Well put. Dean is making a sort of karmic argument of the form "The punishment is just because of past mis-deeds" rather than a procedural argument (which is where I was coming from). I personally have always preferred that karmic backlash be a product of the market rather than the courts, but there are plenty of cases where plaintiff or defendant were made to be examples to discourage similar behaviors.
I don't believe I'm making the karmic argument here, hopefully you're not interpreting it as such. I was simply arguing that Samsung copies at a deeper level which borders the line of cloning a product. If it were up to the market to decide, we should be manufacturing identical Chanel handbags at 1/10th the price and making a killing. Those handbags sell for $10k and probably cost pennies to make.
Hmm, Ok. If you are not making a karmic argument then what argument are you making? Lets go back to square one, I claimed this was a blow to innovation because it would have a chilling effect on designers. And you responded with this argument:
"No, it's not a blow to innovation. The only reason Apple went after Samsung and not HTC or other Android handset manufacturers is because Samsung has gone into detail copying every small feature from Apple."
You claim that innovation is not harmed, and the basis for that claim is an assertion that Apple's motivation for pursuing a patent infringement suit against Samsung was due to poor behavior (detail copying).
And yet in every patent dispute, and there are many to choose from, Microsoft FAT file system, Intel frontside bus, Unisys GIF file compression, where the exact strategy was to assert the patent against the biggest and most difficult possible defendant, so that a win would cause everyone else to simply follow that decision rather than fight. If you do it the other way and start with the little guys, each time you sue the next bigger guy he's going to assume that because he has more resources he can win the fight and you're back in court. Doing it this way nobody thinks they are going do better than Samsung did and they will all submit to Apple's demands.
I claim it has absolutely nothing to do with Samsung's "detail copying" behavior and everything to do with the fact that Samsung is the single biggest, baddest, richest, manufacturer of smartphones after Apple.
I realize that I didn't respond directly to your claim of motivation because I did not feel it was supported by your evidence. You don't provide evidence of Apple's motivation, you don't provide a definition of 'detail copying', and you don't provide a rationale why details like 'rounded corners', which is one of the claimed infringements, should be protected.
When you re-iterated Samsung's bad behavior I guessed you were going for the karmic angle.
You've followed up your claim by trying a reductio ad absurdum [1] argument about copying. However it is trivially easy to poke holes in that argument by looking at the market we live in without the Apple lawsuit. There are no $10 Chanel bags being made by an otherwise reputable handbag maker.
So do you still think Apple was just mad at Samsung? And so you or I could make a rounded rectangle tablet device and they wouldn't sue us ?
The reason I bring up the Chanel bags is because Chanel also applies for patents as well. I'm not trying to bring up some crazy straw-man argument. There are actually such things called "design" patents that differ from your examples of "utility" patents (FAT file system, GIF, etc). The reason no other $10 Chanel bags exist is due to design patents being enforced. Rounded corners and icons would actually fall into the category of "design" patents.
The reason why detail copying matters is because this is how infringement is determined by an individual. If said individual is unable to distinguish between the two products, it is possible that infringement has occurred. If the product merely copied a single item/feature, it is unlikely a consumer would be confused by the two products.
Apple's core motivation is for trade dress protection. They need their design patents upheld so that others cannot challenge their registration. Samsung's tablet has very similar packaging to Apple and may be confused by consumers. Packaging matters in trade dress protection (see Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana).
