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Clash of the (Tech) Titans

Just a few days ago, Apple Computers Inc. won a huge lawsuit against Samsung Group for alleged patent violations committed by Samsung in its line of Galaxy phones, winning over $1 billion in damages and some incredible PR by being able to claim that one of their biggest threats in the mobile market is a copycat. The battle is not over, however. Samsung plans to ask the court to overturn the decision, and failing that, appeal in a separate lawsuit, dragging on their legal battle against Apple that has been ongoing since April 2011. This is nothing new for the tech industry. Every company with interest in the mobile market has used its lawyers as weapons in the battle for market share with patents as the ammunition.

Graph of Tech Lawsuits

The tangled mess in which tech giants find themselves

As the above graph from August 2011 shows, nearly every company you’ve ever heard of in the phone industry (and a few that you haven’t) is involved in some sort of patent litigation with their rivals. While the above graph is a simplification of the huge number of tech lawsuits going around the court circuits, we can still draw a few conclusions, and indeed, make predictions using the information from the graph.

Let’s zoom in a bit on the graph, and take a closer look at the patent lawsuits between Microsoft, Motorola, and Apple. Each of the three is a household name, each is a giant in the tech industry, each has a R&D department worth billions of dollars working every day to pump out new innovation, new technologies, and of course, new patents. In addition, each of these companies represent the three major operating systems available to consumers when purchasing smartphones: Microsoft with its line of Windows Phones, Apple with its iconic iPhones, and Motorola, having been acquired by Google, with their Droids running the Android platform.

However, a peculiar thing jumps out if you focus closely on the litigation surrounding these companies. Microsoft and Apple, two fierce, historic rivals with a dramatic history of back-and-forth litigation, each major players in this mobile phone market fraught with lawsuits — the fact that there is no link showing litigation between these two companies seems to violate basic common sense!

And indeed, this is a violation. Not just of sense, but also of triadic closure. With Microsoft and Motorola engaged in suits and counter-suits, and Apple and Motorola engaged in the same, we can well say that there is a strong link between Microsoft and Motorola, and between Motorola and Apple. (After all, nothing strengthens bonds like litigation). According to strong triadic closure, if node A is strongly connected to node B and node C, there needs to be at least a weak link between nodes B and C or else it violates the property of triadic closure. In this case, Motorola is strongly connected to Apple and Microsoft, but there doesn’t appear to be a link between Microsoft and Apple — a violation of triadic closure!

That is, of course, unless Microsoft sues apple. One could very well predict, based on this graph alone, that there will be an edge developed between Apple and Microsoft. And that is exactly what happened. In March 2012, 7 months after the publication of this graphic, Microsoft (through a subsidiary holding company called Core Wireless) sued Apple in an Eastern Texas District Court over patent violations, claiming that Apple’s iPhone and iPad violated no less than eight Core Wireless’s (and in turn, Microsoft’s) patents on wireless communication over 2G, 3G and 4G networks.

And thus, an edge is formed between Microsoft and Apple, the triangle is closed, triadic closure is satisfied, and the tech companies’ lawyers keep getting paychecks.

The effects of all this litigation is dire. In an ecosystem in which companies are so eager to sue each other over any perceived patent violations, innovation is buried under the red tape of litigation. Indeed, if a company as large as Samsung could be forced to pay $1 billion over something so trivial as pinch to zoom, it would be impossible for anyone, any company, to innovate in the industry without unleashing the wrath of armies of lawyers seeking damages, and find themselves added as a node onto this ever-expanding graph of patent litigation.

 

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Sources:

Yao, Nathan. “Mobile Patent Lawsuits.” Mobile Patent Lawsuits. Flowing Data, Aug.-Sept. 2011. Web. 07 Sept. 2012. <http://flowingdata.com/2011/08/22/mobile-patent-lawsuits-2/>.

Mullis, Steve. “Apple’s Patent Win Could Alter Landscape Of Smartphone Industry.” NPR. NPR, 25 Aug. 2012. Web. 07 Sept. 2012. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/08/25/160028467/apples-patent-win-could-alter-landscape-of-smartphone-industry>.

Crouch, Dennis. “Microsoft and Nokia Sue Apple for Patent Infringement (via a Holding Company).” PatentlyO, 5 Mar. 2012. Web. 07 Sept. 2012. <http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/03/microsoft-and-nokia-sue-apple-for-patent-infringement-through-a-holding-company.html>.

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