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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."
Can we just agree that neither company were all that original and that the progression to today's design was a natural and obvious path given the technology that became possible?
Or are we going to start calling in the Science fiction writers next? Because what ever Samsung or Apple might of designed an SF writer likely wrote about it first.
We are blessed that back in the 1970's, 1980's and in early 1990's there were many inventors decided to share their incredible inventions with the world, and they also decided against patenting their inventions
That is why we got what we got today - from hypertext to web2, web3
If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple - We are sure going to miss out on the many things that we are enjoying today
Hooray to the generous inventors !!
Pox to those greedy patent trolls !!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Fidler holding both tablets. Yeah, Apple's is totally original... :-|
When a judge, who has shown their bias already, feels compelled to go against their own bias, then Samsung must have a pretty strong case.
I also notice that Steve Jobs ripped off his trademark look from this guy in addition to the iPad design.
It didn't happen to look like a Newton, did it?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Apple is plenty-rewarded with their profits.
Regardless of Apple's making it work, we're talking about trademark looks and conceptual functionality. As a designer, if this man did come up with what a tablet should look like and should do, and then if someone else took his work and made it work, that would mean that the someone else has a derivative work.
Hell, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they had these tablet computers that they walked around with and used for data access and retrieval. They were even called PADD. They had rounded corners. Yes, they were not real. But, as we've seen, a lot of people want to make real things that work like the fake things they see in science fiction. There's no shame in that, but their works are all derivative works at best. They didn't come up with the idea. They just made it work.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It doesnt matter if Samsung was influenced by iPad or Fidler's tablet. What matters is Apple's design patent is no longer valid, and Samsung has all the right to copy the iPad and Fidler's tablet.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect both to be rewarded. What is not reasonable is to reward the creator of the second, working, tablet by blocking any competition that also produces a working tablet with a similar design to the first non-working tablet.
You don't understand patent law very well. Being successful at bringing someone else's design concept to market does not allow you to block competitors from creating a knock-off. That's what you need a patent for. But for that, you need to show both novelty and nonobviousness, and it's not enough to be the first one to make it "actually work." If someone had the idea for the design 20 years ago, but not the technology, go ahead and patent the novel technology. But if you are using widely available technology, expect competition.
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)
After thinking about it a bit, this would be my answer:
For the one that came after (and actually works), I see no reason why they shouldn't be rewarded for the effort on the parts that actually made it work. Patents on novel engineering regarding the guts of the device that made it a functioning tablet? No problem.
For the one that came first (and doesn't work), the non-functional mock-up offers only style; the external look and design. Those are the only elements he should get credit for -- but it just so happens that elements of style are among the patents at question in this trial.
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)
Oh to be so fucking young and ignorant :) You're shown the design prototype and you complain that it wasn't a working a tablet (this is in the eighties to early nineties). Apple used a simple existing design, added modern components and a lot of good ui/usability still doesn't mean that they own the idea of tablets with rounded corners. Did you know that there were even pre-IPad tablets which failed even though they had somewhat similar design, or were you born after them also?
>>>Put them in front of a 1984 Macintosh, and almost everything works like we have now.
Except it doesn't have subfolders like we have now.
Or the ability to multitask more than 1 program.
And no right button menus (like Commodore Amiga and Atari ST).
Users would be frustrated.
BTW it's not the first time a patent was invalidated in court by showing the existence of prior work. In 2007 Novell and Red Hat Linux jointly fended off a patent infringement suit for virtual desktops - and several people helped in finding cases of prior art. The most interesting one of all? A carefully restored and working 1985 Commodore Amiga demonstrated to the judge and jury..... Basically they demonstrated how the Amiga could have multiple desktops and screens.
POINT: A patent is invalidated when a piece of working hardware predates the issuance date. Apple can not claim a patent on the rounded-corners of the iPad if a piece of hardware already existed with that concept.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Every time I read something new about this case Judge Koh is more pissed off. I think everybody's going to get spanked on this one.
OK I'm going to ramble a bit here, but you got me thinking... I'm an anonymous coward anyway so what do you care?
( the irony of your CPU name and your harsh view of Jobs was also not lost on me )
I am intrigued that you see all this so strongly in Samsung's favor. I guess must realize my own bias from this... I see almost everything in this trial has gone in Apple's favor, and Samsung's lawyers couldn't possibly have done worse on the courtroom.
And yet you think that Samsung is clearly winning.
Very interesting to me.
Yet, I can't get past this prior art thing... I know it's not an objective question, but...
Apple could win this on one question to the jury: Had you ever seen anything like the iPhone when it came out?
If any of them, and any of you slashdotters say "yes" you are lying.
For a biased, but beautiful example, go back and watch the original Apple keynote from 2007 where the iPhone debuted. Fastforward to the live demo jobs does.
People are audibly gasping. This is Apple fanboys, of course. Fanboys will hoot and holler, clap and yell, but even Apple fanboys won't gasp at something... unless they're amazed at what they see.
Did that happen in 1994 when Fidler's demo was shown to people? Of course not. It wasn't a real product. It was stardust and dreams.
Samsung may well win... we'll have to just see.
Did that happen in 1994 when Fidler's demo was shown to people? Of course not. It wasn't a real product. It was stardust and dreams.
This matters not for the purposes of establishing prior art / originality, though. You don't get to claim "well, I started selling it first" and ignore the works that preceded you on those grounds.
While I agree with what you've said, as a programmer, I must ask you to never ever say "just made it work" again. We get enough of that shit from management. :)
Are you intentionally being obtuse? If the patents are overturned, there is no case. It doesnt have to go to the jury, the judge will herself throw the case out.
Either humans suck or the patent system sucks or both.
The point of contention for which this was presented is the design patent; the inner workings are irrelevant (cf. here).
Apple is seeking to prevent Samsung (and, by extension, most other tablet manufacturers, if the case succeeds) from selling anything that resembles their design (namely, the rounded corners, form factor, etc.) based on the idea that they came up with an original, non-obvious design for the iPad and should be awarded exclusive rights to it. Samsung's evidence points to the idea that Apple were beaten to the design by almost 20 years, and were exposed to it then, and therefore their idea is neither original nor non-obvious, thus invalidating their patent.
Again, none of this requires "working" hardware. Patents don't require it, except for perpetual motion machines; for those, a working prototype is mandatory.
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)
Since it's a matter of trade dress (read: design) I'd say whoever designed it first. That would be the piece of plastic with newspaper stuck to it. Nice attempt at redirection, though.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If its purpose is to demonstrate a design concept and it demonstrates that design concept, it's working.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It's impossible to "Vaguely Imitate" a center mounted screen, or a screen made of glass (which is shiny, and transmits light from one side to the other). It is impossible to imitate the color black. It impossible to imitate a rectangle (it simply is or is not a rectangle). It is impossible to imitate quite a few things Apple has design patented, and many of them are obvious. Design patents are an abomination to human culture, and are the lowest form of filth. How is one to make a functioning smartphone or tablet without a screen that transmits light? Glass is so utterly generic, It simply doesn't matter whether it's gorilla glass or not. Using strong glass is not patentable anymore than I could patent using a hardwood floor in my house. Or wood in my baseball bat.
the patent isn't on the hardware, it's on the shape of the hardware.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
C'mon, that obviously Photoshopped...everyone knows Apple invented rounded corners!
That is PRECISELY why I got out of programming.
boss walks in... "Our biggest competitor just released an update that does xyz. Please have these features added to product abc by the end of the week."
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Every time Steve showed a feature in the iPhone in 2007, I didn't gasp, I thought "My phone does that, though poorly". The iPhone was a good product, but what it did wasn't new. It was just that they made it work. That's commendable, but doesn't make the ideas themselves original.
even the European Union had a news tablet designed by acorn...
Apple hasn't ever invented anything at any time in their entire history, real american innovation like digital video from the BBC in england (as is the case with almost everything Americans claim to have invented, actually always came from Europe...)
sorry, the Russians were there before you every single time... (from the nuclear bomb to space travel, you'd have to thank the Nazi's for those...)
What about that number 25? Why not 23 or 42? I don't remember any of those actually appearing in court filings.
Here, have a look at actual complaint, this is all that's claimed about design:
41. The following non-functional elements of Apple’s product designs comprise the
product configuration trade dress at issue in this case (the “Apple Product Configuration Trade
Dress”):
a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black borders above and
below the screen having roughly equal width and narrower black borders on either side of the
screen having roughly equal width;
as to the iPad product, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in
width;
a metallic surround framing the perimeter of the top surface;
a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners; and
a bottom row of square icons (the “Springboard”) set off from the other icons and
that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed.
Nope, not about rounded corners.
Samsung sold tablet computers before Apple. The hardware did not get to the point to manufacture a low weight tablet overnight. If you actually cared to look at the news during the time a lot of people were working on tablets and had functional prototypes before the iPad was announced.
I read the article linked to in the summary, but did not notice any place where it mentioned the grounds that Apple attempted to use to get the evidence excluded.
I mean, aren't you required to give a judge a reason to not admit potentially relevant evidence?
And really, I'm compelled to wonder what possible reason they could have given that they seriously would think had even the slightest chance of flying...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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)
The creator of the idea should be rewarded for the idea.
The creator of the design should be rewarded for the design.
The creator of the functionality should be rewarded for the functionality.
The creator of the implementation should be rewarded for the implementation.
The creator of X should be rewarded for X.
Any more difficult questions?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I have a feeling you'll see something similar to Oracle vs. Google.
The jury will be asked to determine whether Samsung copied Apple, assuming that the patent is valid. If the jury comes back and says, "Nope. They didn't," then the whole thing is over. We're done. If the jury comes back and says, "Yup, they did," (and, personally, I agree that they will) then the judge decides whether or not those patents are actually valid. If the judge decides that the patents aren't valid, then the whole thing is over and we're done, regardless of what the jury said. It's okay to copy things that don't have patent protection.
Can we stop already with these Apple/Samsung trial stories ?
It's not that I'm not interested in the subject: I believe its outcome will have profound implications on the smartphone/tablet landscape (hopefully for the best).
However, I am totally uninterested in every trivial aspect and "twist" of the trial, especially when I'm sure that slashdot editors/firehose cherry pick these stories, and fail to give us the greater picture of the process. Can't we just wait for the court ruling, and have a GOOD summary of it, for once ?
I REALLY hope samsung wins this one....I'd rather not have to carry an iphone...My Android device is a wonderful piece of work and no Macintosh product will EVER usurp it....because i can mod mine without breaking its warranty.
No it isn't perfectly acceptable for both to be rewarded. In his video, Fielder talks about emergent technologies. Some things naturally come out of the combination of new technology. Why should anyone be able to patent the obvious? It's garbage - and society is hurt by this mindset and attitude.
Now, real inventions, like compression algorithms, noise reduction algorithms, etc. deserve a patent (albeit a very limited life so that society is not hurt), but not garbage like "rounded corners". Anyone that tries to patent such garbage should be "bitch slapped" repeatedly until they admit they are being assholes - regardless of WHO it is (Apple/Samsung/Google/etc). Evil is evil.
Having said that, if Fielder patented something that was significantly different and unlike anything around (ie. a new field or a completely new technology), then that would be fair game for some protection. Apple is NOT EVEN CLOSE to achieving this with its iPad, IMHO.
When Steve showed the iPhone in 2007 I felt the same.
I then wondered where the fuck all the basic fundamental features every other phone I'd had for at least 6 years prior were, such as MMS support.
I am the creator of identical copies and thus should be rewarded for the identical copies.
That means that all must be rewarded.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
microwave ovens (TOS)
protein-based food analogs (Pot Noodle? Precursor to food replicators, mayhap?) (TOS "The Trouble With Tribbles": KIRK: "This... is my chicken sandwich and coffee.")
cellphones/PMRs (TOS)
tricorders (TOS)
head-mounted direct-to-retina projection displays (TNG "The Game")
just off the top of my head.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
For the one that came after (and actually works), I see no reason why they shouldn't be rewarded for the effort on the parts that actually made it work. Patents on novel engineering regarding the guts of the device that made it a functioning tablet? No problem.
Of course, Apple didn't actually do most of the novel hardware engineering that made the iPad possible as a functioning tablet - in that regard Samsung actually did more to make the iPad possible than Apple did. The touchscreen display and CPU chip in the iPad are both engineered and built by Samsung.
The more i read stories about patent cases the more clear it becomes that the people who decide what can be patented are being bought and paid for. Nothing else makes since.
Jack of all trades,master of none
The most interesting one of all? A carefully restored and working 1985 Commodore Amiga demonstrated to the judge and jury.....
Carefully restored? My 198x Atari ST machines (including an MFM RLL harddrive) were just unpacked from storage a few weeks ago and still work just fine.
it's in my head
Well, if ideas not important a all, only the actual product made, then Apple shouldn't sue Samsung in the first place.
I usually reply back with... "Out biggest competitor pays their developers $x per month.. Please adjust my salary by the end of the week..."
And if he would give you a raise (I'm assuming you wouldn't ask your salary adjusted downwards), could you finish the features he wants in time?
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
Tablet Newspaper (1994). Note that the depicted design includes tablet with full-color reactive touchscreen (CRT, not LCD), it is not just "a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it". Also note that this case is about design patents, not functionality, and therefore the fact that Fidler didn't have a fully functional iPad in 1994 is irrelevant.
Did Apple develop the technologies to turn Fidler's design into a working product? Or did they just use technologies that were developed by others, then package them into a form also designed by another persons? Yes, they should be rewarded for the work they did - the packaging itself is still a valuable service. But they should not be able to prevent OTHERS from doing the same thing.
This whole trial is ridiculous. Apple should have never have got the design patent in the first place. It has no innovation at all if you think about it logically, and most designers aren't even that logical.
Q. Hmm what screen shall we use?
A Oh, the cheapest ones are 16:9, next probably 19:10 then there's the good old 4:3. Whatever we use is going to make a rectangle shape.
Q OK, how do we make the device feel nice and be safe for children to use.
A - ROUNDED CORNERS!
What exactly are Samsung / other competitors meant to do?!?
I half want Samsung to develop a round screen, and for it to be a huge success, and for Apple to try to compete with it - just to see what they try to do. Just a shame a round device would be a right PITA to carry around, and an even more PITA to develop for.
Quick, someone pay Gene Rodenberry's estate off, and launch a StarPADD
I'm typing this on an IPad (oh, the irony!)
Nice tho, but, if you used computers pre 1995, pre 1991, and knew the 'hacker' and 'pirate' scene, you would have seen many games and indeed consoles had cuter better interfaces, ie ps2/xbox1, and xbmc.
Why didnt you guys get the sony ps2 game designers/graphics artists to design a futuristic GUI.
This is why hardcore geek engineers need to branch out and at least play games often to get the feel of alternative interfaces.
Though I can imagine the management being old farts in suits saying they want boring text on white like a paper document.
Hell, even in 1991 I've seen better interfaces on the Amiga.
Note: game coders can do wonders in a small amount of ram/cpu speed. (well the 1990s did)
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
It looks like the iPad mini about to be released.
If every coder/geek watched startrek 5000 times, the concept of tablets + flat screen + touch screen is there in their heads.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Samsung's Lawyers are not playing to the judge but to the Jury. That is their audiecne and if they can convince them that Apple's Design Patents shouldn't have been issued to begin with, they solve the problem not only for themselves but for every other company that Apple has sued using those design patents. Simply put, Samsung's lawyers aim to kill Apple's entire legal strategy in all of the U.S. Courts being pursued by Apple.
By invalidating these patents entirely, they kill Apple's biggest legal threat against Samsung with the added benefit of doing the same for most of the other defendents in the States. Hell it may even benefit them in Germany, France other EU countries and such if the patents are invalidated in the States. Thus those lawyers will have definately earned their money for the case.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Oh, and the plastic will have gone that horrible yellow shade :(
Hydrogen peroxide and leave it in the sun for a few days.
Don't use a high concentration and be careful it will burn. Gloves and goggles are a good idea.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
It's SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE for them to rule that way.
Agreed. I had a company issued WinMo phone. Sure it could do everything that an iPhone could and more but it wasn't very easy or intuitive. When I first saw the iPhone commercials, I thought: They must have been rigged. It can't be that easy.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Only the Patent Office can invalidate a patent. The jury can however rule that the patent can be ignored in this case.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The touchscreen was made by LG and the CPU was an A4, designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung. Various components like RAM, flash RAM, etc. were engineered and manufactured by Samsung.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The A4 (like some samsung's processors) is comprised mostly of "IP-Cores" from various companies.
IP Cores are electronic designs sold like the ARM processor (which is present in all the iPhone/iPad/... processors), the grephic accelerator (PowerVR, nVidia,...), the RAM block, the FLASH rom, the USB interface, the wifi system (Broadcom and other), ...
So, no, Apple did not design the A4... they designed a VERY SMALL part of it. Some people did "decap" (cur the plastic box around the processor) both an A4 and a Samsung processor and, using microscopes, were able to identify these common parts which covered more than 90% of the chip (well, Samsung chip had some extra IPcores which were useless for a phone and are not present in the A4)
When Apple boast about their "brand new magic A(n+1) processor", it makes me laugh... because there is nothing magic, nothing new... they just updated the CPU cores to a newer version from Acorn (which designs ARM) and the graphic cores... Some glue electronics to bind all these parts and it's done...
And ARM cores were used in later Palm devices (first were using a 68000 variant), on iPaq (from CompaQ) and other windows mobiles PDA as well as in Embedded systems.
You're kidding, right? I thought this was one of the most famous statements ever made by Gates. However, it was 1976 (close enough to 1980, I suppose) and it wasn't a newsletter, it was an actual letter to the Homebrew Computer Club.
I think Lotus sued Borland over the look of the menus, or something equally silly.
I am hapilly looking up phone numbers, texts, and calling people with voice activation
on my motorola razr v3.
As I have been doing for years before the iphone.
forgot to added shared libraries.
windows had them from the start, so did UNIX, apple didn't get them until OS 8 and they sucked
IP law rewards the company and stockholders for the design, the creator(s) usually get nothing, save mabey a small bonus.
then they can be sold off to company Y, which will do nothing to actually promote, or make devices or technology, but just sue the piss out of unrelated creator Z which never heard of creator X because the product never really went anywhere, simply because he made the same discoveries as someone else did 5 years later.
" a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black borders above and
below the screen having roughly equal width and narrower black borders on either side of the
screen having roughly equal width;
as to the iPad product, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in
width;
a metallic surround framing the perimeter of the top surface;
a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners; and
a bottom row of square icons (the âoeSpringboardâ) set off from the other icons and
that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed."
My god!! You've just described CDE on a monitor. Ahhhhhh!!!!!
No, but many devices before the iPad did.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
To my knowledge only Qualcomm makes modifications to the ARM core. Everyone else: TI, nVidia, Samsung, Apple, etc. makes changes to everything around the cores. Part of it is that Qualcomm pays extra for the license (and has the expertise) to do it. Pretty much everyone in the space takes ARM cores and pairs it with their choice of GPU and voila: a new chip design.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The early part of SCO vs Novell and SCO vs IBM was all in SCO favour too as they were allowed to get away with a great deal. As the cases progressed the Judge(s) reined them in harder and harder. The case vs Novell (Novell won), a retrial was ordered and they won again. The IBM case may never get to trial as TSG (formerly SCO) is trying to get into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy (liquidation) while still being allowed too continue the trial, which was gutted of most of their claims by the loss to Novell.
My point if you haven't understood it is that you can "win" early in the case but decisively lose later when it matters.
What matters is that Fidler's mock up hits so many of the characteristics from Apple's design patent thus eliminating them from being claimed, because now they are "obvious". This leaves Apple with Losenge shaped speaker holes. (similar to an old Kenwood car speaker I had back in the day) and a shiny apple logo. (Samsung surprisingly left this feature off their product.)
Now the jury might be affected by the "JobsRealityWarpField" (TM) But Apple have some real arguing to do to get this patent over the line.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
microwave ovens (TOS) ...
cellphones/PMRs (TOS)
The microwave oven was a commercial product 19 years before Star Trek first aired.
The Star Trek communicator was not a cellphone. It was a handheld walkie-talkie, communicating with a single base station (the ship). Such had been in existence since at least WW II. Radio telephones also predate Star Trek by 20 years - initially as an automotive accessory with a handset in the front connected to a big box in the trunk, though getting the whole thing into a handheld didn't happen until 1973.
Cellular telephony is a separate invention. It's about reusing the same spectrum by progressively subdividing a coordinated grid of progressively lower-powered base stations as more phones are deployed, while adjusting the transmit power of the phones according to the size of the cell they're in to avoid interference with other users in nearby cells. This handles both the issues of finding enough spectrum to serve an ever-increasing subscriber base (rather than providing a handfull of party lines per city) and matching the financing of the buildout to the revenue from subscriber fees.
What Star Trek communicators DID invent (in addition to popularizing the idea of a handy pocket communicator) was the clamshell form factor. Motorola acknowledged this by naming the first clamshell cellphone model the "Star TAK" ("TAK" having been part of the naming scheme of their phones for some time) .
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's funny how people are now starting to think voice activation is an Apple invention.
Even cheap Nokia S40 phones can recognize your voice and make phone calls, activate profiles, and do other stuff.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
( the irony of your CPU name and your harsh view of Jobs was also not lost on me )
The 6502 was designed at MOS Technology by Chuck Peddle, and powered not only Commodore's own computers and the Apple ][, but a good deal of the early personal/home computers. There's no need for a 6502 fan to have any love for Jobs.
Yet, I can't get past this prior art thing... I know it's not an objective question, but...
Apple could win this on one question to the jury: Had you ever seen anything like the iPhone when it came out?
That doesn't win it for them. The only basis for their lawsuit is the design patent. If real prior art is exposed here, doesn't matter if it was know to millions or just a handful, that could easily invalidate Apple's design patent. And keep in mind, it's not just Fidler's tablet being presented here... Samsung has a number of different people presenting visually similar devices.
It is necessary for the validity of a patent to be based on something unique and not obvious. If similar enough prior art exists, it doesn't have to be identical -- Apple's stuff compared to that might be obvious tweaks to the earlier design, and thus, not patentable.
-Dave Haynie
There's a big difference between the whole thing and the very tiny pieces of that thing Apple has seen to patent. Of course it took years of real work to deliver an iPhone or iPad... or a Galaxy S2. In fact, it took Samsung the same level of hardware design work, even having seen the iPad (and the other similar tablets) before they did.
There is no requirement that a patent itself be the result of lots of hard work. And in fact, it's specifically precluded from being tied to commercial success... you have exactly one year from introducing your new thing in any way (previews, research papers, developers conferences, or actual shipments) in the USA to file the patents. All that's required is that your invention be an actual invention, something at the time unique. If it's too similar to other things that already exist, it's simply not that class of invention -- not patentable.
And a patent is another thing -- very, very specific. No one's claiming the sum of the many things that lead to your iPod experience were obvious looking at Fidler's work, the very iPhone-like Japanese phone that Samsung also introduced, etc. All that's at stake here are very specific, very individual patents, such as the shape of the iPad, entirely independent of what it does when you turn it on (that's the main thing being held against Samsung).
-Dave Haynie
Yup.
And in fact, seeing it portrayed is often the genesis of a real world deisgn. Go back to 2002's "Minority Report", where Tom Cruise is controlling a computer with his hands, waving arms around. Five years later, Apple's released the touch-based iPhone, Google's purchased the touch-based AndroidOS and is getting that ready to launch, Microsoft's working with the touch-based Surface. In fact, Apple representatives were claiming "It'll feel like 'Minority Report'" at the launch of the iPhone. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technologies_in_Minority_Report).
I wouldn't claim "Minority Report" as prior art.. if for no other reason than none of these things were good enough. But it's often some work of fiction, a presentation as a futurist conference, or some other thing that gets all sorts of engineers and designers, working independently, thinking in very much the same direction. When you factor in pre-existing UIs like the PalmOS, with it's rows of rounded-edge square icons, it's actually kind of surprising that the touch-screen phone and tablet OSs are as different from one another as they are.
-Dave Haynie
No, actually, it's a bit different than that.
Qualcomm actually makes their own designs -- their ARM cores (Scorpion, Krait) are really their own designs, not modifications of the ARM core of the day.
Everyone who delivered an ARM Cortex A8, such as the one in the Apple A4 chip, that ran over about 600MHz did some work on it themselves. Whether you're Qualcomm or Samsung or one of the others, you can do this with an "Architecture" license from ARM, which lets you make changes, and presumably, requires a level of architecture conformance to be shown.
Anyway, Samsung's processor core was called Hummingbird. That's the exact version of the A8 core used in the A4. But it's even weirder than that. Samsung worked with a design firm called Intrinsity on the development of the Hummingbird; Intrinsity was a small design firm dedicated specifically to making designs go faster, using a variety of novel approaches. At point after the work with Samsung, Apple bought Intrinsity. So Apple can, retroactively, claim to have done design work on the CPU core in the A4. But that wasn't true at the time. The A4 is essentially a customized version of the Samsung SOC used in the Galaxy S... they used a different (slightly slower) PowerVR GPU, and the various other periperals were absolutely tailored to Apple's needs. But Samsung did most of the work.
That is not true of the more recent Apple SOCs -- by all accounts, they're being designed by Apple's chip teams, the former PA Semiconductor and Intrinsity people. And still made by Samsung, though there are continual rumors of one of the big silicon CMs, such as TSMC, being tapped at least as a second source. Given the wars Apple's launched against Samsung, that would seem prudent.
-Dave Haynie
This isn't a hardware (utlilty) patent being discussed, either -- it's a design patent.
-Dave Haynie
No.. well, they may have some other patents involved. But the main one -- it's just the look they're claiming, not the look and feel. That's kind of the point of a design patent in the USA, or the "Community Design" patent-like thing they filed in Germany. I haven't seen the US design patent; the one from Germany doesn't look much like either the iPad or the Galaxy Tab.
-Dave Haynie
If those "numerous" design patents can't each stand on their own, then they should be invalidated. The "rectangle with rounded corners" just happens to be the most ridiculous one, so it's often used as the example.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Based on a reading of the design parts of the Apple complaint, here is my take:
1.) A significant part of this most definitely IS about rounded corners, but it isn't only about rounded corners.
2.) I am unconvinced by most of the hardware arguments.
3.) The various software arguments are far more damning.
4.) The "Springboard" is by far the most interesting software item, but I wonder about prior art. I've seen similar behavior in, for instance, CDE virtual desktops.
5.) Some of the icons do look a bit slavishly copied, especially in the colors. Others, I think Apple is fishing. If I were Samsung, I think I would have been more careful in my choices.
6.) I also find the packaging arguments to be damning, though I would not award a significant amount of damages based on it. I think there is real "design innovation" (blech!) there.