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."

Comments

I like it

[elrous0]

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.

Re:I like it

[h4rr4r]

That single color scheme thing might get them too.

Re:I like it

[tangelogee]

But at least there are no buttons! Apple will be soooo jealous!

Re:I like it

[Anonymous Coward]

It has rounded corners -> fail.

Re:I like it

[ShakaUVM]

Heh, Apple would probably photoshop a rotary phone to look like an iPhone...

http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Caught+Using+Photoshop+to+Fake+More+Pics+in+Lawsuits/article22500.htm

Re:I like it

[GameboyRMH]

That was literally the first thing I checked for. Rectangular + corners that aren't so sharp they come with warning signs = Apple lawsuit.

Re:I like it

[spacepimp]

So without knowing the quality of the CCD or the quality of the Optics on the device you are summarily dismissing it because the Mega Pixels are less than the number you like? Let me ask you a question: If you needed to get a good quality photo would you rather use a 5MP DSLR Nikon or an 8MP camera on a phone? I would take the DSLR without pause. The Mega Pixel argument is brought up buy salesmen and manufacturers because they make an otherwise crap camera sound better. Manufacturers use tricks like pixel doubling and pixel size to game this because uninformed consumers fall for it all the time. If the ability to take decent pictures is important to you, then you pay attention to this. The mega pixel myth is something you should have learned a long time ago. Now share this with your friends and help them make informed choices.

Re:I like it

[treeves]

At the sensor size involved, a smaller number of pixels might actually give a *better* picture. (I have a DroidX too, and am relatively happy with the camera, except for the lag time.)
That's another big plus photographically (if it's true) of the Galaxy Nexus: zero shutter lag.
Finally, Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) has some improvements, photo-wise.

Proof positive

[Sez Zero]

Yay! Proof positive that patents encourage innovation.

Re:Proof positive

[Dyinobal]

Not innovation, just needless small alterations to an over all design.

Re:Proof positive

[bhagwad]

It's important to remember that it still might infringe on some Apple patent or the other. It's a sad sign of how broken the system is when you try and design a product to specifically avoid all patents but still can't be sure that it succeeds. If Samsung/Google with all their resources can't be sure that it avoids hundreds of thousands of "patents," how is a smaller company without all the resources supposed to do the same?

Re:Proof positive

[h4rr4r]

That is not a sign of the system being broken, that is just a sign of you not understanding its purpose. The system is working exactly as these big companies want it too. They can live through suing each other and are more than willing to deal with it if it keeps out any new competitors.

Re:Proof positive

[Hijacked Public]

Or, if you are an Apple IP attorney, proof positive that the other models were not designed to avoid infringing Apple's patents.

Re:Proof positive

[Adrian Lopez]

Not innovation, just needless small alterations to an over all design.

Exactly. I hope it works out for Samsung, but I think it's unfortunate they had to resort to this at all.

Re:Proof positive

[brainzach]

It is going to infringe on patents no matter what you will do.

I think Samsung is trying to avoid the strongest patents that Apple has in its arsenal. Most patent claims can easily be defended in court if you have the resources to hire the right attorneys. Apple has a few killer patents that it is trying to attack Samsung for, so it will be best strategy is to find a way to work around them.

Re:Proof positive

[TheDarkMaster]

We need to simply ignore this obvious "patents", and shoot the lawyers with a shotgun at pointblank (just in case). Is the only way to stop this madness.

Re:Proof positive

[bhagwad]

There's a right to not have artificial barriers to entry. Creating software for example isn't a "natural monopoly" like railroads or electricity generation. Patents are a form of imposed barriers to entry that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Re:Proof positive

[bhagwad]

For a conclusion like this, I don't need to provide supporting statements to someone who knows how the system is supposed to work. Sufficient to say that Anti trust systems are designed to prohibit artificial barriers to entry. Also, that I write software and there are indeed no barriers to entry - or should not be if the system works correctly.

Galaxy SII

[Nerdfest]

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.

Re:Galaxy SII

[Kenja]

You dont understand. Anything released by any company in any field is an "answer to the iPhone xx" where xx is the model of the last iPhone released. Black and Deckers new toaster oven? Their answer to the iPhone 4s. The new Toyota Prius? Their answer to the iPhone 4s. And so on.

Re:Galaxy SII

[Telvin_3d]

However, from a 'we are trying to convince people to buy this instead of ____' point of view it is completely accurate.

Re:Galaxy SII

[ColdWetDog]

(Feel free to laugh at this if you want) I'm no fan of Apple but their products do work. They do exactly what they are designed to do. The disconnect comes when consumers expect them to do something different.

But I thought iPhones were supposed to make telephone calls.

My bad.

Interesting admission

[jamrock]

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.

Re:Interesting admission

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how English works. "We did X" does not imply "We used to do the opposite of X".

Re:Interesting admission

[GodInHell]

You could read his statement that way, or, you could read it as an admission that they simply developed technology without reference to Apple's patents and were surprised to find out these obvious technologies and algorithms were patented.

Incidentally, all of the items you list -- those aren't patent violations, at best they're trademark issues.

-GiH

Re:Interesting admission

[ceoyoyo]

And they come in white boxes with the exact same shade of gray lettering Apple uses, with a picture of the device taking up most of the front of the box. Inside the box is a white cardboard insert holding the device.

Oopsie. And it doesn't matter what "anyone familiar with both devices would instantly notice," trade redress suits are about complaints that a product is designed so that someone NOT familiar with the product might confuse them.

The only thing Samsung did that's different than a cheap knockoff manufacturer is that that put "Samsung" on the device instead of "Adple."

Maybe they should get into selling Rolaxes.

Re:Interesting admission

[guruevi]

But what does it mean in court. Lawyers seem to have a whole different interpretation of both law and English.

Get used to it, they all do it.

[Moridineas]

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/

Re:Get used to it, they all do it.

[Missing.Matter]

This looks to be an updated version from 8/17/2011

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/RNGS/2011/AUG/PATENT_CI.jpg

Blue phone icon

[Adrian Lopez]

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.

Re:Blue phone icon

[Adrian Lopez]

Based on the various office phones I've used since the 1980s, if I were to pick a color I'd have said the color red "has long been used to indicate placing a call" - if I were to associate a color with it at all (which isn't likely).

The standard color for cell phone "send" buttons is green and has been so long before Apple even entered the cell phone market. The color red, on the other hand, has long been used for cell phone "end" buttons.

Re:No SD card

[Muramas95]

but the S2 is thinner and weighs a lot less than the prime Prime Dimensions 135.5 mm (5.33 in) H 67.94 mm (2.675 in) W 8.94 mm (0.352 in) D Weight 135 g S2 Dimensions 125.3 mm (4.93 in) H 66.1 mm (2.60 in) W 8.49 mm (0.334 in) - 9.91 mm (0.390 in) D Weight 116 g (4.1 oz)

Anyone?

[ZenDragon]

Anybody actually know what are the patents that Samsung is supposedly infringing on?

Of course Apple are all over this

[phonewebcam]

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.

Useless

[TheDarkMaster]

Apple soon will patent the "device to enable communication between two (or more) people" itself =)

Re:A sound strategy

[boristdog]

I'm hoping Samsung patents the bejeesus out of every tiny design element they make from now on, and it bites Apple in the ass down the road.

What goes around comes around.

This is not innovation

[chrb]

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.