There are thousands of possible lunch combinations for the average student. Peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff, and peanut butter and jelly are the most ubiquitous.

Well, in the smartphone arena there are dozens of manufactures, but the proverbial PB&J and PB&Fluff are Apple and Samsung, respectively. Apple holds the title as the United States’ most valuable company by market cap, weighing in at just above $600 billion. Samsung leads global manufactures with a 23.5 percent market share of cellphones. It’s evident both of these companies have formed a near oligopoly of the industry.

The first recipe of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich appeared in 1896 in Good Housekeeping magazine. Massachusetts baker Emma Curtis published the recipe for peanut butter and Fluff in her promotional booklet in 1918 to lure customers to the newly invented Fluffernutter.

Did Good Housekeeping sound the alarm and seek damages after Curtis potentially copied the “look and feel” of its peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I doubt it.

But Apple filed its first lawsuit against Samsung in April 2011, in part for infringing upon the iPhone’s “look and feel.” Since 2011, variations of the lawsuit spread to 30 courts in four continents. Samsung has sued Apple for infringing on its patents regarding the Samsung Galaxy product line’s 3G technology. Apple’s assault is much more broad, encompassing the “look and feel” question.

What constitutes look and feel? When a peanut PB&J and PB&Fluff sandwich are placed side by side, do their outward appearances constitute differentiation or does quantification come after the first bite? Is user experience the unequivocal judge of intellectual infringement or can mere industrial design dictate a product’s feel?

Apple’s iPhone has proven to be a cash cow for the company. The iPhone profit margin between April 2010 and March 2012 was a staggering 54 percent, and the iPad profit margin was 28 percent. Apple was seeking intellectual patent infringement damages of $2.5 billion, dating back to the iPhone’s original release in 2007. In addition, Apple wanted an outright U.S. ban of Galaxy Nexus series products.

The recently released ruling from the San Jose, Calif., jury awarded Apple with a fruitful victory totaling $1.05 billion. Samsung was found guilty of infringing on several utility patents related to Apple’s iPhone and iPad. The awards from the trials are not of great importance, but rather the far-reaching legal ramifications have the potential to shape our purchasing options in the coming years.

One of the infringed-upon patents deals directly with Apple’s multi-touch gestures, like pinch-to-zoom or the manipulation of documents by dragging. In some cases, 20 Android-powered Samsung smartphones may be pulled from stores nationwide.

The nine-member jury was presented with dozens of charts, diagrams and prototypes that sought to prove that Samsung naturally innovated its products through traditional means, as opposed to Apple being the victim of a deliberate scheme to copy.

An undeniable truth is that both Apple and Samsung’s mobile hardware foster the 21st-century, high-tech entrepreneurial landscape, where innovative third-party apps vie for both user traffic and substantial monetary reward.

Samsung, the PB&Fluff sandwich in this situation, plans to appeal the decision, while Apple, the PB&J sandwich, heads for an injunction. The stakes are high across the globe, and this high-tech patent quandary will continue as these companies and others continue to innovate.

Jared Rosen is a sophomore advertising and marketing management major. His column appears weekly. He can be contacted at jmrose03@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @jaredmarc14.

Published on September 4, 2012 at 1:00 am

Contact Jared: jmrose03@syr.edu