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Galaxy Nexus Designed To Avoid Infringing Apple Patents
An anonymous reader writes with an except from an article on Geek.com about the Galaxy Nexus: "Samsung has been on the receiving end of many an Apple lawsuit in recent months, and in some cases a ban on selling its products. The Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which was unveiled last night, could also come under close scrutiny in the courts once Apple takes a look at it. But unlike previous Samsung Android devices, the chances of that happening are apparently going to be diminished or even non-existent. Shin Jong-kyun, the president of Samsung's mobile division, admitted yesterday that the Galaxy Nexus has been developed taking into account Apple's patents."
They released a picture of it. Looks pretty sweet.
But it may still infringe on Apple's "Physical object with an ability to dial a number" patent.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yay! Proof positive that patents encourage innovation.
And who knows, while Samsung work to avoid IP pitfalls they may have (and likely have done) developed their own technology and patents which could trip up Apple in the long run.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
None of the rectangles have rounded corners.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
It's a triangle. :D
TFA says "dubbed by media as Google and Samsung's answer to the iPhone 4S". Not particularly accurate. From a tech point of view, the Galaxy SII was the answer to the 4S, and was released ahead of it. This is the next step.
All Samsung needs now is to to make a bunch of clip-on square corners for their tablets and they'll be able to thumb their nose at Apple with impunity.
And ... if the customers decide to customize their tablets by removing the corners that's none of Samsung's business.
No sig today...
From what I understand about how easily patents on extremely general ideas on technology, how can anyone know what design is going to infringe on a patent? I don't see how anyone can write a design specification with one of the ground rules being to not infringe on a specific company's patent.
How can you know how a given patent will be interpreted by a court?
- No, it's not, just a way to avoid having to deal with your bullshit.
Are they in effect admitting that their previous Android phones were ignoring Apple's patents? Samsung has not been doing themselves any favors recently, what with the "app wall" in their store display in Rome featuring icons from iOS, and the webpage for the Galaxy Player 50 (since removed) that showed a 2008 screenshot of the iPhone's Maps app.
I wonder how much the bad PR accumulated from stupid patents hurts companies like Apple- or if it even feels any affect,
Don't say any public exposure is good exposure. Toyota found out that that was not the case when their cars decided they didn't want to stop.
When it comes time that I decide to buy a smart phone [as if I will ever have that much money :( ] I will weigh the pros and cons of each option; however, I won't deny- I have a bad taste in my mouth about apple so I may be less inclined to buy their product if I find it not to be too much better than a competitor... if Apple is way better than anyone else- I will overlook the minor inconvenience of their patent faux pas.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Now we will avoid everything we can and take patents very seriously," Shin told reporters Tuesday on the eve of the Galaxy Nexus launch. His comments were embargoed until Wednesday.
I'm a bit surprised that he publicly made such a statement as it seems to state that before now they did violate patients, and only now are cleaning up. It's sort of like answering the trap question about "When did you stop beating your wife/husband/s.o.?" without refuting the question.
Hopefully they came up with new ways to do things rather than just blindly remove features tainted by alleged patients.
Why don't they put in a SD reader? That is one of the things I love about my Galaxy S and makes it a replacement for my MP3 player but without it I am thinking twice about getting this phone and making the Galaxy S II look a lot more appealing.
Not "the legal system." The legal system is the set of laws, the rules of the court and the judge. The legal system is likely to look dimly on that argument. You are, however, certainly correct that Apple's lawyers will make that argument. Hell, I probably would too.
I think the strong hand response would be to attack the validity of the patents. I believe that's what Samsung is doing in the EU.
-GiH
If companies suing each other over patent issues leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you might want to just abstain from using cellphones at all.
This is a year old (I had seen a more recent one, but can't find it now): http://flowingdata.com/2010/10/11/mobile-patent-lawsuits/
The first thing I notice is they've changed the phone icon from green to blue, which I'm sure is an attempt to avoid Apple's claims of trademark infringement. The color green has long been used to indicate placing a call, which is why Samsung changing the color from green to blue is such a good example of IP law being so stifling that companies have to intentionally avoid making anything remotely similar to another company's products. The problem is there's only so often you can do this before you run out of things to avoid.
Aside from the green phone icon, another example is Apple's claim that Samsung's yellow notepad icon infringes on its own yellow notepad icon. Yellow notepads are fairly common, yet for some strange reason it is wrong for Samsung to use the color yellow for its notepad icon. If all other companies acted the same, imagine the many different colors each company would have to avoid, like mines in a minefield.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Apple patented the idea of designing a device that does not infringe their patents.
So let me get this straight. Samsung is designing a device that specifically doesn't infringe on another company's patents. And this is news? Isn't that generally the goal of patents (at least when they're not terribly broken like they are)?
Also, they seem to have been ABLE to produce a phone that didn't rip off Apple's design (it looks pretty good actually), what was all this about "it's impossible not to make a phone exactly like Apple's" stuff that was floating around in their defense earlier?
With all that parallax scrolling and tiles they will have to worry about Microsoft patents a lot more.
Going to sell all the current Ones for $99.00 to dump all the ones already built? I'll take a couple!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Whereas, I don't think that designs are patentable, when you can mistake your wife's phone for yours walking out the door, they ripped the design off. That's fine for your Chinese mass-market aPhone, but Samsung has a design staff.
It's good that they acknowledged (if nothing else, the legal threat) the problem and took steps to correct -- the new phone looks fine and not like an iPhone.
Now, let's get back to our regularly scheduled topics . . . like "iPhone Keylogger Can Snoop On Desktop Typing" where the summary talks about smart phones. Remember when slashdot had less than 3 apple articles in a day? Me neither.
In a circular box?
Anybody actually know what are the patents that Samsung is supposedly infringing on?
They need to get all its features ready for the 2013 model iPhone so they can claim them as own their invention, the same way the half assed iPhone update from 2 weeks back magically got the widgets and notifications Android has had from the start.
How is that not a fair agrument? Besides all that, every court that has reviewed the case has concluded that Samsung infringed on Apple's patents. It doesn't mater whether or not Samsung thinks they are infringing or not at this point.
Not functional patents. The basic issue is Samsung's blatant copying of Apple, and in doing so Samsung tripped over some of Apple's design patents.
Look at this image to get a good idea of the extent that Samsung has been riding Apple's coattails where the iPad is concerned. It paints a larger picture of willful copying that Apple can use to bolster the court case over the design patents.
Yay! Proof positive that patents encourage innovation.
And THAT, SIR, is the undisputed hallmark of excellent design.
Do NOT tread lightly to avoid stepping on the toes of others! Design yourself some new feet that fit between their toes instead!
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Apple has a design patent on the shape of the iPad. Read the article I linked. This is not a trademark issue, it is a patent issue.
Did they make it round with square corners?
Apple soon will patent the "device to enable communication between two (or more) people" itself =)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The first thing I notice is they've changed the phone icon from green to blue, which I'm sure is an attempt to avoid Apple's claims of trademark infringement. The color green has long been used to indicate placing a call, which is why Samsung changing the color from green to blue is such a good example of IP law being so stifling that companies have to intentionally avoid making anything remotely similar to another company's products. The problem is there's only so often you can do this before you run out of things to avoid.
Aside from the green phone icon, another example is Apple's claim that Samsung's yellow notepad icon infringes on its own yellow notepad icon. Yellow notepads are fairly common, yet for some strange reason it is wrong for Samsung to use the color yellow for its notepad icon. If all other companies acted the same, imagine the many different colors each company would have to avoid, like mines in a minefield.
It's not just the color. Apple's phone icon was a white outline of a landline-style handset, held at a 45-degree angle against a lime-green square background tile. Samsung's icon used the same white outline, the same green background, the same angle, and the same tile shape.
Even if you assume that Samsung wanted to keep (A) Green as the make-a-call color (B) A landline-phone icon shape, they could have
1. Made the phone outline itself green, instead of the background
2. Used a base-and-handset outline (like, say, the way most fonts render U+260E) instead of the handset outline
3. Rotated the handset to some other angle
4. Made the background round, or any other shape
And probably a dozen other things. Run a Google Image search for "phone icon."
Yes, original, like all the "innovations" Apple announced for iPhone 4S, that Android already had, except for a talk-back SIRI (but they do have voice commands with speech to text, just not talk-back). Yeah, I'm marveled.
And it's not "admitting" anything. They been in a legal strong harm competition for so long that it actually costs less to change and give the middle finger to Apple. And design?! It's a rectangular shape with round corners, I had small black boards that looked the same as an iPad when I was a kid... they just weren't a tablet.... So, Apple, original?!
Anybody who says just "rectangle with round corners" shows they don't know the case.
Uh, talkback, kickback, and soundback have been available on android for a while though they are marked as for more accessable usage for people with impairments.
Agreed, my dumb-phone's call button is green, why can't Samsung's phone call icon be green too?
Yes, but if they become such a giant it's just as bad... It would be better to hope that they all damage each other so much that some kind of sane regulation is imposed over this broken and trollish system.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
It's not fair because the legal system should be there to counteract objectionable behaviour at every possible turn whilst also being as humane as possible.
If (not if, obviously 'when', apparently it's standard in the US) this is an acceptable legal argument to make, the legal system now forces people to make a choice: do you want to give up a right you are 90% convinced that you have? Or, do you want to continue with some behaviour that you know is inconvenient to someone else, possibly objectionable, and would worsen your standing in the 10% likelihood you are wrong?
The choice is inhumane, and objectionable behaviour is either neutral or encouraged.
It's like some guy starting to chop down trees on his property that he feels blocks the sun, and then gets sued by the state - and he HAS to continue chopping them down because otherwise it would count against him.
At the same time there is nothing to gain for the legal system and no "justice" is promoted by accepting this argument - "justice" and "legal behaviour" at any point in time should be possible to determine based on the situation as it stood at that point.
The phone, regardless, is looking and working great, challenging the iPhone in many aspects.
Though Apple had quite a few diverse patents in question.
Scrolling is visibly changed (this "mistake" was introduced in the Nexus S) on the SG Nexus, gallery app probably as well.
But I bet they had to be quite clever to figure ways around Apple's multi-touch patents.
Samsung's in current lawsuits is buying time, so that when they're over, it won't matter anymore, forcing Apple will to cross-license due to countersuits.
So contrary to constant hopes by Florian Mueller, Android 4.0 is probably safe to use (apart from Oracle case which won't finish anytime soon).
Shin said that the past six months of lawsuits in which Samsung and Apple have filed numerous suits and countersuits was "just the start" of a long patent war, from which he sees no end in sight. ... Samsung added personnel to its legal team to ramp up the battle against Apple and plans to hire more lawyers, according to Shin. "(I realized that) having technological power and being business savvy aren't enough," he said.
How is this innovation? The patent system is encouraging companies to spend money on lawyers and lawsuits instead of engineers and technology. Instead of doing proper development, engineers have to waste their time making minor visual changes to a product line in the vague hope that someday a judge will find that these changes are significant enough to make a product "not infringing" of some random patent.
Using a global patent war to get a competitor's products banned outright is certainly an innovation in the competitive capitalist marketplace. And from a legal perspective, maybe corporate lawyers all over the world are now thinking, "yes, that's innovative! That's what we should be doing!".. But don't confuse this with technological innovation.
Having said that, it isn't even clear how the Galaxy Nexus design is supposed to avoid Apple's design patents - it is clearly still a phone with a glass screen and rounded corners, so I doubt Apple's legal team is going to back down.
All this talk of patents is, from what I have read, plain wrong.
Apple have applied for and been granted Trade Marks for the appearance of the iPhone and Ipad UI. (stating the obvious here) Trade marks are not patents.
So, the complaint Apple has lodged is that Samsung is copying the appearance of its products and samsung is gaining sales of the back of Apple marketing dollars.
If you design the interface of the phone and publish specs then they won't have to worry about software patents. Just ship the phones as a platform with basic functional software and let users put the "real" ported software on the phone, be it open source or a free binary blob.
Divorce the hardware from the software.
It shouldn't be necessary but it's the ecosystem that these corporations and their lawyers have done to the patent system.
Why would Samsung use a TI OMAP processor in the Galaxy Nexus when they have their own line of ARM SOCs?
Samsung is copying as much as possible to ride on Apple's coattails.