Will an Apple Patent Victory Kill Smartphones?
Speculation has grown about what will happen to the smartphone industry if Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) prevails over Samsung in an intellectual property trial. Both sides have rested their cases and said they cannot reach an agreement outside of court.…
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“I think what we’ll see is a diversification of designs in the marketplace if Apple wins,” said Christopher V. Carani, an intellectual property lawyer for McAndrews, Held & Malloy in Chicago.
That could mean development of new products will be substantially slowed as smartphone companies with products that have iPhone-like features go “back to the drawing board” to avoid suits. Planned launches of some products may be delayed for months. Samsung, with its strong balance sheet, could suffer a setback. It is the leader in the smartphone industry worldwide. The effects on smaller firms like HTC could be devastating.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.