In the latest iteration of the Patent Wars Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has now filed yet another lawsuit against their rival/supplier/co-dependency Samsung claiming patent infringement and seeking an injunction against sales of the Galaxy IIIS and Samsung Note tablet. I’d say they’ve gone too far here, but frankly, I thought they went too far years ago. Everyone in technology has. If the U.S. Patent Office is so inept that they continue to grant patents to companies only to have the courts rule that the companies have violated each others patents, which is what happened in a different Apple v. Samsung lawsuit, then doesn’t that truly call into question the efficacy of the entire patenting process?
Of course it does.
Apple is way out of line asking for injunctions against products when they should be looking for reasonable licensing fees, a la Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Android. $15 a license for Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) to pay is just enough of a cost to Google so as to not impede their plans but also ensure that Microsoft can expense the development of competing technologies, i.e. Windows Phone, without overtly alienating consumers by restricting their choices. Microsoft’s quite capable of alienating consumers on their own they don’t need to Google to act as their proxy.
For Apple this is beginning to look like a company that has run out of good ideas, scared of non-premium devices stealing their thunder or a mix of both. The truth is that the ecosystem is the cash generator for the future, not the devices. The devices are transitory and ultimately disposable, as long as they are of acceptable quality as devices. As these ecosystems evolve and the industry along with it, this will become even more apparent.
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