Hardware Copyright Battles

Since 2011, the heated battle between Samsung and Apple has run wild, creating stirs in the internet community and the world. Apple sued Samsung for various copyright infringements including Samsung's Galaxy Tab and their Galaxy phones. In response to this attack on their validity, Samsung counter-sued them with similar claims of copyright infringments with Apple's Iphone and technologies. 

So, the last month the court drama came to a climax with final arguments and evidence being presented by both parties. Then, a few days ago the final verdict was given by the jury and Samsung was slammed with a 1 billion dollar damage payment for infringing on a lot of Samsung's best-seller mobile devices. This is surely a hard hit for Samsung, not only against their pockets, but also their reputation. 

The whole debacle has thrown copyright infringements back into the spotlight. Recently, and less in the news, was the Oracle vs Google infringement case. Oracle sued Google for allegedly infringing on Java patents with their Android operating system. 

For years, technology has been fragmented more than it is today in the sense of advancements, that made it a lot harder to infringe on existing patents. But in the past few decades, technology, and specifically computer technology has grown to include many standards. And the more standard something is, the closer it gets to being the same as another guy's own design. 

A few older cases comes to mind, such as Apple's claim against Psystar in 2008 for their 'hackintosh' systems that came loaded with Apple's OS.

It is the opinion of many a internet-blogger that Apple will be going after Google next, for various infringement they have committed against Apple's devices. Google has been going strong with innovation, but perhaps they are running out of ideas? More and more things they release are starting to feel like copies of other people's work. Such as their Android system's similarities to Java and other related mobile operating systems (such as Apple's own mobile OS, iOS). Apple has always been intent on their patents, and have been hunting copycats for years.

If there's one thing we have learned from this court drama between Samsung and Apple, its that you can only get away with blatent technology theft for so long. Don't get me wrong, I use a Samsung phone myself, which is like a small, less fancy iPhone. But in the end it is so close to Apple's phones that I agree with the verdict of the court on this matter. In my opinion, we might see more copyright lawsuits come up after this case, as it has set a precident for copyright infringement.