Samsung's question to Apple was brilliant because no matter which way Apple
answered Samsung won something. There was no doubt which way Apple was going to
answer.
I don't claim the members of Apple's legal team are paragons of
moral virtue but I doubt they would have engaged in such chicanery because the
risk would have been great and the reward would have been small. It makes even
less sense for them to then bring attention this area they would have great
desire to keep hush hush. Finally, if Samsung's lawyers had evidence of the
chicanery and just sat on it then they would be culpable too.
IMO the
lesson from all of this is not Apple's lawyers must have done something
evil. The lesson is that when lawyers play word games to twist the truth
around to mislead without having to technically lie (like we've seen time and
again in SCO v. The World and Oracle v. Google) then people stop
believing what all lawyers say and the whole system is headed for collapse. Our
legal system is based on trust. Our entire civilization is based on trust.
When highly paid, highly respected, highly visible people abuse that trust for
short-term, selfish, pecuniary gains then we all lose.
If you want you can
blame the judges for not reigning in the lawyers. You can then blame the
legislators for endlessly blocking judicial appointments. Then you can blame
the people for constantly electing corrupt politicians. The real question is:
what can each one of us do as an individual to help restore trust in our
society?
--- Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more
contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|