Disruptions: Apple Patent Fight With Samsung Spills Some iPhone and iPad Secrets

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Monday, August 06, 2012

Disruptions: Apple Patent Fight With Samsung Spills Some iPhone and iPad Secrets

By NICK BILTON

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Back in the early 1930s, a magician by the name of Horace Goldin went to court to defend his signature illusion: sawing a woman in half.

Mr. Goldin filed a lawsuit against the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for using this magic trick in an advertisement and explaining how it worked. According to an article in The New York Times from March 1933, Mr. Goldin, who had won a patent for the illusion a decade earlier, asserted that the ad had adversely affected his ability to get people to see his shows. He asked for $50,000 in damages. (That's about $865,000 in today's dollars.)

I thought about Mr. Goldin last week as I sat in a federal courtroom here in the capital city of Silicon Valley. I listened to evidence presented in a patent lawsuit that Apple has brought against Samsung Electronics. Apple claims that Samsung copied its designs for the iPhone and the iPad.

You see, even just by filing his patent, and then using it to litigate, Mr. Goldin publicly drew attention to the secrets of his profession. Apple, by going to a jury trial to defend the patents of its most prized products, is also allowing competitors and the public to see inside one of the most secretive companies in the world.

Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, was very much in the mold of a magician. People often spoke of being sucked into a "reality distortion field" as he pitched his new products. Anyone who closely watched those dramatic announcements may recall how he repeatedly used the word "magical" to describe his latest devices.