Apple sues Samsung on stupid things and wins

If you've been following the tech industry at all lately, you'll probably have heard of the (big font)

APPLE VERSUS SAMSUNG COURT ISSUE,

but if you haven't then here's a run-down.

Apple sued Samsung for violating a few user-interface patents held by Apple, namely U.S. Patent '915, U.S. Patent '163, U.S. Patent '381, and multiple others.  The patents range from trivial features like "double-tap to zoom" to the "bounce-back effect" (moving past the screen on webpages will cause the view to snap back) to the design of the backing of smartphones.

The purpose of the U.S. patenting system was simple and straightforward -- encourage innovation by protecting ideas.  People who knew they would be free to sell their product without competition from rivals selling the same product would be more likely to create that product in the first place.  Or, in Constitution-speak:

The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
~ U.S. Constitution, Article One, Section 8(8) [1]

Patents last, in general, for 20 years before they become public domain (unless they are renewed under Patent Term Adjustment).

Apple's patents are roughly a year old.  They're perfectly valid.  What's questionably valid is whether or not the patents in question are specific enough that they're actually patent-able.

The patent process has requirements for novelty under which a patent may be submitted. [3]  If the patent has been used or known previously within the U.S., or if it has been described or patented internationally, it is invalid.  If the patent is based on something that was not invented by the patentee, it is invalid. [4]

The list is long and wordy, but essentially the patent has to be not-completely-trivial (you can't patent the use of wires, for example) and also has to be completely and undoubtedly your intellectual property.

The court presided over features that were honestly trivial in nature.  You wouldn't consider a "double tap to zoom" feature to be grand thievery, would you?  You wouldn't consider a little "bounce back" animation to be the greatest piece of intellectual property?

Thing is, this sort of thing happens all the time between major industrial giants.  Colloquially, they're known as patent wars, in which a company will dedicate a part of their legal team exclusively for combing through rival products and picking out minor details to attack in court.  U.S. patent law is weak enough in that the opposing legal team will have to respond by throwing massive amounts of money into their own lawyers, to counter the lawsuit and engage in their own.

It's a matter of exclusivity.  Tech giants use it as a way to push down the quality of the products of their competitors.  Only Apple can use the "bounce back" effect in their phones now.

So why should you care?

As a fellow lover of all things tech (right? Of course!), patents like these will become seriously detrimental to the innovation that the patent system was built to protect.  In the court ruling, the jury ruled every single Apple patent in question to be valid.  In short: not a single opposing smartphone company can use those patents.  The thing is, most of the patents licensed under Apple simply make sense.  Pinch to zoom?  That's something people have always dreamed of in old sci-fi movies.  It's simply intuitive.

The actual implications of the court case are minimal at best; Samsung was charged a measly $1,051,855,000, which is insignificant when you consider that Samsung makes a hundred times that yearly.  But this decision pushes tech into the wrong direction.

If there's an answer to a design problem that "simply works," you probably won't be able to incorporate it into your product without having to battle a lawsuit over it.

That, simply put, could become a very big problem for the innovative future.

OH NO SCALE: Very :(

1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law
2 http://www.macrumors.com/2012/08/24/jury-reaches-verdict-in-apple-vs-samsung-trial/
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_%28patent%29#United_States
4 http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxl_35_U_S_C_102.htm