Samsung Withdraws Counter-Suit Against Apple

tekgoblin writes "Samsung has withdrawn a counter-suit against Apple in their ongoing legal battle which concerns similarities in the iOS device lineup against the Galaxy S lineup from Samsung. The counter-suit concerned the design of the user interface being very similar to that of Samsung's: 'related to fundamental innovations that increase mobile device reliability, efficiency, and quality, and improve user interface in mobile handsets and other products.'"

Comments

Who gives a shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is not whether Apple or Samsung are right - it's that this shit is patentable in the first place.

Re:Who gives a shit!

[artor3]

The iPhone interface -- a bunch of icons arranged in a grid, each of which launches a different task. See also: Windows 95.

Re:Who gives a shit!

[TheRaven64]

PalmOS was much closer. I can't find a decent picture in 10 seconds of searching, but this should look familiar to anyone who has used an iOS or Android device...

Re:Who gives a shit!

[CharlyFoxtrot]

And that itself was influenced by Apple's Newton. It's all a mishmash of influences. What matters is that eventually Palm hit on the definitive UI in the stylus era and iPhone finally hit the sweet spot in the touchscreen era.

Re:Who gives a shit!

[abigor]

I guess Xerox wasn't a corporation, but some sort of charity? Anyway, Xerox PARC was founded in 1970, making it pretty improbable that everyone "ripped off" Xerox in the 1960s. And the first mouse was invented at SRI and first shown at The Mother of All Demos in 1968, along with various other stuff we take for granted today. I guess Xerox "ripped off" SRI then, in your simple-minded universe.

In exchange for allowing Apple to make use of their work, Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO Apple stock. Welcome to the world of business.

You're sick of Apple fanboys? I'm sick of clearly non-technical people spouting rage at an industry they have absolutely no idea about.

Summary is misleading, not dropped the suit but

[teh31337one]

they've consolidated them to focus on their defence in this suit.

"Look and feel" bullshit

[Adrian Lopez]

If only Apple would withdraw it's lawsuit against Samsung over the same ridiculous "look and feel" claim. Why should either Samsung or Apple have exclusive rights over what's ultimately a rectangular grid of icons? It would be like giving the company that released the first touch-tone phone exclusive rights over the layout and appearance of the touch-tone keypad.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be like giving the company that released the first touch-tone phone exclusive rights over the layout and appearance of the touch-tone keypad.

You need a better example, because that's exactly what happened in the US, up until Ma Bell was broken up. The phone company owned the very wiring in your house as well as the phones, not just the keypad design.

Also, note that Apple is only suing Samsung for producing a device that looks a lot like the iPhone in many more ways than just a rectangular icon grid. Apple isn't suing Google over the Android UI, just Samsung for making the Android UI look more like the iPhone UI than other Android phones. In other words, a significant lack of originality on Samsung's part.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[Theovon]

If it were the icons Apple was unhappy about, they'd be suing Google, because that's a function of Android. Rather, Apple's beef is with the bezel of certain Samsung phones looking remarkably like earlier iPhones. And in my opinion, they do look remarkably similar, with minor differences in things like the home button.

But notice that I said "earlier iPhones." None of the Samsung phones look like the iPhone 4, while Apple has left behind the look of the original iPhone. So why is Apple so up in arms about Samsung copying a look they've deprecated? Well, one reason might be that Samsung was selling these phones while Apple was still selling the 3Gs, although I'm not sure if that's true. However, there are design patents and trademarks and copyrights pertaining to this look and feel that Apple legally must defend or else they risk losing exclusive rights to their IP.

It's also pretty lame that Samsung can't be bothered to get their own design team to make their own unique look and feel. Apple spent a lot of R&D on theirs, so it's not right that Samsung just copies it. And don't tell me that the similarities are just coincidence. Of course, copying happens all the time. Even more significant than the look and feel was the concept of the iPhone itself. It was certainly not the first smart phone, but was the first to bring this level of usability to a touch screen without a stylus. THAT's really the hard part.... and it was Google that decided to ride on Apple's coat tails there. Now, it's vital that Apple have competition, to keep Apple on its toes, but that competition has to be innovative in its own right or else Apple will have really nothing to compete against except clones of itself. I saw this one Nokia phone that had a feature that Apple didn't come up with, which was to make the whole display a button that was clickable, so touching was one kind of input, and that was separate from clicking. I thought that was pretty cool.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[sessamoid]

If it were the icons Apple was unhappy about, they'd be suing Google, because that's a function of Android. Rather, Apple's beef is with the bezel of certain Samsung phones looking remarkably like earlier iPhones. And in my opinion, they do look remarkably similar, with minor differences in things like the home button

I don't own an Android phone, but looking at the photos of the Samsung phones and stock Android, Samsung clearly changed several of the icons and interface elements to mimic the iPhone in ways that Google seemed to have intentionally avoided. That's aside from the obvious hardware similarities that other Android phones do not share.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[Adrian Lopez]

"Also, note that Apple is only suing Samsung for producing a device that looks a lot like the iPhone in many more ways than just a rectangular icon grid."

Such as, say, the phone's shape?

Apple isn't suing Google over the Android UI, just Samsung for making the Android UI look more like the iPhone UI than other Android phones.

Which particular aspects of the iPhone UI do you think should be owned exclusively by Apple? If Apple were to sell its UI as a product (just the UI, not the operating system), what would the sales brochure look like?

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[Adrian Lopez]

As to the first one, there are many, many companies that pour tons of research and money in designs and they think those designs should be protected. Without these design patents, any car company can copy the look of the VW Beetle, any soda company can copy the red and white designs of Coca-Cola. Do you think these companies should be able to protect their designs?

"Look and feel" isn't a design patent issue, but rather a "trade dress" (trademark) issue. The red and white design of the Coca-Cola can is an example of trade dress, but I don't think that's quite the same thing as claiming exclusive rights over a GUI's design. Unlike soda can logos, GUIs and their layouts are largely functional in nature and should therefore not be subject to trademark protection. Icons used as part of a GUI may be subject to copyright protection, but similar-looking icons should be perfectly legal (e.g. a calendar icon can only look so much different from another calendar icon). What remains of a GUI's look and feel beyond all that should not, in my opinion, be protected by "look and feel" trademarks.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[andydread]

Going by your logic Apple clearly copied Samsung F700 which was shown to the public a whole year before the Iphone came out.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[phantomfive]

It's a funny picture and cool story, but it's just not true.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[CharlyFoxtrot]

That's the whole point of the Pablo Picasso quote famously used by Jobs : "Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." Imitation is a good learning tool but it doesn't become innovation until you steal what's good and put it together in a novel way to create something new and improved. I guess the argument against duplication goes that imitation without innovation could actually stifle progress by rewarding knockoffs over original thought. It's a difficult line to draw though.

Re:"Look and feel" bullshit

[EEPROMS]

Apple's beef is with the bezel of certain Samsung phones looking remarkably like earlier iPhones.

Yes but the early iphones look exactly like the the award winning LG prada, you know the full screen mobile phone with a silver bezel around the edge and icons in a checkerboard layout that was released a year before the iphone.

Re:Well, guess what Samsung

[tero]

Well, don't use Kies then, it's not like anyone is forcing you?

And why on earth would you want to keep the default ROM on *any* Android phone?

I'm very happy with my Samsung phone.
But each to their own, hope you'll find iPhone does it for you.

Correct it's an accellertion / linking

[rtfa-troll]

That seems to be 100% right. Samsung is still asserting the same claims, but now in the lawsuit Apple originally launched against them. They've also raised Apple another two patents.

Palm

[zmooc]

Too bad Palm is sort of out of business. They came up with the buttons-below-the-touchscreen concept that's been copied by just about every touchscreen-enabled device since 1997.

(Which reminds me... Sony, please, please make new Clies!!1 Thank you.)

Re:Palm

[phantomfive]

I went to Best Buy yesterday, and WebOS is all over the place. The Veer is prominently displayed, and their tablets look better than the Xoom (though not quite as good as the Galaxy.....the interface is cleaner, though). HP hasn't been advertising much the results of their purchase of Palm, but they are definitely trying to make profit off their investment.

Re:Well, guess what Samsung

[greentshirt]

The entire point of Android is openness and flexibility. If you do not like the stock manufacture-themed flavor of Android on your phone, you can use an app like Rom Manager to change to a different one. Can you do that on an iPhone? In Soviet Russia, rhetorical questions ask you.

As far as the battery being bad, you're doing it wrong. With no OS tweaks, and using just the stock Samsung ROM on the Captivate, battery is on par with any other smartphone. Sure, if you have your bluetooth, wifi, and gps permanently turned on, and your screen brightness cranked to maximum, you will run out of juice - but really, if that's how you're operating, your iPhone, your Blackberry and even your laptop will run out of juice as well. Forgetting stock for a moment though, using apps like Juice Defender to manager resource hogs, using a kernel that lets you undervolt and set different power regulators (eg, turn CPU to 100mhz when screen is off, etc) and making sure your application data-sync settings are set to realistic intervals will do magic for your battery life. In Sovie Russia, power manages you.

If you're using Android and complaining about the UI, you're doing it wrong. There is simply no other mobile operating system that provides you with so much easy customization. Even on your stock ROM you can download a different (and free) launcher from the market - say ADW. It will give you so much customization (and preset themes) that you will find it difficult to stop tinkering. You like the MIUI interface? Swell, just download the ADW MIUI theme and use it on your stock ROM. Choice is good, no?

Finally... are you really complaining about default-bloatware? Don't like an application? Uninstall it. Want a different application to use as a system default? Download it. From replacing your text messaging software, to the soft keyboard, to the camera, to the email client, to the browser, to the system launcher... Android gives you choice.

The only real problem with Android is that it treats people as intelligent beings who will make rational choices and decisions. As Apple dwarfs almost every other technology firm, a few things are made clear: people are fickle, buy image and brands over features and benefits, and there are more stupid people on the planet than intelligent ones. I'm not saying anyone who uses an Apple product is in this category, there are many legitimate reasons to use an iPhone or an iOS device over anything else. What I'm saying, however, is that Apple has very specifically targeted the "dumb market" and lures them in with an unparalleled branding and marketing strategy that has people who shouldn't own a calculator buying $700 smartphones.

Google played this one brilliantly, Android is here and the irony is delicious. Apple lost the original Mac vs PC war at the onset due to control-freak behavior. They guarded their technical details jealously, IBM did not, it became easier to write for IBM hardware, clones began to appear, etc, etc, etc. Perhaps that didn't work out too well for IBM as a company, since their core business was consumer hardware and they lost that to clones, but Apple was the bigger loser. $DEITY smiled on them and gave them a second chance in the personal electronics and mobile computing realms. Rather than learn from the past and avoid losing the market again due to the same kind of control-freak behavior, they are doing the exact same thing again. In a decade, Android will be ubiquitous because every hardware maker gets to use it, and iOS devices will once again be relegated to a tiny share of the market. The technology market moves and shakes very quickly. All it will take is one line of highly successful Android MP3 players, phones, or tablets to completely reshape the field. All it will take is a sophisticated branding campaign from a hardware manufacturer who is saving millions on developing their own operating system and diverting those funds into marketing. It's not a matter of if, but rather, when. As for Google, they just wanted a mobile OS to eat advertising revenue from, and that's exactly what they got.

Don't be deceived

[phantomfive]

Even after dropping the countersuit in California, Samsung is still suing Apple in eight different courts, six countries, and three continents. [source]