Samsung's imitation of Apple's patents and designs: Ethical and Legal Considerations

Samsung's imitation of Apple's patents and designs: Ethical and Legal Considerations

Introduction

After the debut of iPhone in 2007, smartphones rapidly became the mainstream mobile computing platform. In mid 2011, a survey of mobile phone operators shows that smartphone ownership reaches 40% of all U.S. mobile subscribers and the rate of smartphone adoption is accelerating. Compared to older phones, smartphones are equipped with much more powerful processors (CPU and GPU), abundant storage, high-resolution screens with multi-touch capability, advanced mobile operating systems and open SDKs. Augmented by a rich collection of mobile applications and services, smartphones are increasing weaved into our daily lives. The introduction of centralized application delivery channels (e.g., Apple App Store, Google Play) revolutionized the distribution of third party mobile applications. Today smartphone users are able to access a myriad of applications instantly and wirelessly. With ever increasing computing power, connectivity, and a large selection of mobile applications, smartphones play a critical role in our digital life. Under the hood, a smartphone is a combination of sensing, computing, and communications in a compact form factor. Smartphone users rarely go far without their phones. Phones are usually co-located with users and exposed to what the users experience. Depending on the usage pattern, a smartphone typically runs for one or two days on a single charge. People usually charge their phones on a regular basis, without shutting them down. Although battery life is still a bottleneck for smartphone sensing system, frequent charging alleviates the energy problem. Smartphones represent the first truly ubiquitous mobile sensing platform for everyday use. Apple recently filed a lawsuit against Samsung and its device (Galaxy S3) claiming that the company copied their patents and used their technology in their device. In this paper, we study the legal and ethical considerations of such claims.

Samsung's imitation of Apple's patents and designs

The lawsuit ended with the conclusion that Samsung had indeed copied patents from Apple and the company had to compensate the claim heavily. Such an act is highly illegal as well as unethical, because from a legal point of view, any act that breaks a law is illegal and from the ethical point of view, any act that harms the rights of others is unethical. Hence, Samsung's act can be called both. Patents are blunt instruments that have been likened to toll booths. They create a 20-year limited monopoly for their owners to exclusively manufacture, import, use, sell, or offer for sale the product or process covered by the claims of the patent (35 U.S.C. SS 154, 271). For most patent holders, patents are a means for producing a product that others may not produce without their permission. Patents are not self-enforcing. Accordingly, companies and individuals are free to infringe patents unless and until court orders the infringers to stop or the infringers agree to cease infringing as part of a settlement agreement. To achieve either outcome (court order or out-of-court settlement) requires the patent owner to initiate patent infringement litigation ...