back to article Apple: You're a copycat! Samsung: This is really about Google, isn't it?

It was déjà vu all over again in a California court yesterday as Apple and Samsung rehashed the same old arguments in a new patent trial, with the odd twist. Apple once more kicked off with its allegations that Samsung had deliberately "copied" its iPhone, because the Jesus mobe was such a game-changer. "The introduction of …

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  1. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Meh

    Prior art: UIQ2, Windohs phone.

    Yes, they weren't wonderful but the Iphone is merely a usability extension on what was already there, not a groundbreaking change in the way we use phones.

    Yes it opened the market up, but that was more about advertising than innovation.

    1. JetSetJim

      Re: Meh

      At least until you consider the dumb-assed s/w and design patents allowable in the US which means Apple and others can play this game in the courts rather than the marketplace

    2. Miek
      Linux

      Re: Meh

      Considering that iPhone shipped originally without the ability to Copypasta suggests that it wasn't even that much of a game changer. Simply put, the launch of the iPhone was just brand alignment for the Apple hipsters.

    3. SuccessCase

      Re: Meh

      So Reg commentards who will never come close to making something like the iPhone in their lives think the most successful consumer electronics device in history is no big deal, yet in the recent book "Dogfight" Google's own Chris DeSalvo, working at the heart of the Android project, admitted on first seeing the iPhone:

      “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

      So no, I guess it had no impact on the industry and all the ideas it embodied had no impact either. /sarcasm

      1. Fluffy Bunny
        Mushroom

        Re: Meh

        "the most successful consumer electronics device in history"... but Apple didn't invent either the mobile phone, or even the smart phone.

        Obviously a very short memory. Perhaps you are too young to know about the Sony Walkman? Video recorder? Personal computer? Games console?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Meh

        Will I ever make something like the iPhone in my life...

        Of course I won't you dullard I'm not a major manufacturing concern.

        But I do work in a small software development company.

        Will I write creative software? Yes.

        Will I write new GUI elements? Yes.

        Will I write things like slide to unlock? Yes.

        Will I write things that suggest interaction with a real world object on a touchscreen? Yes

        Will I want to hypertext-ualize content in text if I recognize it? Yes.

        Will I want to implement visual cues for recognizing the end of a list? Yes.

        Will I want to implement multi-touch gestures for achieving x? Yes

        Will I want to implement a billion other frikking things? Yes.

        Will I want to implement a search that looks at multiple data-sources? Yes.

        Will I want them to run on a phone? Yes.

        Will I probably be doing this until I retire? Yes.

        IF IT'S STILL ARSING POSSIBLE GIVEN ALL THIS LUDICROUS SOFTWARE PATENT SHIT THAT PEOPLE LIKE YOU SEEM TO THINK IS A GOOD IDEA.

        You may never have done anything remotely creative in your entire life except decide which apple product to buy next but a lot of us do and we've done it almost our whole lives, and this crap is going to kill everybody in this industry with less than a billion dollar legal budget.

        Every time I "independently" (quotes because I understand that everything is filtered by what I've seen before) implement any form of GUI element I should not have to live in fear that someone else has done it before and who happened to have a team of lawyers in the room next door and a company policy of "patent everything, sue everybody, see what sticks".

        Software patents, especially when tied to easily independently arrived at solutions to trivial problems (such as slide-to-unlock, pinch-to-zoom and a myriad others) are clearly wrong and utterly devastating to competition and creativity.

        I am totally bewildered that so many people who post to this site, who clearly have more than a casual interest in IT/Software/Development, can not realize this.

        1. SuccessCase

          Re: Meh

          @AC

          kinda arguing against your own straw man there. Not what I've said at all, but it's quite fun to watch you vent against an imaginary enemy. Throw some more insults at the dullard. Get it off your chest. But if you come to blows, don't swing too hard, he's not real so there's a high chance you'll just spin on the spot and hit yourself.

    4. Piro Silver badge

      Re: Meh

      Ahh, UIQ.

      I had (well, still have around) a Sony Ericsson P900 and a P990.

      I could play SCUMM games at native res with a stylus, which is honestly better for those good old point and clicks than your finger.

      1. I Like Heckling Silver badge

        Re: Meh

        I still have in my drawer next to me, a Sony Ericsson P990i that I used up to 2011 (because I don't give a crap about changing my phone every 12-18 months and on average make them last 3-4yrs).

        I never upgraded because it wasn't needed... The iphone always seemed like a fashion statement rather than a desirable piece of tech and the early android phones were much the same with both sides having underdeveloped operating systems that in some cases couldn't even do things my aging P990i could.

        When I did upgrade in 2011 I went for the HTC Desire HD, which even then was considered 'old' technology... But when you realise what it cost me and was unlocked and contract free... and came from a friend who got it as a free upgrade for peanuts.

        I'm still using it, and although I do wish I could upgrade the OS to 4 and above (but HTC have a habit of screwing over owners with a lack of upgrades).. But when I upgrade to a new phone... it won't be an Apple and it won't be a Samsung... because I for one am sick and tired of the fanboy behaviour on both sides and want no part of it.

        I think I'll get a pure Nexus direct instead... for a lot less than either of the others charge.

    5. Jason 5

      Re: Meh

      If anyone remembers Palm, they would know that it would be considered the first generation smartphone. Apple and Google's inspiration for their phones obviously came from the tile icon based device.

      I wonder how much of the Apple/Google fortune the new owners of Palm could sue for....you know...HP (Half Pathetic)

      1. SuccessCase

        Re: Meh

        @Jason 5, selective memory, since the Apple Newton was out first, which was, oh a tile based haptic touch-screen device released 1993 when the Palm Pilot was released 1997. The "who was earliest" game is a silly one anyway. All modern tech products have components with considerable lineage which have been around in combination with other devices for many years. It's all about the cake that is baked with the ingredients, not the ingredients themselves.

        1. SuccessCase

          Re: Meh

          sorry, meant to say resistive, not haptic touch screen device. Old age.

        2. NumptyScrub

          Re: Meh

          quote: "@Jason 5, selective memory, since the Apple Newton was out first, which was, oh a tile based haptic touch-screen device released 1993 when the Palm Pilot was released 1997."

          Of course, the Newton (and the Palm) could neither make or receive GSM phone calls or SMS messages, so neither can be called "smartphones" in that respect. The IBM Simon is (barely) a smartphone and was released in 1994, or you could go for the Nokia 9000 released in 1996 as a better PDA+phone mashup (source).

          quote: "The "who was earliest" game is a silly one anyway. All modern tech products have components with considerable lineage which have been around in combination with other devices for many years. It's all about the cake that is baked with the ingredients, not the ingredients themselves."

          Indeed, yet Apple enthusiasts almost always immediately claim Apple were the "first" with the iPhone and iPad when they demonstrably were not. When pressed for details of first-ness, they tend to switch to "game changers" as Apple's USP, and when challenged regarding the details of game-changing-ness, normally "touchscreen" or "multi-touch" are mentioned at this point.

          Apple are exceedingly good at letting other companies do the risky business of sounding out a brand new market, and then they come barreling in once profitability is established. They are also exceedingly good at writing their marketing to imply they were first, and let public perception do the rest.

          So yes, Samsung may well be guilty of copying Apple copying {IBM,Nokia,Ericsson,Palm,Microsoft} et al. However in this specific case, as in that last one, the patents are utter tripe and should never have been granted in the first place (I see "slide to unlock" is still on the list, let's see if they have the balls to try and patent "swipe finger over fingerprint sensor to unlock" as well).

          1. SuccessCase

            Re: Meh

            @NumptyScrub

            "yet Apple enthusiasts almost always immediately claim Apple were the "first" with the iPhone and iPad when they demonstrably were not"

            It's not too facetious to point out, that by definition, Apple were the first with the iPhone and the iPad and you have already appear to have agreed it is the cake baked with the ingredients, not the list of ingredients themselves. Plus you seem to have ignored the "horses mouth" admission of a key techie in the history of this, one who was quite happy to pay due respect to the achievements of a competitor. Why do you think it is Chris DeSilva thought the Google Android project (at the time Android looked far closer to the Blackberry OS than iOS) would have start-over if it wasn't for the fact the bar had just been moved significantly higher ? And why did RIM take a dive? Because of an OS that looked like their own, or because of Nokia's smartphones (which they were already, in business if not in technology terms, besting), or because of the significant fork in the smartphone design path brought by the iPhone? So all in all, who is it that is attempting to re-write history here?

            I'm a little at a loss as to what your point is except to deny the important role the iPhone played. Now if you ask me if the Newton, the Palm Pilot or the Nokia 9000 were important devices I would have no difficulty acknowledging the part they played. Sour grapes and partisanship only serve to warp historical analysis. Psion should be in the mix too: they had far superior OS technology than Palm (though how they squandered that advantage is a sad story). Their OS was the root of Symbian, which they spun out as a separate company, though by the time they did this, they had lost their early lead and the endeavour was, unfortunately, further wrecked by vested interests and a lack of overall over the design direction for the OS.

            1. ThomH

              Re: Meh

              Apple was first to... release a device that was truly attractive to the majority of consumers. It achieved this through a successful marriage of blossoming technologies and by using its iPod clout to strong-arm the mobile networks.

              If you had asked interested consumers what impressed them in the first iPhone they'd probably mention the multitouch interface (thanks to Apple's acquisition of FingerWorks), the smooth user interface (achievable because GPUs had crossed the necessary power/price threshold) and the unlimited data plans (that's the network clout bit). The screen was also large and high resolution for its time.

              But the real issue here isn't whether Samsung dared to plan its products by surveying competing products (hint: it did) it is to what extent it should be allowed to as obviously if someone had said "iPhone purchasers have reported liking this browser icon, let's use this browser icon" then there'd be no real debate.

              If you've really nothing else to do with your day you can check my post history and see that I'm generally positive about Apple but, honestly, I don't think a functioning marketplace is sustainable if we're at the level where minor interface elements like slide to unlock are protectable (regardless of whether Apple should own that one or not). I also don't really understand Apple's strategy here. What benefit has been derived from all this wrangling? It feels like if Apple had just left well alone then it would be in a better market position now, allowing for the negative PR consequences compounded by Samsung's resulting advertising strategy. All I can imagine is that it's so much bluster to get a better price on components.

            2. Peter 48

              Re: Meh

              All this talk about who invented what first and whether the iphone had specific tech first or not is missing the real reason why it took off - marketing. Apple were the first company to market a smart phone to consumers outside of the the business sector and do so heavily and for a prolonged period. Combined with the concurrent development of a more robust data infra structure and improvement in tech completely independent of apple they were able to show that demand could be created in the much larger consumer market. Whilst apple acolytes love to think that their saviour invented the wave and the ocean they surfed in on, all apple did was pick a decent surf board and a better spot on the beach to start riding into success.

            3. NumptyScrub

              Re: Meh

              quote: "It's not too facetious to point out, that by definition, Apple were the first with the iPhone and the iPad and you have already appear to have agreed it is the cake baked with the ingredients, not the list of ingredients themselves."

              First with what? Smartphone? Not by a long shot. Touchscreen on a phone? Nope. Phone which has a touchscreen which takes up almost all of the real estate? Err, not even that, sorry.

              This lawsuit by Apple is over 6 specific ingredients (patents), so since we both agree about the cake analogy, I'm guessing we both agree that it's a pointless waste of time for Apple to be doing this, and especially galling that they are demanding $2 billion for ingredients?

              quote: "or because of the significant fork in the smartphone design path brought by the iPhone?"

              I think you mean the significant design fork brought about by the LG Prada (see link above), although I understand that since Apple harp on and on about their design being a "game changer" and "first" and "anyone making products that look vaguely like ours must be copying us" that you could be forgiven for believing them. :)

              quote: "I'm a little at a loss as to what your point is except to deny the important role the iPhone played."

              My point is (and always has been) that the decidedly important role(s) that the iPhone played were in popularisation and market penetration. The iPhone was a well rounded iteration on release, but I certainly wouldn't call it a particular innovation, either design-wise or in a technical aspect, given that it used off the shelf ingredients and was itself the subject of some serious "copying" scrutiny on release.

              You will note that Apple have since received a design patent on the iPhone even though it was initially the subject of a potential lawsuit over the design. Feel free to use that to contend that it somehow confers retroactive credibility or legitimacy to Apple. Personally I'll be viewing that particular USPTO decision in a slightly different light, alongside the slide-to-unlock and bouncing-list decisions... :/

        3. sysconfig

          Re: Meh

          "It's all about the cake that is baked with the ingredients, not the ingredients themselves."

          That's what common sense would tell us. However, when it comes to software and hardware patents (which overlap to a certain extent), it seems to be all about abstract ingredients. The US (and other countries with similar laws) got that fundamentally wrong. Now the poor judges have to listen to that shit.

        4. Oh Homer
          Headmaster

          Re: "Apple Newton was out first"

          Sorry Mr. BasketCase but, as you were already told six months ago, the first portable resistive touch screen device with handwriting recognition was actually the Linus Write-Top, released in 1987, a full six years before the Newton.

          1. SuccessCase

            Re: "Apple Newton was out first"

            Well here's the thing Homey boy, its a little boring how you are incapable of grasping the argument that "first" does not equal "success" or even "good," and though it may be largely of identity with "inventive" isn't even necessarily "innovative" (innovation being more than invention, but also cultivation and integration of valued solutions such that they are brought to practical fruition and application) And the first electronics device made of plastic was way earlier than 30 years before the Linus Write-Top. So what?

            1. Oh Homer
              Headmaster

              Re: "Apple Newton was out first"

              "So what?" I see, so first you make a bullshit claim then, when you're proven wrong, you pretend you asked a completely different question, whilst neatly ignoring the entire topic of the article, re: who copied whom.

              As for subjective things like "quality", crApple's garbage has had more than its fair share of failures, and it's financial success is purely driven by exorbitant prices (which is why it makes more money than anyone else, despite having a tiny market share). That's all very laudable, I suppose, if you're the sort of person who admires rip-off artists.

              But as fascinating as that is, the point of this article is who copied whom, and given that Apple is the least innovative plagiarist in history, clearly it's Apple that copied everyone else.

              If I were you, I'd pick a replacement "SuccessCase", because your current one seems to have failed.

              1. SuccessCase

                Re: "Apple Newton was out first"

                Oh Homer you seem not to have been able to parse quite simple logic. Saying x was an earlier implementation of feature y than z's is NOT a claim x was the *earliest* implementation of feature y. Read again my "claim" and you will see I have made no statement about the Newton being the earliest resistive touch device, and that I have quite rightly pointed out the argument Apple was not innovative because the iPad was predated by the Palm Pilot is a wholly inadequate given the Palm Pilot was predated by an earlier *Apple* device which clearly evidenced the two features (touch sensitivity and a grid of icons) cited. In the future, do try harder to actually parse basic logic old chap, your supposed to be a technologist. Bad humoured insults suggest your ability to analyse simple logic has been somewhat hampered by the red mist.

      2. Euripides Pants

        Re: Meh

        > HP (Half Pathetic)

        HP (Hugely Pathetic)

        There, FTFY...

  2. Roo

    Presumably this is the same Phil that claimed Apple sunk most of the firm's R&D effort into the iPhone, yet we have Greg Christie on record as saying the dev team was "shockingly small"... To be fair Phil's claims could be correct if Apple had a very small R&D budget and outsourced the vast majority of their development work...

    So Phil, which is it ? Perjury or Apple outsources the majority of it's product development ?

    1. Martijn Bakker

      That is actually a matter of public record. See the investor reports.

      Apple's R&D budget in 2008-2012 was about 2-4% of it's revenue. With most major tech companies, this is somewhere around 10-15%.

      Also note that this includes ALL product development. So it's not just iPhones and iOS. This includes development on MacOS and it's applications and the development of ll other i<Thing>s.

      Since Apple have to develop their hardware, OS and applications themselves (i.e. they can't just buy an OS for their hardware), you'd expect that they'd need to spend more on R&D, not less.

      It's likely that they outsource most of their product development.

      1. El_Fev

        What you said makes no sense because you are using percentages, if your company makes a 100Billion in revenue , then 2% is a damn sight more than 2% of say a million.

        Plus just because they don't spend as much percentage wise as their competitors does not mean they are doing no R&D, apple only has a few products so therefore can concentrate their resouces.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Martijn Bakker

        Sorry, but you're an idiot if you think Apple outsources ANY of their product development. They outsource the manufacturing, not the R&D. If you can point to one case where they've hired outsiders to write their software or design their products I'll eat my words. Sure, they acquire companies like Fingerworks and get some of their technology from them, but all large tech companies do that. For example, Google didn't develop Google Maps, they bought out a company that developed it, and gave it their own name. They've improved it a lot since then, just as Apple has improved on what Fingerworks developed.

        Apple spends a smaller percentage of their revenue on R&D compared to other tech companies for several reasons:

        1) their revenue is higher than other tech companies - a lot higher in some cases. If one company makes 10x as more as a smaller one, only a stupid Wall Street analyst would suggest they should automatically spend 10x as much on R&D.

        2) they have a very very tiny product portfolio compared to all other tech companies of remotely similar size. The fewer products you have, the less R&D that's required. Apple introduces one model of phone per year, that should require less R&D than if they introduced dozens like Samsung.

        3) From 2008 to 2012 their revenue grew massively. R&D requires planning, you don't budget R&D based on a percentage of revenue. If you did, you'd have the R&D department racing to spend an extra billion or two between Halloween and Christmas if you were having a great year, or have to furlough your entire R&D department from Halloween to Christmas if you were having a bad year.

        Samsung has a much larger R&D spend than Apple, for instance, because smartphones are a tiny part of their overall product portfolio. They are paying guys to design everything from dishwashers to oil tankers. All the money they spend building/outfitting new fabs count as R&D. Apple outsources manufacturing so they don't have to spend that (I'm not sure how their joint venture with that sapphire company in Arizona will be reflected, maybe that $1 billion Apple is chipping in will count as R&D for them...I'm not sure how that accounting will work)

        1. Richard Plinston

          Re: @Martijn Bakker

          > If you can point to one case where they've hired outsiders to write their software ...

          Applesoft BASIC. They hired Microsoft to implement MS BASIC on Apple II.

          Mac Office. Microsoft implemented it for Apple.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @Martijn Bakker

            OK, Richard, I guess I should have limited the search for examples to the current millennium :)

            Fair cop though, you got me, I can't say they NEVER have done it, they just haven't done it since Jobs 2.0.

        2. Chet Mannly

          Re: @Martijn Bakker

          "Apple spends a smaller percentage of their revenue on R&D compared to other tech companies"

          Because they only release a significant new product once a decade then just do minor tweaks.

          Look at OSX, Macbook pro range, ipads, iOS in general...

    2. SuccessCase

      "Phil that claimed Apple sunk most of the firm's R&D effort into the iPhone, yet we have Greg Christie on record as saying the dev team was "shockingly small""

      That's a false choice, since there is no inconsistency in saying most of the R&D effort was against iPhone and that the dev team was shockingly small. Most companies use R&D spend as an accounting trick, because it can be used to minimise tax. Steve Jobs was well known for the fact he disliked large sprawling teams and he felt fluffing up R&D budget to reduce tax would lead to a dilution of focus on what R&D should be about.

      On returning to Apple he slashed the R&D budget and also crucially cut the number of the products the company marketed to a fraction of what it was before. He understood you get far better and more intense value from small focussed R&D teams. Far from reducing focus on R&D, he was in fact the most R&D obsessed CEO of any tech company for the simple reason his modus operandi was to involve himself intimately as R&D commander in chief. To put it in somewhat melodramatic (but illustrative terms) he was the equivalent of the special forces officer who takes on an audacious plan with the words "my specialist unit 1/20th the size of your conventional forces will get the job done better and with fewer casualties." and then he went out and proved his argument in spectacular style.

      1. Roo
        Windows

        "That's a false choice, since there is no inconsistency in saying most of the R&D effort was against iPhone and that the dev team was shockingly small."

        That can only be consistent if migrating two lines of hardware, an OS, developer community and software from PPC -> x86 in the same timeframe could be done with a tiny fraction of the R&D budget.

        You will probably find more people who think that Steve Jobs was the second incarnation of Jesus than you will find engineers who agree with that picture...

  3. DrXym

    Slide to unlock

    This is such an obvious feature that it's a wonder it could even be patented.

    Even so, most Android devices have avoided this metaphor and used something virtually analogous. For example, the stock Android 4.x requires a person to drag a ball and drop it on the perimeter of a circle which just so happens to be a slide to lock arrangement. I assume Google would point out the ball can be dropped anywhere on the perimeter but its the same deal.

    And Samsung has stuck a screensaver with a swipe to unlock message. It doesn't say where to swipe to unlock but it works the same way - drag the finger some appreciable distance in a straight line and the screen unlocks.

    Simply put, swipe to unlock is achievable in other ways but the original patent is so obvious it should not have been granted in the first place.

    1. Tom 35

      Re: Slide to unlock

      It's great that Apple invented slide to unlock, before that we all had to crawl under the locked door of the washroom stall.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Slide to unlock

        "before that we all had to crawl under the locked door of the washroom stall."

        ...on a mobile device? Oh, yeah, portaloos, caravans etc :-)

    2. Fluffy Bunny
      Thumb Down

      Re: Slide to unlock

      "Slide to unlock... This is such an obvious feature that it's a wonder it could even be patented"

      Prior art. My image scanner has a slider to unlock it. And please don't say "on a mobile device" makes any difference. That contains no intellectual content and the "I" in "IP" is important.

      1. DrXym

        Re: Slide to unlock

        "Prior art. My image scanner has a slider to unlock it. "

        The prior art would be any number of bolts, latches and levers which work in the exact same way in real life. Apple basically patented a virtual latch.

  4. El_Fev

    Oh please thise same tired old crap...

    There were touch screen phones before the iPhone but they were crap. The phone that Samsung was building for Google was a blackberry rip off until the iPhone came along.

    What Samsung did was make a phone that looked very very similar to the iPhone, even with similar packaging, to get those people who would have liked an iPhone but could not have afforded it.

    The Samsung S2 was the same as those Chinese knockoff you see on eBay, with the court action they knew that they could not keep on doing that stunt which is why the Samsung s3 looks so different , yet the iPhone 4 and 5 are the same just with different dimensions.

    And wait for legions of morons going on about rounded corners etc, deliberately missing the point , that it was a design patent, and part of one at that to stop people just making a copycat of their phone.

    Apple has not sued Sony or Microsoft or Nokia, for their phones, because they had the good grace to come up with their own damn designs!

    As for Apple being envious of the Android market, considering Apple makes more money than anyone in the purely mobile arena and by an immense margin at that ... its laughable

    1. james 68

      Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

      cannot decide if troll or deludedly serious, well played sir.... however april first was yesterday.

      1. El_Fev

        Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

        Yes because stating a fact is a troll, Tell me why does the S3 look nothing like the S2 and the S4 look like the S3. Hey and the S3 has rounded shoulders and everything....cretin!

        1. The Bit Wrangler

          Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

          If the S3 is unlike the S2 (and, by inference, the iPhone), why then is the S3 one of the targets of this suit?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

          So despite the fact that the original iPhone looked fairly similar to the HTC Alpine and various others means that you can't have a phone which is rectangular shape where the screen takes up the majority of the real-estate apart from a few buttons at the bottom?

          Oh and rounded edges are nothing new so go shove your rounded shoulders where the sun don't shine...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

      "Apple has not sued Sony or Microsoft or Nokia, for their phones, because they had the good grace to come up with their own damn designs!" Nokia n900 has slide to unlock, or is a round button significantly different to a rectangular one?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

      Right. So with the S3 being so different, why does Apple continue with this same tired old crap? Take the slide-to-unlock patent asserted in this case. Even if the patent would be valid (which I don't think it should be, a completely bullshit patent if there ever was one), the unlocking method on a stock S3 is almost, but not entirely, unlike the patent. The similarity is that the user moves his finger.

    4. Richard Jones 1
      Unhappy

      Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

      "There were touch screen phones before the iPhone but they were crap."

      They still are.

    5. william 10

      Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

      Apple has not sued Sony or Microsoft or Nokia, ....

      It always seems to me, its because they do not look Chinese (=>益<=)

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh please thise same tired old crap...

      So why did the iPhone look so similar the LG Prada (released 6 months earlier)? The S2 looks more like a Prada than it does an iPhone, got the same number of front buttons at least !!!.

      Samsung should admit they copied the Prada, then if Apple keep this up they would be admitting it too.

      This apple fandroid rant is strangely amusing

      http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/70657/iphone-copies-lgs-new-prada-phone

  5. auburnman

    This is where the Samsung-Google cross licencing alliance will start to bear fruit: Sue either of them and you could well end up taking on two tech giants in a war on two fronts.

  6. dade

    Apple Disappointing

    Again apple you still cant move on!!!!, your only problem is, you just simply cant accept the fact that, you did not bring a large screen format phone out when windows and samsung did ie: 5.5 and 6, which is why you did not have the sales. God i thought about this the minute i saw the first samsung 5 inch phone appear, but nothing from apple:( U spent far too long on new macpro. I say, stop going to court get back to innovating and bring out the large format phones, move on and get to work on what else you can bring to the world like, well ill give u a hint. 1) Apple IPlay (Game Box) (OPPosition to XboxOne and PS4 ) and actually make it this time, and 2) Apple ITV a real one like a real tv from a store, that can interface to all other apple products and stream from the apple hdisk devices.

    1. El_Fev

      Re: Apple Disappointing

      Are you a gibbering idiot? Name me one quarter ONE where Apple has made a loss on its iPhone's, Jesus they can't even make enough of them to sell.

      While Apple can look forward to another recording breaking Billion dollar net [profit quarter, some no mark sitting in his mothers basement can go on about how they have lost their mojo! :S

      1. 20legend

        Re: Apple Disappointing

        'Jesus they can't even make enough of them to sell'

        1) highlight a point where the iPhone has ever been in short supply other than upon release of a new model (which is a scenario far from exclusive to the iphone)

        2) cuts in orders for the iPhone 5c to manufacturers by Apple would suggest a surplus.....

      2. VinceH

        Re: Apple Disappointing

        "Are you a gibbering idiot? Name me one quarter ONE where Apple has made a loss on its iPhone's, Jesus they can't even make enough of them to sell."

        While Dade's comment would probably cause even the most powerful grammar checker to overheat and die, I can't see the bit where he said Apple has made a loss on its iPhones, only that they "did not have the sales" - by which I suspect he means lost sales (which are very disputable) rather than losses.

      3. Philip Lewis

        Re: Apple Disappointing

        "no mark"

        Wow, it's ages since I heard that "clock busting" term. I use it myself, mostly in conjunction with "Belgian bastard" or similar, but I digress.

        Welcome to The Register sentient life club, whomsoever you might be.

  7. DerekCurrie
    Thumb Up

    Apple Requires Competition. Deceitful Liars And Plagiarists Need Not Apply.

    Dear Apple,

    Rip Samsung to shreds please. Make room for REAL competition. That is what we *all* require.

    1. Neil Alexander

      Re: Apple Requires Competition. Deceitful Liars And Plagiarists Need Not Apply.

      Oh boy, you are full of it if you think that the courtroom is the way to achieve competition. Real competition comes from companies innovating, not litigating.

    2. Roo

      Re: Apple Requires Competition. Deceitful Liars And Plagiarists Need Not Apply.

      "Rip Samsung to shreds please. Make room for REAL competition. That is what we *all* require."

      Ironically, given the title you chose, you totally lied - perhaps that was a joke I missed ?

      Personally I don't require a bunch of overpaid toffs debating how best to wipe out any semblance of free-market competition.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    "The Galaxy-making firm is also likely to argue that the patents in question are for relatively minor features that wouldn't influence a customer's choice of which phone to buy."

    This is so very true, but for Apple fangurlz who like to channel the late Steve Jobs and pretend they're geniuses, it's the small details and little touches that make Apple products so desirable.

    Actually, what makes Apple products so desirable is excellent marketing, product placement (seen Channel 4 News for example? Everyone they interview, even jobless people who are about to be made homeless, seem to own top of the range Apple kit) and brand management that draws the weak minded to the shiny-shiny and makes them go 'Oooooooooooh'.

    1. Tom 7

      Apples true genius

      seems to be taking money off people who then seem to think that because they paid Apple it must be Apple that invented everything. Can you imagine if they had tried patenting the same sort of things at the start of the PC era - imagine a mouse click being patented to mark a point on the screen?

      Can I patent new form of Stockholm syndrome for use in marketing please?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Shiny-Shiny

      "that draws the weak minded to the shiny-shiny and makes them go 'Oooooooooooh'."

      This explains why my iPhone keeps being stolen by Magpies.

      1. MrT

        Sounds as if staying away from...

        ... St. James Park is the answer.

        Luckily Newcastle City Council wisely avoided renaming the place on roadsigns etc to the Wonga.com SportsDirect Stadium, or whatever Michael (only-in-it-for-the-c) Ashley has pimped it off to this season.

        :-D

  9. Moosh

    About time

    This pleases me because at least one of the parties involved has finally cut through the crap and outright stated that the real issue is that Apple has some sort of personal vendetta against Android for no real discernable reason other than the fact that they're embarassed by how well its doing.

    This is something everyone has known from the very start, but its nice that one of the people actually involved has come out and said it officially.

    The real issue is that Murrican courts will never view this objectively because it ultimately boils down to US Company versus Foreign Company.

    What Apple are trying to do is the equivalent of "We started breathing first, so you have to pay us $1 Billion or stop breathing yourself".

  10. Slawek

    Apple is the most disgusting high-tech company. They seem to sue every major phone manufacturer, except Chinese ones (they know they will not win) and Microsoft (they have cross-licensing agreement).

    1. Steve78

      They are protecting their IP. Apple have spent billions only for companies like Samsung to copy and rip it off. Apple (or any public company) are obligated to stakeholders to protect their IP.

      1. Moosh

        Why isn't Microsoft suing apple for clearly ripping off their tablets, then?

        The iPad is as much a ripoff of the earlier windows XP tablets as a Galaxy S2 is of an iPhone.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          1) you'd need to be blind and/or mad to think the iPad was a rip off of XP tablets

          2) Apple and Microsoft have a cross-licensing agreement

        2. Philip Lewis

          No Moosh, it's not - unless you are both blind and absent both hands

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @steve78

        nokia took a big bite out of apples ass on patents that are actually necessary to make the thing go. nokia licenced them at reasonable cost after apple used them without permission and had to be sued

        the patents that apple are asserting are usually cosmetic and non essential. but they want even more $ and wont licence them cos they are unreasonable

        1. Philip Lewis

          "cos they are unreasonable"

          Read: "Because they are within their rights not to and choose to exercise that right"

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Microsoft (they have cross-licensing agreement)."

      I guess that includes HTC now, Nokia previously and who knows who else that Apple have notably failed to sue.

      Are you getting the picture yet????

  11. Yugguy

    Patenting breathing?

    The trouble is that motions like pinch and zoom are so basic to ANY touchscreen that any manufacturer would have to invent and incorporate them.

    So for Apple to prove Samsung copied their ideas is a bit like trying to prove one human being copied breathing in and out from another human being.

  12. NotWorkAdmin

    Wait

    Samsung sell a product under the moniker "Galaxy"? Cadbury should get in on this legal shenanighins - it would make about as much sense.

  13. SpiderPig

    iPhone a leader !!! Ha!

    Why you would want to copy the iPhone is beyond me. The original was as dumb as a brick, nearly every other phone on the market had more smarts, they just did'nt have the cash to throw into the spin machine as Apple had.

  14. Crady

    Had to laugh last week when it was announced Apple had patented 'Text n Walk' when Samsung did this back in 2010. Whose the real copycat?

  15. Hans 1
    Headmaster

    CC

    So up until 2009, Sammy tried hard to compete:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_%28original%29

    then

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_i5700

    But cheap looking crap does not sell, so what does in 2010 ?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S

    Why ? iPhone clone.

    Case closed, Sammy cough up, thanks!

    I really could do with some down votes, guyz ;-)

  16. Robert Jenkins

    Handheld Linux & the touch / icon interface date back to 2000...

    A lot of the interface features they keep fighting over originated long before either Android or the iphone.

    I have an old Sharp Zaurus PDA, which runs Linux using a touchscreen interface.

    Mine's a 5600, but the first Linux-based one was the 5000, released in the year 2000.

    Android is basically another version of Linux for mobile devices.

    The first iphone was not not released until several years later.

    The Zaurus also had a full QUERTY keyboard, very similar to that later used on the Blackberry devices.

    http://tuxmobil.org/pda_linux_sharp_sl5000.html

    The patent fights are purely to try and hold back competitors, not due to any genuine, dramatic innovations.

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