News - UK High Court brings common sense to Apple vs All patent war

[pp05]

They learned a lot from Intel and Microsoft.

[mikerr]

It talked about Bill gates giving loads to charity, Setting up Orginisations to try and stop deaths in the third world and how to many ppl he is the devil incarnate Yet Steve Jobs who was well known for not giving to charity made devices that where elitist was seen as a god to many.

Bill Gates has already given away $25 billion to charity
-for scale. that's over a tenth of apple's total current worth.

http://www.businessweek.com/manageme...-11012011.html

"In 50 years from now, Steve Jobs will be forgotten and Bill Gates will be honored"
http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/08/steve-...ored-50-years/

[The Hand]

Rather depressing that Apple have chosen to spend (a fraction of) their world beating mountain of cash on paying lawyers to try and stifle their competition. This is despite the fact that it's fairly clear much of their customer base isn't even interested in buying non-Apple alternatives anyway.

My thoughts exactly.. it is very depressing.

Good for HTC and for the customer in winning this case, imho. I've always felt neutral as far as Apple was concerned, but now they do seem to be throwing their weight around too much, targeting up and coming companies like HTC, assuming they're going to be a push over. I'm certainly going for WP8 phone now.. either HTC or Nokia.

Also, Lol @ 3 of these patents turning out to be invalid!

[crossy]

I will ask everyone who is against Apple this question. If you were running a large successful company (which already implies that your morals are very suspect), and you spotted a potential legal loophole that allowed you to try and stifle your competition on 100% legal grounds, thereby making your fortunes even bigger..would you do it? Or would you stick to the moral side of things and ignore it as so many people seem to think.

First off I am not against Apple - they've got some very nice products, one's I'd aspire to (the desktop and laptops - I'm not convinced by the iOS-powered stuff at all). And yes, I know that comment of yours wasn't necessarily addressed to me.

I'm going to argue that the route of "repayment for past misdeeds + license payments for future products" would net Apple more than their current purblind "vee vill destroy you!". If companies know that Apple patents can be licensed then there's always going to be the temptation to go the easy route and just pay the money and have done with it - thereby netting monies that might not have come to Apple. Compare that with the current situation, where Apple has to chase each infraction - good for lawyer's fees,but conversely not so good for your bottom line. I'm also aghast at the staggering hypocrisy of Apple whining that Motorola don't give them FRAND terms on IP that they (Apple) need - when in fact (if true) then all Motorola are doing is following the Apple playbook. Being brutal - Apple can dish it out, but can't take their own medicine.

[Spud1]

Being brutal - Apple can dish it out, but can't take their own medicine.

Very true - they can't..but again mass hypocrisy is widespread in business, especially in larger ones with different business units that each have different aims, where costs can be cross charged all over the place to become well and truly hidden..it's complicated!

True enough that there are other approaches that could be taken, and of course we are all just speculating based on what we read in the press and various journals (so again we are probably discussing based on lies and mis-information ). Apple should have taken different action earlier on, giving them the opportunity to potentially make more money without the negative impacts that we're seeing..but we're probably too late for that.

Maybe it isn't really about that too - I suspect that Apple as a company are getting quite scared now, they have enjoyed total dominance in the mobile music player market for nearly 10 years now, and are one of the biggest global technology brands in the world..it's obvious that this cannot last, so they will naturally lash out at competition who they see as a threat. I doubt it will help long term, and I am sure that in a few years both Google and Apple will go the way of IBM (Google even earlier as they are not a "cool" brand), but it might do short term.

Like I said earlier though, on a moral level I completely disagree with Apples stance here..but I can't criticise as at least from the information I have available to me, it's a fairly logical one to take