Ouch. Thoughts about this judgement? Apple is awarded over 1 billion dollars in its suit against Samsung.
Opinion: In Apple versus Samsung, expect no one to truly win
My thoughts are there will be an appeal in the very near future. The fact the judge denied samsung the ability to show evidence that proved not only prior art to apples “patents” (space odyssey star trek etc), and proved they had designs for a phone that looked almost identical to the phone apple is complaining about BEFORE the iphone was released… in addition to the fact apple played games by compressing and changing the aspect ratio of the images they used to make them look more alike are all grounds for an appeal that im hopeful will not go apples way. In fact I really hope on appeal apple gets slapped hard.
It’s very ironic for apple to complain about the “stealing” of ideas anyway since they wouldn’t be near where they are without standing on the shoulders of those before them. Apple is a company of litigious assholes who will never have a dollar of my money… I don’t care if they make the best product in the world I’d rather suffer and use an inferior product than support a company who tries to stifle innovation with shitty patents.
I think Apple proved beyond any doubt that Samsung copied Apple. Period.
Doesn’t matter where Apple got its inspiration from, Samsung blatantly copied Apple, not whatever came before the iPhone. That’s just a desperate argument from those who don’t understand the issue at hand. It’s not about whether these things existed before the iPhone or not. It’s about the fact that Samsung purposely copied Apple’s stuff, not the things that existed before the iPhone.
Seriously, you can’t look at Samsung phones pre-iPhone, and then look at Samsung phones post-iPhone and not come to the same conclusion. Unless you’re in serious denial. Samsung internal documents constantly referred to making things look more like Apple’s stuff. They even copied the fricken USB connector!
What’s really sad here is that somebody gave Samsung bad legal advice. They decided to launch this suit against their largest customer, and they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Before this, Apple was Samsung’s biggest customer, and Samsung was Apple’s largest supplier.
As for “litigious assholes” – I guess you won’t be giving Google or Samsung any of your money soon either? Both of those companies seem to be lawsuit happy as well, and I guess by your definition are trying to “stifle innovation”?
theverge.com/2012/8/24/32665 … t-it-means
[quote]Perhaps most importantly, the jury ruled that many of Samsung’s infringements were “willful” — that is, the company deliberately copied Apple’s patents. That’s how they got to that $1.051 billion damage award; they punished Samsung for doing it on purpose.
There is no way to interpret this as anything but a sweeping, definitive victory for Apple.[/quote]
Regardless of how you feel about the judgement (we will have to agree to disagree) did samsung copy some aspects of the iphone? Yes but were those items trivial and easy to copy without knowing and just a natural evolution of design? yup. Even if they wilfully copied apple what apple has a patent on is trivial and should never been allowed in the first place. I think (hope) we can agree that look and feel patents are bullshit to begin with.
How many cars look alike and have similar user interfaces? does that confuse car buyers? there is no way a customer would confuse an iphone for the samsung phone/tablet especially after using it for 10 seconds.
Apple is certainly trying to stifle innovation or at least artificially increase the barrier to entry for new players and I don’t agree with that. From what I have seen thus far google’s suits have been either retaliatory or defensive but if I’m wrong I’ll have to take a hard look at where I spend my $$ for my next phone. Google certainly is no saint but so far they’ve kept above the rest.
I know you love your apple stuff and I agree they do make some decent hardware/software but this kind of behaviour is unacceptable in my opinion. It’s not just apple that I hate I have an equal dislike for oracle, microsoft and sco.
Well, no, I don’t think this was just a “look and feel” patent thing. That would be ‘trade dress’ and would be copyright law, not patent infringement. So separate issue, but related for sure. Samsung copied both.
But Samsung purposely went out to make their stuff look as much like the Apple stuff as possible. It wasn’t ‘natural evolution of design’ and that’s what Apple proved in court. If you’ve been following the case, you’d see stuff like their internal memos, where they explicitly tried to make their stuff look like Apple’s. They did willfully copy Apple.
Ok two points:
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Samsung’s OWN INTERNAL DOCUMENTS show that they knew and aimed at confusing their customers. The reason all those Samsung products kept being returned to Best Buy? Consumers thought they were buying Apple stuff, then returned them when they found out they weren’t. That’s not Apple spin, or bullshit, that’s Samsung’s own internal documents, which were presented in court. They set out to confuse their customers.
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All cars have a steering wheel and 4 tires, etc. Yes, that’s evolution. But you can’t just take a Ford Focus, copy it exactly, including the shape, colour, etc. That’s blatantly ripping them off. That’s what’s happened here. Samsung copied Apple, purposely. They tried to make their stuff look as much like Apples as possible.
Car designs are protected by the ‘trade dress’ stuff. For example, here’s a court case where Ferrari sued a company that was making cars that looked an awful lot like Ferraris:
law.justia.com/cases/federal/app … 235/34859/
There are many such cases, and that’s why car manufacturers will copy each other’s features, but never try and copy each other’s designs.
The Guardian has a nice step-by-step of the Apple - Samsung decision, including patents versus trade dress, etc:
guardian.co.uk/technology/20 … nt-dispute
This is not evolution this is ripping off:
Who cares if USB connectors existed before Apple created this one? The point is that Samsung copied this one.
What innovation? Copying is innovation? If Samsung comes up with something original, then great, no problem. They even have the right to protect it. That’s not what’s happened here. Apple came up with the original, and Samsung copied it. Outright. Sometimes right down to copying where the icons were, and what they looked like. That’s not innovation.
If you ask me, allowing a corporation to blatantly copy stuff (and make profits, and take away business by copying) then you’re the one that’s stifling innovation. Why spend millions of dollars and time and energy developing a product when you know that a large corporation can just go ahead and make a blatant copy of it? Did you see the number of iPhone prototypes? Did you read the amount of development it took? Almost 5 years of sweating the details, and then Samsung just comes along and copies it.
That’s what the jury found:
Their internal e-mails show that they purposely wanted to copy the Apple stuff.
What phones looked like before and after iPhone:
Lots of 'em ‘inspired’ by the iPhone for sure. But only Samsung went out of its way to try and be as much like the iPhone as possible, while the rest tried to differentiate their products and ‘innovate’.
Here’s a Samsung store, with Apple icons.
Here’s a Samsung ad, from their store, and from online and TV ads. Showing an iPhone screenshot inside the Samsung phone.
See the pattern? Samsung wasn’t innovating anything, they were trying their absolute best to copy Apple’s stuff. Because they know that people will confuse the two.
[quote]
From what I have seen thus far google’s suits have been either retaliatory or defensive but if I’m wrong I’ll have to take a hard look at where I spend my $$ for my next phone. Google certainly is no saint but so far they’ve kept above the rest. [/quote]
Which is why they bought Motorola – for their patents. Google’s recently launched a bunch of suits based on those patents. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Google’s recent lawsuits.
[quote]
I know you love your apple stuff and I agree they do make some decent hardware/software but this kind of behaviour is unacceptable in my opinion. It’s not just apple that I hate I have an equal dislike for oracle, microsoft and sco.[/quote]
Microsoft’s Metro UI (I know, it’s not called that anymore) is a perfect example of innovation, by the way. They didn’t copy Apple. They made their own stuff.
If you come up with something unique, should somebody have the right to just copy it, blatantly?
Arguing with you is hopeless 
so this will be my last post on the subject and no I won’t concede to you being right. The design of the galaxy is definitely a natural progression from this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGH-F700
gsmarena.com/samsung_f700-1849.php
Samsungs “design” (aka bullshit) patent for this phone was introduced before the iphone was announced and they look quite similar. Unless samsung was involved in corporate espionage I doubt they were copying the iphone when they designed it before the iphone was announced. My understanding is LG had a similar looking phone around the same time as well.
So when you look at the whole picture yes they copied elements of the iphone/ipad design but they were clearly headed down the same path as apple at roughly the same time. I’m glad I don’t live in the US thats all I can say about this judgement.
Honestly, I was going to buy an iphone but decided on the s2x because of the hardware spec’s and frankly i’m quite glad I did. My next phone however will be a Motorola (pending any nonsense by them) because their antenna’s are generally far superior to other devices and I need all the reception I can get.
My milestone was probably one of the best phone’s I’ve ever owned in terms of reception so hopefully google doesn’t fuck that up when their takeover is complete.
Um, Samsung admitted in their internal e-mails that they wanted it copied. Not evolution when you use the other guy’s design straight up, including their icons, etc.
You can’t seriously believe that they came up with that USB connector “by evolution” can you? Do you really believe that? It’s exactly the same as Apple’s connector (from 2001!).
And how did “evolution” cause them to put iPhone screenshots in their ads?
How did “evolution” cause them to copy Apple’s icons and even their placement on their screen?
You’re not being honest with yourself if you think this isn’t blatant copying:
Seriously, you don’t think that’s copying? That’s “evolution”?
Irony is everyone in 2007 making fun of the iPhone for not having a keyboard, or buttons. Remember those days? Even here on HTMF, let’s dig up those threads. Now in hindsight, people want to claim that the design of the iPhone was “obvious” and everyone else was doing the same thing? Bullshit.
Also, I thought you had read about Google and Motorola. Why do you think Google bought them? To use their patents!
Google Files New Patent Lawsuit Against Apple, Seeks To Block iPhone, iPad & Mac Imports To U.S.
A bit hypocritical to bash Apple for defending its design being ripped off, then insist that you’re going to buy a Motorola phone.