Did you know that Samsung won a lawsuit against Apple? It was a court case about patents. This was not a surprise, though, as many technology brands are wasting a lot of resources suing each other over patents rather than being more innovative.
This is was not the first time that Apple and Samsung fought over patents in court, though. The last time they had done this was in 2014 when the latter was ordered to pay the first 119.6 million dollars in the form of damages. It was found that Samsung had violated Apple’s three smartphone patents.
Then when the case was appealed, a panel of three judges sided with Samsung saying that it had a significant contribution to the creation of the first two patents. Ultimately, they also said that Samsung did not violate the third auto-correct patent for checking spellings automatically.
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This ruling might stop wars over smartphone patents and open a door to an environment where companies can thrive together, build on each other creativity and re-invent their systems. Then they will stop suing each other and wasting resources.
According to Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law School professor, patents lawsuits such as the ones Apple have done are too costly and bad for the world. Despite spending more than 1 billion dollars in legal fees, they just got back $158, 400. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Samsung, this money will become its money.
According to a new newspaper story titled ‘Patent Licensing, Technology Transfer and Innovation’, written by Mark and Robin Feldman (works at the University of California Hastings), patents are meant to bring value to customers in the form of innovation. So if a patent is not doing its work, it is of no use to the whole society.
