There are a lot of people who would benefit from knowing Apple’s future plans. Competitors, consumers, Journalists, share holders, to name but a few.
The mere knowledge of what Apple’s next instalment of the iPad and iPhone will look like has the potential to make a huge impact on the tech market. Needless to say, Steve and co keep their business top secret. But that could all change, if the courts favour Samsung.
A bitter legal feud between the two companies concerning patents is taking some interesting turns which give us a colourful insight into the legislation behind the multi-million pound industry of portable consumer electronics. The basic allegations are from Apple who accuses Samsung of stealing just about every idea Apple has, and using them to make Android running tablets and smartphones. This alone is interesting stuff. How far can Apple stretch their patents before the courts say no? Any tablet is going to share similarities with the iPad and any smartphone, the iPhone, because all the phone and tablets basically perform the same functions in the same way. But that doesn’t mean that Apple is the holy grail of consumer electronics and everything else is a copy.
Another point to consider is that if Apple keep their product blueprints top-secret how can companies anticipate whether they will infringe patents or not. In order to see if Samsung are guilty of technological plagiarism, Apple asked the courts to force Samsung to hand over all their pre-production plans for smartphones and tablets in case they are in breach of Apples, patents and in retaliation Samsung requested the details of Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPad 3. Now let’s be honest, Samsung have no chance. But in the future, if companies continue to batter each other around court, it’s likely that a judge could force companies to keep each other informed of their next moves and that would completely change the industry.
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