Quote:
Originally Posted by Red
Patents do not stop innovation. They encourage it.
Samsung has not innovated anything here. They took google's OS and put it on a hardware device styled to look like an ipad. Where is the innovation?
I think that this ban is good for customers as it will force Samsung (and soon others) to think out of the box and actually create something unique instead of copying the last big hit.
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I don't agree completely. With copying, there is the possibility you can get incremental innovation. Copying something means someone has already done the leg work and then you have time to improve it - even though legally you aren't in the clear. Some of the best Android roms and kernels originally come out of China where they have copied a stock rom (like from Samsung) and completely reverse engineered it and added 10 times the features and integration with other software and resources. Then even after that, people in the west get ahold of the roms (again copying them) and retooled them and adding even more to them.
That's how open source software works as well and it's incredibly innovative. Someone does the leg work and it's distributed. Anyone can get it and have a copy of the original program/SDK, etc. and add onto it.
Inspiration can also be much more powerful than innovation. If you are inspired by something someone else made and copy it because you see a way to make it better (that the original company wouldn't do), the consumer wins again.
Admittedly, it often results in inferior products and bad counterfeits or legally home built clones (Chinese Bombardier trains that crash horrifically) but the possibility of innovation exists and what's more, the consumer has more choice and options available to him. Innovation is important, but after that, a critical mass of copies and users can make revolutionary improvements that the original company would never have made.