Apple v Samsung: Jobs strikes back Last week Samsung went to the International Trade Commission to try to ban the import of Apple's phones into the US. In response Apple has now tried to stop the sale of four specified Samsung handsets on claims that they infringe Apple patents. Jobs's boys went to court on Friday to seek an injunction to stop sales of Infuse …
I'm not for or against any company (just like good products from many different companies), and I've never joined in with any company bashing in the past....but, I am becoming tired with all this as I'm sure many of you are. Please...Apple...just stop it, carry on making your products and leave it at that (and don't think all you other companies are off the hook either!). You can't moan about others stealing your ideas when you do this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/apple_copies_rejected_app/
I couldn't find a wet kipper icon..
Nokia sued Apple for actual technology infringements - radio interface and other designs that cost a lot to develop and test. Everyone else in the industry licenced these designs, and Nokia licenced other makers' technologies too, but Apple disagreed about how much they should pay until last month.
This particular case is a design issue, and it's not like Nokia sued Apple for ripping off the look and feel of the old Nokia 7710, with its touchscreen grid of rounded-rectangle icons, is it? ;)
To claim that a common geometric shape -- so common that most graphic APIs include it as a primitive -- is your private, protected design signature is a bit much, even from Apple.
On the other hand, I do think Samsung have been very cheeky in their designs. The Galaxy S, I'm sure purely by accident, managed to position all its case elements in exactly the same places as Apple did on the iPhone. And when you tapped the "menu" button, you got a layout that's suspiciously like Apple's application list too. Deeper down, the similarities drop away fast, but for the "play with it in the shop" time so valued by Apple, they're pretty similar... but similar enough for a customer to think Apple had something to do with the Galaxy? I don't think so.
And all the while, the lawyers' clocks keep ticking along...
*Yawn* → #
Posted Monday 4th July 2011 11:38 GMT
In Apple v Samsung: Jobs strikes back
These legal shenanigans are getting tiring. I think I'll ignore the whole thing until a judge actually says something that's binding on one or both Samsung and Apple.
The judge will deliver a judgement and then........ The loser will just appeal.
My lunch included something called an apple, but it did not make telephone calls badly - ergo it was not an apple it must have been something else.
The Apple iThings can only deal with iThings therefore only work with iThings software therefore they are iThings.
Samsung smart phones will not load iThing software, will not interact with iThing services but have round corners, they are still not ithings by Apple.
My rubber, (or eraser to the yanks) is sort of flat and after use has round coners, it cannot make telephone calls, cannot play music or do anything else, but it almost has the look and feel of an iThing. Whatever apple thinks (if that is not an oxymorn) it has NOT copied the look and feel of an iThing, for christ's sake it is a rubber.
Samsung make smart phones not walled up apple ithing toys for playing in an apple garden. Apple ithing toys have the look and feel of walled up items, why in hell would any one copy the walled in apple ithing restrictions feature?
SSorry but in their latest adverts for the Galaxy 2?? basically you dont knopw the name until it the advert ends, and up until that point you would have sworn it wasa new iPhone ad. Sorry but there are other touch screen phones and have been for donkeys years, but the samsung ones, really do look like iphones until you give it a really hard look, and it was intentional IMHO
Either way, it would be pretty simple to change it so that it does not look so much like the iPhone GUI so why haven't they ?
I've held one and played with it – The UI differences are apparent pretty quickly, but I'm not my mother, who probably would not be able to tell the difference between a galaxy tab and an ipad.
My impression is that it really is a shitty ipad ripoff, it feels cheap in-hand, the bezel with its thin strip of shiny metal does strike me as an obvious attempt to mimic the ipad.
Go into a supermarket and look at the own store's brand products and compare to the well known brands of the same. Notice how the look and style is often copied by the store's own brands.
Just how similar does something have to be before it is considered worth the effort of throwing more money at lawyers on the off chance something useful (for you) happens?
If they do any checking around, including the Apple patents, they won't be giving this to much skin. It boggles the mind how quickly Apple patent 7,469,381 was pushed through while patents of others seem to languish for ages. Only a year in 2008? It was either a light year at the patent office, the patent examiner had a lot of help or Apple did. That is lightning fast for the USPTO and makes me question just how thorough they were.
The design patents are equally dubious. A bunch of pics of bricks with softened edges and little else. Apple design patent D618,677 points out the Samsung F700 under "other publications" and guess what? It's a brick with a touchscreen and rounded corners just like the iPhone. As for the tablet patent D504,889, it's beyond me how they managed to get it. Someone drew a rectangle and rounded the corners and back edges. Good thing tabricks with rounded corners and edges have been around for a while like the HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1100.
if you havent got an Android Phone, well, you havent got an Android phone
Apple are actually starting to really piss me off. if their OSX Lion is starting to limit the
ways I want to use the computer as I fear they might then I think I'll be saying bye bye to even having an OSX system - how can they complain about stealing look and feel? Most of their product line have just been slimmer or whiter/blacker versions of things that came before - their first laptop
was a clam-shell design with top half being a screen and bottom half being the keyboard - i'm surprised IBM or Toshiba didnt sue! ;-)
BUT, the 206BW has been around during or before 2007:
http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/samsung-syncmaster-206bw/4505-3174_7-32327974.html
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab
and if one applied touch screen capabilities to it and win nt or xp in a 206BW format, and flattened the back, and got rid of the wiring, it would have been very close. I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung can during "discovery" show that among many formats out there, the 206BW figured in looks and appeal examples in Apple searches for look-and-feel...
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