Apple Vs Samsung: Patents war
Locked in legal wrangles over patents
The battle between Samsung and Apple over copyright and patents ownership reached a climax this year in August with a California jury ordering Samsung to pay $1.051 billion in damages to Apple. The Apple-Samsung trial came after each side filed a blizzard of legal motions and refused advisories by US district judge Lucy Koh to settle the dispute out of court. In April 2011, Apple had filed a patent infringement lawsuit to demand $2.5 billion from its smartphone competitor. In response Samsung, which has overtaken Apple as the world’s leading smartphone maker, had fired back with its own lawsuit seeking $399 million. After the trial, the jury found that several Samsung products illegally used such Apple creations as the “bounce-back” feature when a user scrolls to an end image, and the ability to zoom text with a finger tap. Samsung lawyers insisted that several other companies and inventors had previously developed much of the Apple technology at issue and argued that many of Apple’s claims of innovation were either obvious concepts or ideas stolen from Sony Corp and others. But even after the US court verdict, the battle between the two is far from over. Earlier this month, the two companies squared off once again in the same US court that gave the jury award in favour of Apple. In the hearings that have taken place so far, the iPhone maker has been going all out to convince judge Koh to ban sales of a number of the Korean company’s devices, besides defending its $1.05 billion jury award. Other than the US, Apple and Samsung have filed similar lawsuits in eight other countries, including South Korea, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Australia. In one such suit in South Korea, judges in Seoul ruled that Samsung didn’t copy the look and feel of the iPhone; instead it’s Apple that has infringed on Samsung’s wireless technology.
Hewlett Packard: troubled times
Can Whitman turn around HP’s fortunes?
For Hewlett Packard, the No.1 personal computer maker, things have been going pretty downhill for quite sometime. In the third quarter of this fiscal, HP suffered a $8.9 billion quarterly loss as personal computer sales shrank and it had to swallow a huge write-down linked to its $13.9 billion purchase of Electronic Data Systems Corp. It marked HP’s fourth consecutive year-over-year quarterly decrease in revenue, which sank 5% from last year to $29.7 billion. Worse was to follow as HP disclosed in November that it will take a $8.8 billion write off on the Autonomy deal for which it had paid $11 billion last year. This year alone HP has lost close to a quarter of its market value, and its shares are down about 15% from when Meg Whitman was appointed to the helm last year. Whitman has been shaking things up at HP by reorganizing divisions, ushering in new managers and slashing costs through the job cuts. To cope with the upheaval, HP has been expanding into technology consulting, computer software, data storage and high-end servers made for companies and government agencies. But HP hasn’t been evolving rapidly enough to avoid an alarming deterioration in its financial health.
Locked in legal wrangles over patents
The battle between Samsung and Apple over copyright and patents ownership reached a climax this year in August with a California jury ordering Samsung to pay $1.051 billion in damages to Apple. The Apple-Samsung trial came after each side filed a blizzard of legal motions and refused advisories by US district judge Lucy Koh to settle the dispute out of court. In April 2011, Apple had filed a patent infringement lawsuit to demand $2.5 billion from its smartphone competitor. In response Samsung, which has overtaken Apple as the world’s leading smartphone maker, had fired back with its own lawsuit seeking $399 million. After the trial, the jury found that several Samsung products illegally used such Apple creations as the “bounce-back” feature when a user scrolls to an end image, and the ability to zoom text with a finger tap. Samsung lawyers insisted that several other companies and inventors had previously developed much of the Apple technology at issue and argued that many of Apple’s claims of innovation were either obvious concepts or ideas stolen from Sony Corp and others. But even after the US court verdict, the battle between the two is far from over. Earlier this month, the two companies squared off once again in the same US court that gave the jury award in favour of Apple. In the hearings that have taken place so far, the iPhone maker has been going all out to convince judge Koh to ban sales of a number of the Korean company’s devices, besides defending its $1.05 billion jury award. Other than the US, Apple and Samsung have filed similar lawsuits in eight other countries, including South Korea, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Australia. In one such suit in South Korea, judges in Seoul ruled that Samsung didn’t copy the look and feel of the iPhone; instead it’s Apple that has infringed on Samsung’s wireless technology.
Hewlett Packard: troubled times
Can Whitman turn around HP’s fortunes?
For Hewlett Packard, the No.1 personal computer maker, things have been going pretty downhill for quite sometime. In the third quarter of this fiscal, HP suffered a $8.9 billion quarterly loss as personal computer sales shrank and it had to swallow a huge write-down linked to its $13.9 billion purchase of Electronic Data Systems Corp. It marked HP’s fourth consecutive year-over-year quarterly decrease in revenue, which sank 5% from last year to $29.7 billion. Worse was to follow as HP disclosed in November that it will take a $8.8 billion write off on the Autonomy deal for which it had paid $11 billion last year. This year alone HP has lost close to a quarter of its market value, and its shares are down about 15% from when Meg Whitman was appointed to the helm last year. Whitman has been shaking things up at HP by reorganizing divisions, ushering in new managers and slashing costs through the job cuts. To cope with the upheaval, HP has been expanding into technology consulting, computer software, data storage and high-end servers made for companies and government agencies. But HP hasn’t been evolving rapidly enough to avoid an alarming deterioration in its financial health.
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