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back to article Swiss railways ticked off at iOS clock knock-off

As hipsters and tragics queue for new iPhones, Switzerland's railway operator, SBB, has complained that Cupertino copied its design for the clock display used in iOS6. Your rounded corners might not save you: SBB's railway clock (left) and Apple's iOS6 clock icon (right) While expressing "joy" that iOS6 uses what it …

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  1. Sean Baggaley 1

    Hmm. It does look too similar to be a coincidence.

    But... I don't think Apple's designers and managers are idiots. As with the "iPhone" trademark, I suspect they felt it would cost less to let SBB contact them if there was a trademark involved and set their price (although how you "trademark" a machine's user interface I've no idea; trademarks are usually static images).

    I also can't help noticing a pattern emerging here. I wonder if SBB said "No," knowing full well that they'd get a ton of free publicity by doing so and demanding Apple pay them on their own terms. (And by "their own terms", I suspect they first had some meetings with Apple's people to decide what those terms would be.)

    Whatever you may think of Apple, "incompetent" isn't a term you can apply to their management team. There's more to this than meets the eye.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Call on William Tell

    Job's ghost (Steve Cook) should be made to stand with an Apple on his head. Tell should have one free shot. Let's hope he doesn't take Cook's iOut.

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  4. mhenriday
    Trollface

    Richard, you must have messed up that quote from John Lindsay :

    here's the fix : «Move yr business to where Apple says it is. That's the Apple way. Or we'll sue u in our hometown court.»

    Henri

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  5. Lockwood

    Pending lawsuit

    When will SBB get sued for modeling their clocks after the iOS icon?

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    The trademark on the clock expired on the 2nd of this month.

    https://www.swissreg.ch/srclient/faces/jsp/trademark/sr30.jsp

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    1. G2
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      Re: The trademark on the clock expired [...] this month.

      they might be in the process of renewing it, so the renewal won't show up yet.

      if you look at the status it does say it's an ACTIVE trademark, so SBB might have a grace period to renew the mark

      Status Active trademark

      Trademark no. 512830

      Filing date 03.09.2002

      Expiry date 03.09.2012

      Source of first publication SOGC no.145 to 31.07.2003

      Application no. 07606/2002

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Station Clock Demos

    A nice page about the clock designs, with

    configurable clock and JavaScript code:

    http://3quarks.com/en/StationClock/

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Close ... but this is BLATANT

    Braun's ET22 calculator was (and I choose my words carefully) blatantly ripped off on the first iPhone OS - it was rapidly changed when they got a stiff telling off from das legaldepartment, but they still use a design closely based on it.

    However, it's not all Apple stealing from others: I've got a leather writing set and a wooden magazine rack that TOTALLY rip off Apples unique design style.

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