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December 22, 2010
Smart Phone Rivals go to Court
Patent suits heat
up competition
(AP)-- Competition among smart
phone makers is heating up at retail,
in advertising and, increasingly, in
the courtroom as handset and soft
ware makers wield patent lawsuits
to protect their turf and slow down
their rivals.
J ust a few years ago, smart phones
were mainly for office workers who
needed to check e-mail after hours.
For most people, the Web browsers
and other programs were too much
trouble, and the data connections
too slow.
Apple Inc. changed all that with
the introduction of the iPhone in
2007. Its touch-sensitive screen and
consumers or persuading them to
pay more for their devices.
In turn, that has prompted a slew
o f patent disputes over all aspects
of basic phone use, from the way a
user swipes a touch screen to per
form an action to the method a phone
uses to extend battery life. Nokia is
suing Apple, Apple is suing HTC,
Microsoft is suing Motorola and
more.
"In consumer electronics and re
The iPhone 4 (from left), the HTD Droid Incredible, and the
lated fields, it's a great challenge to
Motorola Droid X,
earn a profit," said Bruce Sunstein,
big icons made it easy to use. Its still sets the agenda.
an intellectual property lawyer at
programs were designed from the
But that throne is weakening. Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers
ground up to work well on the small And as the other devices, including in Boston. "The way you can usu
screen. And the sleek design made those running Google Inc.’s An ally get profit is through innova
it an instant hit with consumers.
droid system, catch up with the tion."
Even as competitors have rushed iPhone, smart phone makers are
Smart phone makers must not
out copycat designs, the iPhone having a harder time standing out to only come up with novel features,
he said, but must also stake claims
to the technology behind them and
thus reap the rewards in licensing
fees.
C onsum ers sh o u ld n 't w orry
about buying or using any of those
phones. Patent cases can take
months or years to resolve — some
times longer than the life of these
phones — and disputes are often
settled with licensing deals.
Ultimately, no one company will
prevail. Rather, the results will de
termine how profits are divvied up
among a vast number of players.
It's a pool of money that's grow
ing as smart phone sales balloon.
Research group IDC expects global
smart phone shipments of 270 mil
lion in 2010, a 55 percent increase
from last year.
Kids go on Expensive Buying Sprees
Free downloads lead to
credit card charges
(AP) -- "The Smurfs' Village," agame for the iPhone and
other Apple gadgets, was released a month ago and
quickly became the highest-grossing application in the
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project at www.unitedway-pdx.org/MLK
K elly R um m elhart and h e r son, Sawyer, 4, who u n w ittin g ly
racke d up nearly $ 7 0 in pu rcha ses on 'The S m u rf's
V illa g e ' gam e he played on h e r IPad, are seen in th e ir
hom e in Gridley, Calif. (AP ph oto )
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United Way of the
Columbia-Willamette
iTunes store. Yet it's free to down
load.
So where does the money come
from? Kelly Rummelhart of Gridley,
Calif., has part of the answer. Her 4-
year-old son was using her iPad to
play the game and racked up $66.88
in charges on her credit card with
out knowing what he was doing.
Rummelhart had no idea that it
was possible to buy things — buy
them with real money — inside the
game. In this case, her son bought
one bushel and 11 buckets o f
"Smurfberries," tokens that speed
up gameplay.
"Really, my biggest concern was
them scratching the screen. Never
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