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Having read many so-called expert opinions, it seems only logical for me to speak up as a consumer. Like most people, I am a pragmatic consumer. I do not support any particular company as they are all the same – trying to rip as much profit from consumers as possible. So what is important to me, is that there are healthy competitions in the market. As such a consumer can choices from different manufactures, while they don’t have to pay a ransom for the innovative features. After writing a short personal view to each infringement, I will also give my verdict on whether the infringement matters to me as a consumer.

I have, in the past and present, owned iPhone 2, iPad, the New iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung Galaxy S3, and HTC Desire HD. The first three devices are Apple products and run iOS. The last three run Androids, manufactured by Samsung and HTC. Oh, I almost forgot that I also owned a couple of Blackberries as well.

A superb breakdown of the infringements questions to the jury can be found here.

Let’s go through the key infringements:
1. The Bounceback patent Apple patent 7,469,381. I won’t go through the details of the patent. As a user, I just don’t care if it is bouncing back or not. My Samsung Galaxy S3 phone does not bounce back comes to the end of a page. I did not even notice until I follow this case. The feature does not enhance the overall user experience. It may give user some novelty effect when they use an iOS device (that is if they ever notice) for the first time. How on earth this is accepted as a patent, it is beyond my world.

Verdict: It does not affect my Android experience.

2. The Scrolling patent Apple patent 7,864,163. This one is related to using one finger to scroll and two or more fingers to zoom. Again, this can be patented? I was gasped again. Isn’t that the most natural human gesture with the invention of finger touchable screens? Seriously, next time I use my finger to point I will be running a risk to infringe Apple’s patent? Microsoft must be kicking itself so hard that they did not patent the pointing gesture, either with a bare finger or a stylus (as in the old day), to give an instruction to its mobile device. With this patent, does it mean that every touch screen device has potentially infringed this patent?

I must admit that the pinch and zoom is a useful feature. But it is not an essential feature, with the increasingly use of a dedicated mobile website.

Verdict: It will affect my experience if this feature is stripped from Android.

To Be Continued …