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The Surprises In the Latest Apple V. Samsung Court Documents
Nerdfest writes "The lawyers behind the upcoming Apple v. Samsung trial have been hard at work filing docket after docket as their court battle looms closer, and many of those dockets have just been released to the public. We're now seeing a lot of previously secret information about the early days of iPhone and iPad R&D, and what's happened behind closed doors at both Apple and Samsung. Surprises include the iPhone design being 'inspired' by Sony product ideas, and that Samsung was warned that it was copying Apple."
Microsoft moves to seal their agreement with Samsung for Android licenses.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120727084323510
It would be nice to get a close view of the MS-Samsung deal.... it would be even more interesting if it is found that Microsoft PAID money to Samsung rather than the other way round.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
1. Most of what are shown here are not surprises, they are iterative design concepts.
2. A kickstand is not a surprise; it seems logical.
3. The fact that the iPhone design was lifted from another product design seen by Apple's team isn't a surprise, it's how all companies work.
4. What is a surprise is that Sony didn't patent their design so they could be suing Apple right now for lifting it.
5. Another surprise is that this story continues to gain stories on Slashdot and other sites. It's a little overdone. Let us know when something of substance appears that is actually interesting.
I hate to be pedantic, but you don't file a docket. The docket is the schedule / container for legal filings. Rather, I believe the proper term would be brief in this case. You can also file other things such as suits, claims and motions.
Guys- is it ever any surprise that apple copies a design? They design well, but that is because all of their work is second generation. They take a concept then make it shiny, and sell it. They don't make concepts. Hell- the apple 2 was literally a XEROX!
The Wired.com article is totally biased towards Apple.
An example is the SONY concept phone released in 2006.
http://www.cellphonebeat.com/sony-ericssons-cybershot-concept-phone.html
Going by Apple's logic, their version of "inspiration" is removing the slider from the SONY concept phone and making the front all touch (removing the silver buttons). With these two basic modifications, there is no difference between the SONY concept phone of 2006 and the iPhone 4 of 2010. I fail to see why does Apple have double standards when treating with the issue when Samsung / Motorola and HTC are concerned. (rather all popular Android manufacturers)
The industry was already gravitating towards touch screen phones in 2007. The technology was not ready earlier in terms of CPU power, price/performance ratio and OS maturity for touch only phones to be popular mainstream phones. Apple was the first to released a polished product, granted. But, Apple is behaving as if it owns all rights to a touch screen phone / tablet, which I find ridiculous.
I have a Samsung SCH-R910 - in fact it does more than the iPhone believe it or not, straight out of the box. But the UI - it looks like the IOS. I find it interesting that they seem to be protesting that it physically looks like the Galaxy Tabs look like the iPad, but the UI is nearly identical on Android based platforms.
We've seen ALL of these devices on Star Trek: TNG. Devices with buttons, devices without buttons, rectangular devices, etc.
Someone should make a smash-up video of all the hand-held computer devices shown in Star Trek:TNG, it would destroy a lot of design patents.
Apple is "inspired" by other designs, while Samsung "copies". Gotta love that fanboy doublespeak.
But Xerox was a xeroxing company. They made products for copying.
iPhone says to Samnsung Galaxy: "I AM your father!"
Galaxy: "That's IMPOSSIBLE!"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But Xerox was a xeroxing company. They made products for copying.
But then they went ahead and screwed things up by doing original research. Thus, the Natural Order of the world was disturbed and Steven P. Jobs ...
Well, we all know how that turned out.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A smartphone is basically a portable computer. We've had computers for ages. Now, how do you get data into a portable computer? The most sensible way is the cell network, so why don't we make these portable computers make phone calls, too?
Okay, so we have a computer. It needs a microphone and a speaker on it, so we can make phone calls. Why not put a camera on it too, since the market has decided that cameraphones are a neat idea.
Okay, how are you going to control your little portable computer? Well, there's not much room for buttons on it, since we need both a big screen so you can see shit and a small device so you can pocket it. Now, computer interfaces have long used the paradigm of "show the user shit on the screen and have a device that simulates pointing at the screen called a mouse for the user to pick stuff to do." So a touchscreen is the obvious way to communicate with a pocketable computer, since it both makes efficient use of area (no buttons) and is pretty similar to what we have been doing for years on ordinary computers.
Now, what shape should it be? Well, we like rectangular screens -- they're easy to code for -- so it should approximate a rectangle. Making it an exact rectangle means that the corners will snag on your pockets, so it ought to be a rounded rectangle.
How is any of this worthy of a patent?
Sony DESCRIBED a product design IDEA, and then Apple incorporated that idea as a design element in an ORIGINAL product.
And then, it appears, Apple went on to sue Samsung for copying nothing more than elements making up the IDEA that was DESCRIBED by Sony.
Where in the article that you linked, or in any other article, is it spelled out that a nonfunctional item's ornamental design cannot be used as prior art against the novelty of a functional item's ornamental design?
Theatrical props can never be prior art unless they are functional.
In what case was this rule established?
Now, how do you get data into a portable computer? The most sensible way is the cell network
How is that more sensible than by having a bridge from a wireless LAN to the wired network at any place where a portable computer will be used for long periods? That solution leads to the device category once called a "PDA" and now called a "pocket-size tablet" and exemplified by the iPod touch, Archos 43, and Galaxy Player. (If the Nintendo DS weren't locked down, it would have qualified as well.) These too can act as phones using applications that implement VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol).
Now, computer interfaces have long used the paradigm of "show the user shit on the screen and have a device that simulates pointing at the screen called a mouse for the user to pick stuff to do."
Computer interfaces have also long used the paradigm of dedicated keys to perform relative movements within a space, such as the arrow keys, or dedicated keys to add characters to a text area, such as a slide-out keyboard. Yet lots of smartphones and pocket-size tablets lack that.
Making it an exact rectangle means that the corners will snag on your pockets, so it ought to be a rounded rectangle.
A rectangle that is rounded need not have four flat sides. The short ends of the rectangle can be rounded as semi-ellipses with no flat end, like the Archos 43.
That is the difference between Apple and respectable companies.
Sure Apple copied Sony as much as Samsung copied Apple. But Sony didn't sue, and sue, and sue, and sue.
patents. So yes props and the like do matter.
The fictional shows, like "2001 A Space Odyssey " clearly show that Apple did not invent the rectangle.
The problem with your line of reasoning is that Apple is suing people for using the basic concept, not for stealing Apple's code.
You say the "secret sauce" worth protecting is the actual implementation, and yet that is not what Apple is claiming damages over.
anything--it is an impossible and absurd standard.
Seriously, name a single new concept.
2001 A Space Odyssey, rounded corners, BOTH are guilty of copying a prior form factor.
While the success of the iPhone and iPad has lent a sense of hindsight inevitability to Apple's design choices, Apple's design documents highlight that there are lots of ways of designing a device that satisfy the original vague concept of a device that "fit in the hand, were ‘square with a screen’ and had ‘corners [which] have been rounded out.’" Indeed, Apple's own prototype designs resemble the final product considerably less than Samsung's products resemble Apple's.
Dont forget the phone I loved in the "early" days: The Ericsson R380. the first "smartphone"? It had (as far as I know) the first onscreen touch keyboard in a phone. Very many of iPhone concepts I remember from my old R380. Very few buttons (if you took away the numeric lid.
It's funny... everyone complains about how the comments are going down hill, people don't read the article before commenting, etc etc.
Reading the comments on wired, the signal to noise ratio is amazing. Not only do people not even read the article, they can't even read the captions under the pictures. And there are people who actually bring out the bible, as if that somehow has relevance to anything.
Slashdot seems to be a lot like democracy. It's the worst system there is, except for all the other ones we've come up with.
The classical imagery of hell suggests the conditions there are not suited for rotting.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.