It seems like everybody's got something to say about the meaning of the U.S. jury's verdict—up to and including the notion that Samsung and others could be forced to take any number of popular Android devices off the market, which would potentially serve to drive consumers into Apple Stores for their gadget needs.
But the interesting twist here is that Apple v. Samsung wasn't the only epic battle over intellectual property to be fought out in the courts this year. Attention spans these days are short, but you may recall another line-in-the-sand verdict from just a few weeks earlier, between Oracle and Google over the latter's use of the former's software code in the development of the Android mobile operating system.
Apple's victory late last week is seen by Cupertino supporters as a victory for the sanctity of IP and a broadside aimed at those who would dance around legal constraints to beg, borrow, or steal from the originators and owners of innovative technologies. Or, if you're less partial to Apple's position, it's a big win for "patent trolling" (as jealously contesting even the most dubious infringements of one's IP is described by detractors) and another sign that the U.S. patent system is fundamentally broken.
Google's big win over Oracle was painted in almost precisely opposite terms. It was a triumph for open-source sharing, innovation free of strong-arming by the rich and entrenched with their petty, bureaucratic quibbles, etc., etc. —or so the triumphalists claimed.
Of course, the two cases have as many differences as similarities. Apple accused Samsung of flat-out copying the iPhone's look, interface, and controls in a slew of Samsung devices that hit the market after the first iPhone appeared. Oracle was going after Google for alleged shenanigans deep in the bowels of the Android kernel, where the creators of the OS utilized free and open-source Java APIs and libraries to build the OS without filling out the requisite licensing forms in triplicate.
Because it involved code and not implementations of patented technology in hardware, the Oracle-Google case concerned copyrights as well as patents. What's more, Apple's ownership of the patents in dispute in its case against Samsung were unquestioned, while the fact that Oracle was seeking redress from Google over the use of free and open-source (but license-restricted) Java properties added a different wrinkle to its claims.
But if the subject matter of the two legal battles was very different, the general gist of the outcomes and even some of the evidence presented touched on very similar, if distinctly divergent themes.
For example, both trials saw the presentation of internal emails to and from Samsung and Android execs that served as smoking guns proving those parties had foreknowledge that the liberties they were taking in copying and utilizing third-party IP was legally treacherous.
The jurors in the Apple-Samsung case have said such evidence helped them find for Apple in a sweeping verdict that basically says that Samsung took an iPhone, copied it nearly screw-for-screw, and then tried to sell it as an original product many times over.
In Oracle v. Google, the jurors and especially U.S. District Judge William Allsup weighed similar evidence presented by Oracle and found it wanting. They determined that it was permissible to take portions of a technology invented and owned by a third party and use it in a novel way. Allsup also made it clear that he believed the Java code in dispute was less innovative and unique than it was what any coder would come up with given the same desired result.
That last bit is important, because defenders of Samsung and other Apple rivals say much the same with the regards to the development of touch screen smartphones. They see clear differences between iOS devices and Android products, but they also think surface overlaps between today's mobile gadgets are more generic than infringing. What's more, they largely believe that Apple's claims to have invented everything it says it's invented to be dubious.
And they're not alone. The U.S. decision may have gone Apple's way, but in other jurisdictions where Apple challenged Samsung, like South Korea and the U.K., Samsung got much more favorable rulings.
How is it then, that the same set of facts could produce such different rulings? Obviously, many factors come into play in a courtroom besides just the facts, most prominently the way in which they're presented and the disposition of the arbiters towards the different sides pleading their cases.
"Clearly Apple made a more simple, thematically clear message that paid off," said Roy Futterman, an attorney with DOAR Litigation Consulting, who found it "surprising" that the Apple-Samsung jury delivered its verdict so quickly given what he perceived to be the complexity of the case.
"Samsung had a high wall to climb because jurors probably had their own memories of Apple changing the game with the iPhone and iPad. There are few companies that lay people consider innovative in the way they feel Apple is," he added.
If Futterman's take is accurate, last week's big victory for strict interpreters of IP may really just be a one-off for a beloved and nearly deified company that doesn't and won't extend to other so-called patent trolls. The Oracle-Google result certainly indicates that a more liberal view on who really owns what exists out there.
Maybe the contrasting outcomes of the two biggest patent trials of this young decade were the result of fundamental differences in the cases themselves. Or maybe our legal system is just a whole lot less consistent than we'd care to admit.
Indeed, my PCMag colleague David M. Stone passed along this wisdom from a friend and Yale Law graduate: "The justice system is a way of legitimizing random results."
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