Apple vs. Samsung: a Legal Anti-Competitive Tactic

Besides, it's not even the same.

On April 15 Apple has filed a law suit against Samsung over a number of iPhone and iPad related patents as well as “trade dress” (packaging and appearance). Apple believes that Samsung has imitated their trade dress and violated their patents with their Galaxy series of smartphones and tablets by offering a similar look and feel, packaging and some of the same features that Apple believes are “unmistakably” associated with the iPhone and iPad. What is interesting about this law suit is that Samsung supplies a lot of the crucial parts that Apple  uses in their products, so to some extent Apple’s supply chain is dependent on Samsung. I suppose this wouldn’t matter to the principle of the law suit, and in the larger scheme of things both companies can ultimately just shake it all off as a part of doing business. In some things you compete or even fight legal battles simultaneously as in other things you cooperate to mutual benefit.
And indeed, this isn’t the first time nor unfortunately the last time that such law suits would happen.
Regardless, I would like to take this opportunity to point out a rather disturbing nature of the principle at play in such law suits; that a company can effectively own something as intangible and dependent on individuals other than Apple (and other plaintiffs in similar lawsuits) as product perception and reputation, and that they are warranted to use force (through the government’s legal system) to prevent other businesses from emulating it.
The way Engadget puts it, calling it a “little space in everyone’s brain that associates the iPhone’s looks and its progeny’s derivative forms with Apple”, is a bit ominous. Don’t lawsuits like this, and laws that support them, effectively imply that Apple has some kind of a legal ownership stake in a little part of all of our minds?
What if some of us decided we love the look and feel of Apple’s devices, but not so much some of their other characteristics, and therefore as potential customers demanded a product that emulates Apple’s look and feel while providing something different in other respects? In such a case we would make a clear distinction between something that is clearly an Apple product and something that looks a bit like an Apple product, but on the whole isn’t. At that point our perception begins to fork away from the Apple brand even if it still keeps some pieces of what defines it. Why would this not be a valid demand to make? Why should a company be legally denied to satisfy this demand?
An even more important point, however, relates to who exactly owns the perception of a product. Since it involves other people’s thoughts and ideas about something then it can’t really be Apple. If I associate a particular look and feel with Apple, this association is within my own mind, and therefore at best my own property (while it stays in my mind), not Apple’s. Apple merely induced this idea in my mind by spending money on that which they can own, such as ads, and products themselves, but they can never own what other people think of them.
The way this relates to Samsung has to do with the reason why Samsung may have made their products look the way they do. If the reason is market demand, as it likely may be, where people may demand an Apple-like product for a lower price and with a different operating system (with its own perceived strengths perhaps) then I don’t see why Samsung should be denied to offer this. Despite certain similarities what people demand in such a case is still distinctively not an Apple device.
In such a light, Apple’s lawsuit (and other such suits) are in fact legal use of force to prevent a form of competition. It is a legal anti-competitive practice. I don’t see what benefit can customers of either of these two companies derive from such an act.
There is a difference between what is happening here and basic protection of a brand name or a trade mark in so far as one is about preventing a case of fraud whereas the other is simply about preventing something similar to be created and offered, under the guise of abstract “intellectual property” violations.
In other words, if Samsung were to slap an Apple logo on their products that would be false advertising, an attempt to defraud the customer. In such a case customers who really do want to buy an Apple device would be scammed into buying something else. What Samsung has done is nowhere near such a scenario, however, so a fraud-prevention argument cannot apply here.
Ultimately, I think it isn’t hard to see the absurdity, lack of value, and even malice in these kinds of law suits. It is common to see people comment negatively whenever something like this happens. There is, I believe, a fairly common sense that something just isn’t right about this, but we’ve come to accept it as a normal thing, business as usual. It is an example of how the use of force is actually allowed and legitimized as the means of getting ahead in business, instead of relying solely on providing the best products and services for the people in the market.