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Samsung's Comparison of Galaxy S To iPhone
david.emery writes "In a document from the ongoing Samsung/Apple trial, provided in both English translation and Korean original, Samsung engineers provided a detailed comparison of user interface features in their phone against the iPhone. In almost all cases, the recommendation was to adopt the iPhone's approach. Among other observations, this shows how much work goes into defining the Apple iPhone user experience."
Ars has an article on the evidence offered by Apple so far.
Fair amount of it here
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-samsungs-step-by-step-guide-for-how-to-copy-an-iphone-2012-8?op=1
Watch those corners
Remember, this is a design patent case.
It's not just rounded rectangles and a black bezel. It's rounded rectangles, a black bezel, this AND that AND other things.
Note the the "AND" - it all has to add up to be significantly infringing. It doesn't have the same requirements as a utility patent. Moving an icon would not likely be unique enough to get you a utility patent, but it could well be PART of a design patent.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Also, from an icons standpoint, they said Meizu didn't infringe, but Samsung did. The meizu calendar icon looks WAY more like the iphone icon than the samsung one that Apple highlighted.
Except that is exactly what their design patent is asserting is their 'invention'.
Claims
We claim the ornamental design for an electronic device, substantially as shown and described.
And their drawings are just scribblings of a rectangular form factor with rounded corners and a bezel.
The internal combustion engine is a perfect example. The internal combustion engine COULD NOT have been patented. The diesel engine was. One particular way of making an internal combustion engine. But with the patent for a diesel engine, a skilled craftsman had all he needed to make a fully functional diesel engine.
The reason there are so many different types of engine is that they were designed to avoid having to license a patent. This worked very well. It created innovation AND if you wanted to produce an existing engine in your own factory you just paid a relatively low fee.
But Apple wants to patent ideas. No a blue print but a concept. Not even the concept of an internal combustion engine but the concept of an engine. And the patents they submit provide nothing that a skilled craftsman can use to build a device. At most, they can give an engineer an problem to solve where the problem is "how do I actually build the product the patent theorizes".
That is not how patents are supposed to work. The idea for an engine is after all far older then actual engines but all the engineers who made engines would have to pay for the license to use the idea of some long dead guy if Apple had its way.
Go look through Apples patents, every single one of them. I bet less then a single percent contains the plans with which a skilled craftsman in the field can build a working product without having to design something himself.
Imagine if Apple was in medicine, they would patent a cure for cancer. The patent has nothing in it but "It would make us a lot of money if we could cure cancer, now someone else actually invent it and pay us".
Not how it is supposed to go. If you really did discover a cure for cancer, you deserve a patent and people would happily pay you for it. But NOT just for the idea that curing cancer would be nice.
Sadly the amoral Americans have decided the patent office needs to turn a profit and you don't turn a profit by turning customers away. So the patent office and grants every payment and the taxpayers pay for courtsystem to try to sort it all out.
Conclusion: Americans are a problem.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If 30% for "hosting, distribution and all finances" is such a great deal, surely they would have nothing to fear by allowing competing services to perform these difficult and expensive tasks. I mean, very few companies on the planet have yet mastered the intricate technological challenges of inexpensively hosting downloads.
30% (plus $100/yr, don't forget) is an insane amount for the minuscule amount of "service" Apple provides.
I disagree. What you're not seeing is the complete list of devices that Samsung released before and after the announcement of the iPhone. There were devices before the iPhone that looked iPhone-ish, but Apple isn't going to show you those. And there have been a lot of devices after the iPhone that don't look anything like an iPhone, but Apple isn't going to show you those either. The only thing that is certain is that Samsung has released a lot of different devices over the years, and some of them have looked iPhone-ish. Because Apple makes only one style of device, they naturally assume that Samsung must have ripped them off when, in fact, it's just not true.
Or put another way, imagine if I started a car company and decided that I wanted all of my cars to look exactly like a 2005 Nissan Altima because I'd decided that was the height of style and function. Then later, I sued Nissan for ripping off my design. In court, I put forth "evidence", slides showing various models of Nissans--the Sentra, the 200SX, maybe even some old Altimas that used a different design, then slides showing the 2006 Nissan Altima, 2007 Nissan Altima, 2008 Nissan Altima, etc. To a layperson, it would look very much like Nissan ripped off my design, when in fact at best, we came up with the designs independently (and at worst, Nissan could compellingly argue that I ripped off their design).
Unfortunately, Samsung won't be able to show the jury some of the evidence of this happening, as a result of Judge Koh's ruling earlier. I still hope they are able to win this case, because otherwise, whether you like or hate Apple, you can bet that there are going to be a lot more cases coming forward dealing with design patents. Every company out there is going to see "rip-offs" of their products and sue, no matter how incidental it is to the actual workings of the product.
It's also unfortunate, because if Apple wins, it's going to also severely limit companies' ability to innovate in the future. Until very, very recently, it wasn't unusual for companies to regularly take the best ideas from other companies and people, mix them up in new ways, improve on features that were weak, and release new products to advance the industry. Apple has benefited from this themselves: they didn't invent the GUI; they got the idea from another company, improved it, and drove GUI operating system technology forward while also making it popular. They didn't invent MP3 players; they took the best of what was out there, splashed their own design and software ideas on it, and completely revived their company.
But now, god forbid someone else uses some of their ideas--ideas that they got from other places--to try to push the technology forward even further. And if I were an Apple fan, that level of protectionism would greatly concern me. To me, it says clearly that Apple is afraid that Samsung can (and quite possibly is) out-Appling Apple when it comes to design and functionality.
I mean, let's be brutally honest. How many people are going to go in a store wanting an iPhone, get confused, and come out with a Galaxy instead? Nobody. I can almost guarantee you that no one has ever gotten home and thought, "Hey waaaait a minute... This isn't an iPhone!" I will admit that there are some slick features that the iPhone and Galaxy phones share that I really like, but when I got my Galaxy Nexus, it wasn't because it was an iPhone rip-off. If I wanted an iPhone, I would have bought an iPhone, I had one prior to the Galaxy Nexus. I deliberately bought an Android phone because of features such as widgets on my phone's home screens, the ability to use third-party software that isn't in the Google Play store, the bigger screen and an aspect ratio that I like better, etc.
Of course, there are rumors now that the next generation of iPhone will have a taller screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Does Apple cons
But if you actually knew anything about the case, you would know that they in fact provided the screen. So it was well known internally it was a touchscreen phone. Likewise the phones in development "before" thing is a myth created by Samsung to hid the real meat of the issue, those phones that were developed "before" the iPhone were designed DIFFERENTLY until the iPhone. Basically they all had entirely different designs that changed once the iPhone was previewed.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Oh, but you are not forced to sell exclusively though Google play.
It is exactly the same amount as Google charges for apps in the Play store.
Unlike iOS devices, Android devices have alternatives to the Play Store. Google charges 0% for applications distributed through "unknown sources" such as Amazon Appstore, SlideME, Soc.io, or the developer's own web site. The key difference is that the user doesn't need to exploit a security vulnerability in the operating system to install third-party app stores on Android devices.
Exactly. I have nearly every model of phone come across my desk, and the Galaxy S is the only one I've ever picked up thinking it was an iPhone. In general, I don't mind design patents as much as software patents, because design patents are easy to work around. Software patents keep me from doing things I want.
For the end-user, this lawsuit means nothing. Samsung has already learned their lesson, and the Galaxy Nexus looks different than an iPhone. Samsung has some nice phones. Ultimately one of these two parties will pay the other one a lot of money, and the rest of the world will keep spinning as if nothing had happened.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As I understand it, the fact that Samsung is denied the right to present the evidence is because their legal team was so dumb fuck stupid not to present the evidence in the legal phase where evidence is supposed to be presented. Call it a technicality if you must. Nevertheless, the judge is 100% right to suppress said evidence on the grounds it wasn't presented on time.
Legal proceedings are very precise. Samsung lawyers seems to be very stupid on that one.
There will be an appeal anyways, so who cares?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
This is a simplistic and incorrect view.
Yours is also a simplistic view.
Apple's case is not based on "We own the idea of phones with big touchscreens, Samsung made a phone with a big touchscreen, therefore Samsung infringed upon our idea, case closed."
The claims are far more specific than just "phone with touchscreen" or "phone with rounded corners."
But, of course, a twelve-point comparison makes for a lousy sound bite, so we keep harping on ALL YOUR TOUCHSCREEN WITH ROUND CORNERS ARE BELONG TO APPLE!!!1
Not if you use their micropayments plan. Their fee is 5 cents + 5%, which works out to be 10 cents for a $0.99 app, way less than what Apple or Google charges.
You have a bit of a misunderstanding but the situation is complicated because it really is a result of mistakes by everyone: Samsung, Apple, and the Judge.
Samsung did bring up their evidence near the end of discovery but they were still in the phase of the trial when such things should be admissible as long as it wasn't intentionally delayed until the end. There is practically a tradition in the legal profession of submitting exhibits and discovery at the last possible moment, and having it ruled inadmissible is one of the risks they take with that and Apple won in saying that the F700 should be inadmissible. That's fine.
Where things go sketchy is that Apple then brought up the F700 design as an example of a Samsung iPhone copy in its opening statements. Samsung argued that by bringing up the F700 Apple opened the door for further information about the device (particuarly that it was in development before the iphone was announced) which is the way things normally work for this sort of situation. The Judge said no. However the Judge also has ruled and issued statements that everything in the trial is to be open, so Samsung pointed to the evidence when asked what the flap was about by a media contact.
The Judge was angry about this, but the Samsung lawyer's response was basically bulletproof and hung the Judge to dry by both her own statements and overwhelming precedent. Apple's lawyers have been very loudly hoping to capitalize on the Judge's unhappiness while (hypocritically IMO) they (or Apple PR) have been feeding the press a steady stream of "Samsung did a horrible thing by speaking to the press!" quotes.
Samsung's legal team made a mistake in not getting the F700 in earlier. Apple's legal team made a mistake in mentioning the F700, and in doing so allowed Samsung's team to immediately tee-up this case for a very strong appeal should they lose. The Judge made a mistake in her very aggressive response to Samsung's media statement and may have strengthened Samsung's appeal case by seeming to not be impartial. The only party seeming to be doing a perfect job is the Jury, which has been following the instructions to avoid all media on the case and thus likely doesn't have a clue about all of this bickering.