Apple and Samsung are making peace – at least outside the United States. In a surprise move late Tuesday, the two companies said they were dropping all litigation outside the country.
“Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the two companies said in a joint statement to The Verge. “This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.”
Good news of course, but just imagine if all the money and resources wasted on fruitless court cases was spent on actually useful things. I also wonder how this settlement-that-isn’t-a-settlement will affect the ongoing American court cases. Won’t the judge push them to settle even harder now?
A few billions here and there is hardly fruitless.
This whole agreement sounds like “we will continue to sue about the past, we will continue to sue about the present, we will continue to sue about a dozen other things…but we are nice guys, so we will not sue each other sometimes, somewhere, about some things….maybe
avgalen,
Depends on who you are of course. Lawyers always come out ahead, even those on the loosing side benefit. Without serious lawsuits, then most lawyers would make much less and even be out of a job. Consumers are generally on the loosing end since patent lawsuits hinder competition and increase expenses. Most developers also feel it’s a detriment to R&D due to diverted funding and the barriers caused by legalizing technical monopolies.
Shareholders are harder to read. I think company directors will sell the shareholders on the idea that they need patents & lawsuits to increase profits, yet they tend to overlook/downplay the full costs associated with patents.
Is that both companies, especially Apple, are sitting on mountains of cash already. How much bigger does Apple’s R&D budget have to be to make the expenditures on litigation be a non-issue?
jgagnon,
I’m having trouble parsing your question. Apple would need to increase R&D by roughly a factor of three to match samsung, but I don’t see what this has to do with litigation?
Apple $3.4B, 2% of sales.
Samsung $9.1B, 6% of sales.
R&D data:
http://mashable.com/2012/11/01/apple-research-investments/
People are complaining that companies “spend too much on litigation” and that the money could be better spent elsewhere, such as improving their products (R&D). I was just trying to figure out how much a company like Apple would have to spend on non-litigation stuff for people to stop worrying about how much they’re spending on litigation? Or is any amount too much?
jgagnon,
Yep.
Well, personally I look at the opportunity cost. Can’t companies find *something* better to do than wasting god knows how much money/time over litigation and accumulation of legal ammunition in the form of patents?
In my opinion, yes, because patents serve no purpose other than to be used for litigation (be it offensive or defensive), they hold no value otherwise. What all patents represent is an investment in future litigation with unspecified parties. The *only* way to recoup the costs & overhead of patents is for them to end up in the hands of patent lawyers suing others for royalties or monopoly rights in court. This is inherently detrimental. Patents should only be permitted in disciplines where the free market produces no takers otherwise; they should be banned in disciplines where they discourage competition rather than encourage it (ie software).
Samsung is no longer the enemy to Apple it once was and so Apple no longer cares that much about it’s products in markets outside the US.
In the US, Samsung enjoys strong relationships with carriers and so the litigation is a way to make continuing or establishing new relationships that much more complex.