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Samsung Lawyer Fails To Differentiate iPad and Galaxy Tab In Court
Several readers sent in a story that's sure to be embarrassing for Samsung. The company has been involved in a drawn-out patent dispute with Apple over similarities between the Galaxy Tab and the iPad. Today, during a court session, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh held up both objects and asked one of Samsung's attorneys whether she could identify which was which. The attorney replied, "Not at this distance, your honor." The distance was roughly 10 feet. The judge then quizzed the rest of Samsung's lawyers. After a brief hesitation, one of them was able to correctly identify the Galaxy Tab.
Two rectangular slabs are supposed to be perfectly distinguishable at 10 feet? Perhaps Apple wants Samsung to make round tablets. How bout trapezoidal? I'm sure that's not patented...
Black slate of plastic with rounded corneers, like every other tablet on the market. Its like trying to identify between name brand and generic cereal by looking at a bowlfull.
No matter how you feel about patents, Apple, or Samsung, this is funny.
How about turning them on? The one that works is a Samsung.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
...That's the real story here.
Myself, I can't tell the difference between an iPad and a windows 98 tablet computer at ten feet.
And at fifty feet, you could be holding an etch-a-sketch for all I know. I mean seriously, how much detail do you want me to discern from a nearly featureless slab of plastic?
I can't tell the difference between a Honda and a Toyota 9 times out of 10, and I drive a Honda. If my GF didn't have a sun roof, and there was no hood ornament, I'd have absolutely no way of distinguishing her silver Corolla from the neighbors silver Civic. What exactly is this supposed to prove?
That you need new glasses? :-)
This whole Apple V samsung debate really bothers me. Everyone here knows we need (proper) patent reform across the board. I hate trivial patents, patent trolling, and software patents....but there's just something about Apple being able to keep samsung from selling tablets because their tablet is, *gasp* a rectangular touch screen. Why aren't LCD monitor companies fighting each other in court? Many monitors look the same with trivial differences. All these tablets are are screens with a little computer on the back. I mean jesus christ, what a fucking waste of time and effort.
As others have pointed out, that's a terrible test. I can't tell apart a pair of toasters or TVs or refrigerators unless the brand logo is visible. That doesn't mean they're all infringing, it just means that form follows function. But this judge wanted a bad ass moment like what you'd see on Law and Order.
Apple has patents covering their design. This is what the judge is saying. The Galaxy clearly violates Apple's patents, but Apple still needs to prove that their patents are valid (Samsung claimed several instances of prior art, Apple has to show that those cases would not violate their patent).
For something to be funny, it has to be based in truth... an Android tablet having run out of power rings far more true than the iPad having failed for some reason.
But part of the point of the lawsuits is that even on, most would be hard pressed to tell them apart...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the case of the iPad, one of the primary uses is to impress people from across the room.
So, yes, 10 feet is the usual using distance.
http://peanutbuttereggdirt.com/e/custom/Apple-vs-Samsung-1-Hardware-Design.html
http://peanutbuttereggdirt.com/e/custom/Apple-vs-Samsung-2-Interface-Icons.html
http://peanutbuttereggdirt.com/e/custom/Apple-vs-Samsung-3-Package-Design.html
Apple's "design patent" is not about any single property (like the famous "rounded rectangle") but about the combination of all of these.
Find any two white refrigerators of the same size. Remove their logos. Tell them apart at 10 feet away.
Are you one of the lawyers for Apple by chance?
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The designs of most older refrigerators have a lot of similarities. The freezer was almost always on top. They almost always opened from the same side. They're typically the same size, with shelves and railings inside. Their user interface (the thermostats) were often numbered from 1-10. In fact, apart from the logo, it's usually quite difficult to tell refrigerators apart.
:(){
I, too, agree that Samsung (and others) are copying Apple in some ways more than others.
The questions are...
1. Is that a bad thing?
For the end-users, I would say it isn't.
For Apple, I would say it isn't either. Nobody's going to walk around with Device X that may look like e.g. an iPhone and claim it's an iPhone - that would just make them posers.
Without the claim, if you were to see such a Device X and think "ooh! iPhone sure seems popular!", I can't see how that would hurt Apple either, except from the anti-popular-things crowd.
No store is going to put the Device X in their shop and then try to suggest it's an iPhone either.
The people who buy a Device X, in short, buy it not because it's "just like an iPhone", but in part because it's [i]not[/i] an iPhone.. either in design details or in operating system or.. etc. Whatever the reason, it was reason enough not to just get the iPhone.
Now it may be a matter of principle, and that's all fine and dandy and they're in their right to defend that principle.
But if Apple are essentially just saying "you can't make a device that copies ours because with those copied elements your device is better than ours - please stick to crappy design elements so that our device is the only one the majority of people could reasonably want, thanks"... well, that's just sad.
2. At what point does the copying become something different?
What I mean by that is this... you already point out that obviously it's not [i]just[/i] about having a rectangle with rounded corners, it's the complete package.
But presumably just doing a single thing different wouldn't break enough from that 'complete package' to get the case dropped.
I.e. if they dropped the 'the color gray appears as a rectangle at the front, center of the screen' and instead went with a bluish one, I'm going to guess that would not get them off the hook. I'm going to guess that if it was actually a shape with two curved edges going across the screen that it would also not be enough. Maybe the combination of curved shape + blue would be enough... but only for that single point. It would leave all the others.
The problem with 'all the others' is that they're pretty generic.
( Mind you, even that rectangle is pretty generic if they're literally referring to the screen itself. Making the screen 'blue' would mean nothing less than tinting the LCD thus giving everything a bluish cast. Really now? I was half hoping they meant the grey rectangle used for the bottom set of icons, which could indeed be designed in a billion ways not 'copying' Apple.. but they specifically list that separately and as being 'silver' so perhaps the "[the screen]" is indeed meant literally. )
Yes, the older comparison model shows a completely different design direction that doesn't appear to copy most of the points made. But it still copies 4 of the 15 points. Is [i]that[/i] enough, then?
Let's assume, just for kicks, 'yes' here. Now let's add one thing back in - colored icons. The black/white design is nice for those who like it, but most people are going to want colored icons these days. Putting aside the 'icon design' issues, the device would now find itself 'copying' the fact that it may use 'black, blue, brown, brown-gray (and a host of other colors) as part of its design. It would also make it vastly more appealing to the masses. So would it now be a target of litigation again?
If so, that would mean that a whole range of devices would be fair game.
E.g. the Dell Aero:
http://cdn.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/articleimage/Jerry%20Hildenbrand/2010/05/Dell-Aero.jpg
So, let's back up a bit here. What did 'smartphones' look like before the iPhone? Various screen sizes, clunky thinkness/form factor and a alpha numeric keyboard of some sort. We all know history, iPhone comes along, all touch based and it sets the precedent for things to come. Apple invented that. No one else did, especially not Samsung.
The full-touch design was first introduced by LG, with the LG Prada. So LG invented that. Apple must have copied it.
Then the iPod Touch follows about 8 months after. Note around this time, if you search everywhere on the web, for Samsung's tablets or anyone else's (like Archos, etc) all look like something between a Sony PSP and a Nokia 770. Yes, all rectangle, but just not the Apple glass touchscreen with a black bezel and metal band around the edge.
Archos tablets looked this way in 2008, two years before Apple introduced the iPad. Apple must have copied it.
Now, let's look at the packaging of a Galaxy Tab. White box, picture of device on it. Gee, where have I seen that? Open it up, same unpacking experience as the iPad/iPhone - device up front, other stuff underneath. Btw, Apple patented their packaging - all the way back in 2007!
Then they copied the Nokia packaging from 2006. My N73 comes in a package with device up front - with a nice "here's your N73" writing - and other stuff underneath.
search around the web a few weeks ago for the picture of the Samsung store. Look hard - pictures of Apple's app store and Safari icons on the wall. That's pretty blatant - even Microsoft doesn't do that
It's a shop-in-a-shop in a small city of Sicily. It's impossible to believe that Apple execs from South Korea have a say over what stickers the sicilian clerks attach to the walls of the shops they run. And even if they did, what would their plan be? Putting a Safari icon, amid hundreds of Android icons, attached on a wall to improve the sales of, say, the Nexus S because of the beauty of the Safari icon?