn it off ?

Plus (and possibly even more irritating), whilst it was probably the best that could be done during the analogue era (at least for a reasonable price), we can almost certainly do better during the digital era. Rather than simply look at when a TV programme is being broadcast at, why not look at the content?

There are plenty of programmes broadcast after the watershed that whilst may not be aimed at children certainly don’t have the kind of content that would be “dangerous” for children to watch. After all many are later repeated during the day!

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