Poll Results: Will the outcome of the Apple vs Samsung case stifle or help innovation?

A week or so after the jury announced its staggering decision to award Apple with over $1 billion in patent infringement damages and virtually agree with all of Cupertino’s patent claims, the dust has settled. Opinions were polarized and speculation surged that Apple might tax Android for using such essential actions like pinch-to-zoom, but turns out the implications are not that drastic and rumors say that Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook and Google’s head Larry Page are discussing an agreement of some case for Android.

The jury also spoke - foreman Velvin Hogan explained the decision mostly as pointed against blatant copying in early TouchWiz by Samsung, and was specific that it didn’t affect Android as a whole.

For Android phone makers, though, this decision has definitely made them more cautious, more careful what to release and what not, doublechecking designs. This fear that Apple has just become the big bully in an industry living peacefully by large so far, has definitely crippled. Samsung, Android’s biggest partner, is allegedly partnering deeper with Microsoft now to cut its dependency on Android.

With all that in mind, we asked you - will the jury’s decision in the Apple versus Samsung case stifle innovation, or the opposite, help push it forward? The overwhelming majority of votes saw the negativity in this decision and sided with Samsung’s position that you can’t put a patent on rectangles. Nearly 82% of you, our voters, feared some kind of an “Apple tax” on Android that could make Android phones more expensive.

On the other hand there were still over 18% who thought this would eventually push companies to invest more in innovation and not copying. The future will tell who was right, but right now it seems that those legal interventions seem to be largely a negative force on the market.