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Apple Loses Bid To Exclude Evidence In Samsung Patent Trial
New submitter Shavano writes with news that Apple's attempt to block Samsung from introducing evidence of a tablet prototype developed in 1994 has been denied by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. Part of the reason Apple got a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 earlier this year was that an Appeals Court said Apple's tablet design was significantly different from earlier designs. Now, Judge Koh has decided that the issue needs to be decided by a jury.
"Samsung has argued the design was an obvious variation of tablets existing as early as 1994, including one made by Hewlett-Packard Co. The Korean company supported that argument at the trial with videotaped testimony by Roger Fidler, who heads the digital publishing program at the University of Missouri. Fidler said he started working on a tablet design in 1981. Apple sought to exclude the testimony based on the appeals court ruling. In a written declaration, Fidler said 'Apple personnel were exposed to my tablet ideas and prototypes' in the mid- 1990s when the company collaborated with Knight-Ridder Inc.’s information design laboratory in Colorado."
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
The creator of which one should be rewarded? (think carefully before you answer)
And for what it's worth, as someone who's used a Xerox Star and Alto, a 1984 Macintosh AND modern UIs, I find the concept of accusing Apple of having just ripped off Xerox and applied no work of their own to be the claims of people who've done little more than look at screenshots. The Star and Alto, ahead of their time as they were, were nothing like a modern GUI to use. Put a modern computer user from 2012 in front of one, and they'll be stuck for finding how to work the thing. Put them in front of a 1984 Macintosh, and almost everything works like we have now.
And the answer to the creator of which should be rewarded? Both. Grand concept work by Fidler, at a time when nought was obvious. Grand work by Apple for actually creative the device that does, in the real world, what tablets had promised to for ages.
For samsung to claim the design of the iPad was "obvious" after seeing Fidler's work, but not to have gone ahead and done the obvious and taken over the world of tablet computing, smacks of outright lies.
Only time it was obvious enough for them to commit to the design was post-iPad. Funny that.
I suspect they would have gasped and oooohhh and aahhhhed if Steve had shown a big steaming turd on a plate. Fanbois are the worst of the worst.
Slavishly ignorant, stunningly hooked and ready to buy anything with a logo!
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.