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Samsung Ordered To Hand Over Unreleased Designs To Apple
An anonymous reader writes with an article in Edible Apple "Samsung last Wednesday was ordered to hand over to Apple five as-of-yet unreleased products so that Apple can compare them to their own offerings ahead of litigation. Apple of course claims that Samsung's products blatantly copy the look and feel of Apple's iOS devices."
Samsung Ordered to Hand Over Unreleased Designs to Apple
Uh huh ... well, when I go to the original source cited in the article I find this piece of text:
She [Judge Koh] also limited the results of discovery to "Outside Counsel Eyes Only," meaning neither Apple nor its in-house counsel will get a peek at the phones or related marketing materials.
(Emphasis mine.) I must confess that one does have to read the entire article of Courthouse News to get to that somewhat important and relevant tidbit but that is asking a bit much for an editor. Or perhaps that was known but "Court Counsel to Judge Samsung Prototypes" just doesn't boil up the anti-Apple blood like the current headline does?
My work here is dung.
And none of them have antenna/reception issues, so where is the copying taking place?
The article references:
"Helping their cause, Apple presented to the judge a news report which quotes a Samsung executive saying that they will have to improve parts of their upcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in light of the thinner iPad 2 from Apple."
Someone tell me how this is worth anything in the legal world? Of course Samsung would want to improve their product to compete with a product currently on the market. How is this relevant?
You mean they are rectangular and black with a touchscreen? This is hardly revolutionary design. And Samsung's TVs look just like other TVs - again rectangular and black.
I shrugged at that myself, but then I've bought Samsung Galaxy S II a few days ago. And you know what? It really tries very hard to look like an iPhone. I don't just mean the full-glass front screen and a hardware "home" button. Their replacement launcher, TouchWiz, is also an iOS lookalike, with four icons on the bottom. App drawer is replaced to work more like iOS, too, with automatic sorting of icons replaced by manual positioning on a number of screens. Heck, they even changed tab switching UI in the browser to look identical to iPhone, except that the close button is (-) instead of (x).
So, it's not just Apple being silly here. Mind you, Samsung beats them on some other points (like screen size and contrast/brightness, or sheer hardware power), but they definitely do copy the design.