Samsung on Jury Verdict: "A Loss For the American Consumer"

This is a discussion thread for the "Samsung on Jury Verdict: "A Loss For the American Consumer"" story posted on the front page.

Samsung...smh...it will help innovation because you WOULD not be copying everyone else...

Samsung is right. Now is the time for LG to hop on the lawsuit bandwagon and sue Apple for stealing the black rectangle with round corners design.

I have to agree with Samsung. The law can't define between inspiration and copying. If you aren't allowed to make your own improvements on existing ideas, then innovation essentially dies. Apple are basically making it known that they are the giant in the smartphone industry and they'd like to keep it that way. Samsung have come the closest to affecting their domination of the market, and they have effectively shut down that competition. It's a real shame, and it will have a negative effect on innovation.

Not bad for Apple. Not very bad...

I agree with mostly what you are saying, but Samsung isn't going to be dead after a $1 billion lawsuit. Sure they may suffer their spending and all, but they are a $247 billion company they will be able to recover. What I'm worried about is what will happen to Apple in the future.

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Now here comes my TL,DR on what I think about this.

The reason why Apple had innovation to start off with is because there was a great market in Cell Phone, but no single phone was ever dominant. That's where the iPhone came it. They blew out every single bit of competition from the previous generation and inspired many to build on a platform based on an all-in-one device. Now its been almost a decade and no great innovation has came since then. Like the current video game console generation there is really no push to change the market for things, but unlike the video game console market cellphones are only changing so minorly just to peak their performance. Whether its a Quad Core smartphone or a single core smartphone the only thing thats different is a better graphic games, nicer resolution, compatibility and some spiffy features.

So back to Apple and pretend they eliminate all of their competition. It may be great for them in terms of sales and more money they can work with, however if one can imagine their future products. What will be different from now and about 5 years along the line will be better graphics and more hardware features, but no innovation. Sounds good to the majority of consumers and it should, however that would mean to those who wanted to try something a bit different wouldn't be to. The ideas of brining in a phone that was different and creating fun (if we still have fun these days) product rivalries will no longer exist and innovation is lost forever. In the end of this fantasy Apple wins and the consumer somewhat wins, but being loyal to any company is rather quite stupid as they get your money and you aren't going to be rewarded with anything in return (maybe a keychain or something quite smaller than a keychain).

Now do we need innovation?
I believe we do as back in the 90s Nintendo and SEGA were big rivals and they did whatever it took to make their console better. Their rivalry created innovation and a better experience that gamers appreciate today. Same with Samsung and Apple. Although Samsung copied a few minor things that shouldn't be sueable (imagine if Nintendo sued SEGA for having power and reset buttons), the fact Samsung and Apple compete has brought better features to both phones. I don't really want to name any examples, but if you look at both phones, both has seen major improvement over the past years. Sure it could be just the company's ideas that made their phones better, but if they didn't compete they wouldn't have to go to the drawing board more often.

(Just read this if you don't wanna read my rant )
Apple and Samsung need to realize that if they want to make a future where all we see in the news is suing each over new products and innovative ideas then be my guest. If they want this century to be remembered in history as companies suing each other right left and center for invisible scrolling bars, square icons or even home buttons then go straight ahead. Just remember how it will make your company outlooked as to the next generations.

Now if you excuse me I'll be reading on my iPad 3 while listening to music on my Galaxy S III. (No I refuse to do both on one of them).

I don't care about Samsung as a company, I know they would recover. In my opinion, the reasons apple have sued Samsung for could quite reasonably be applied to many smart phones out there. This is why I say that Apple have pursued this only because it is taking up part of their profits (didn't they say that?) and therefore saying its about values... I just don't like it.

Don't get me wrong, I love and own apple products, but I think Samsung has been hard done by in this situation. I still find it weird that Samsung produces iDevice screens, does that apply to the retina displays too?

They take Apples ideas and makes them better, who wins with that?! You and me. Every company takes each others ideas and makes them better. Do you think car companies should sue each other now for having similar shaped cars?! The outcome for this is a load of sh*t and everybody knows it.

The issue is why did Samsung decide to use the same ideas that Apple came up with. Like with pin-to-zoom; Apple used it first and patented it. No one told Samsung to use that except method, they could have created something completely different like someone mentioned, make a circle-to-zoom. Or how Samsung made their homescreen similar in layout; no one told Samsung the only way to make a homescreen was the one that people were found of with Apple.

There is multiple ways to accomplish the same thing. So just because Apple did certain elements first, doesn't make those elements the only way in the world to accomplish that. Why not make a phone that is completely different from the current worlds standards and see how it works. I'd bet it would catch attention.

(In no way am I referring to the 'rectangle with rounded corners' because it was thrown out from the verdict, so DO NOT quote me on that, unless you are to dumb to read.)

Exactly. This is Samsung's fault. All they needed to do was a little bit more tweaking, such as the circle to zoom as you suggested, to avoid these lawsuits altogether. As soon as Apple unvieled the iPhone, Samsung took the "make a phone like this" too literally.