Apple, Samsung blast away in patent case closing arguments They're done. Apple and Samsung have each given their closing arguments in the epic patent trial over whether the South Korean mobile maker infringed on Cupertino's iPhone patents. For the nine members of the jury, however, the next phase of the ordeal has only just begun. Weighing the three weeks of testimony to decide …
Apple attorney Bill Lee – he who does not smoke crack – next took the floor to rebut Samsung's claims. According to Lee, the question was not whether Samsung infringed Apple's patents
So he doesn't smoke crack and he doesn't himself think Samsung didn't infringe. Why sue then :)
You need some legal grounds to get compensation of billions. "jail-free-card" is not a legal term and the case is not criminal to talk about 'jail' - the wording is just dumb and I'd be insulted if I were in the jury.
If there were no infringed patents all Apple does is inane bullying.
I still don't see the answer. Get out of jail free, what does that mean?
It took Apple five years to think of rounded rectangles? Samsung were in the smartphone market for years before johnny-come-lately Apple, the idea that this is now spun as Samsung coming later is ludicrous. But with the widespread myth of "Apple invented smartphones" (even though the first Iphone was a dumb phone - couldn't do apps), I worry how this trial will go. Selecting from a grid of icons is how phones (and computers in general) have done things for years, even bog standard feature phones from 2004 or so.
Even if it was the case that Samsung had intentionally tried to make it look like Apple's device (for which the evidence seems non-existent, both in how they don't look similar other than what you would expect for phones, and given the evidence that they were working on such designs earlier, and that other companies had already produced similar phones before Apple), their argument is still ludicrous - it suggests that that's the only hard thing about making a smartphone. As if Apple spent 5 years deciding about rounded rectangles, and drawing icons, and all Samsung had to do was copy that, and hey presto, you have a smartphone (or dumb phone, if you're copying Apple's). All the hard work in developing the phone hardware, and marketing it to people, which was done by companies like Samsung years earlier, for Apple to take advantage of, is apparently irrelevant. I myself just made myself an original Iphone copy in my spare time, all I had to do was copy it!
The lawyers are walking RDF machines.
Pains me to say it but I really think Samsung really went to far in copying Apple. At one point they were so blasé I almost thought they were on drugs, even their advertising was all about Apple. What were they thinking?
Hope the outcome will give some breathing space to really creative companies like Sony who have struggled to get into the market, even if they have much nicer and original designs than anyone else. Plus they already make the best cameras for all the top phones!!
I was very happy to see the latest news about Somy collaborating with Google to bring AOSP to their phones. Samsung doesn't care about AOSP, they put the best stuff into their own flagship phone while Nexus gets the second choice. Fingers crosses this will change things for the better.
A curse on both their houses. Apple for iTunes and other control freakery in their overpriced hardware . Samsung for their unsavoury corporate history and (I gather) for messing with Android on their phones.
Sony seem to have learned the lesson of their rootkit PR disaster. Their MP3 players are DRM free -- and drag and drop, so infinitely preferable to iPods.
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'The dash implies a new thought.'
When I learnt English, my teachers taught that the full stop punctuation indicated a new thought.
The 'and' at the beginning of your dashed phrase also appears to refer to a continuation of your list of preferred features of Sony following DRM-free. (Note the correct use of a dash there.)
Perhaps my teachers failed me.
'The dash implies a new thought.'
When I learnt English, my teachers taught that the full stop punctuation indicated a new thought.
Neither statement is correct.
A punctuation mark in English is a signifier in a natural language. Like all such, it is ambiguous and contextual, and may indicate many things - including different things to different readers. To believe that any mark of punctuation in a natural language indicates one thing and one thing only is to operate under a terribly naive understanding of language. (It's what I sometimes call "handbook writing" - following a bunch of simplistic rules, of the sort that appear in writing handbooks, which do not accurately describe the problem domain nor provide good advice for achieving acceptable results.)
More specifically, in this case: even under the most broadly accepted principles of preferred usage and grammatical interpretation in modern English, both the "full stop" or "period" mark and the dash may be used to delimit independent clauses. Typically, adjacent independent clauses in the same paragraph are assumed to represent a continuation of the same line of thought, but to express a different independent statement in that line. However, the dash may also be used to delimit dependent clauses which modify a nearby independent clause (and so probably not a "new thought", though that's not a term of art in English grammar), and all of these principles may yield to style, which often deviates from canonical form for effect.
2009, years after mp3 players became mainstream - so that's pretty late. But glad to see it's no longer there.
The problem is that even without DRM, it's a pain to transfer stuff. Trying to play stuff from an Ipod on another computer just results in seeing the garbage scrambled filenames. On my Sansa, this just works. Even if we tried installing Itunes, we were unsure if this would result in the Ipod "syncing" with the new machine, and generally messing things up. I'm glad that my Galaxy Nexus (and my earlier Nokia 5800) also work in a sensible way, allowing drag and drop, and not scrambling the filenames to its own format.
The iPod has played DRM-free MP3 files since the very first model. iTunes has always managed these files just fine, ripping them from CDs nicely. The only DRM in iTunes was in songs bought through the online store, at the insistence of the record labels, and the terms of this DRM were more liberal than those of competitors. In 2009, Apple was the first major company to drop DRM from its online music store.
"Hope the outcome will give some breathing space to really creative companies like Sony"
You really think that will be the outcome if Apple win?
It's Android that has allowed lots of companies to make good smartphones without worrying about creating an entirely new platform. It's also Android that allows compatibility - so if you like Sony, why does it matter if their market share is small? Buy a Sony device and enjoy it - and because it's Android, you still get the software support as the largest platform. And if Sony give up on phones, you can still stick with the same platform, and easily transition all your software and data, when you move to a new Android phone from a different company.
A win for Apple is just a win for Apple, not Sony. Harm to Android makes it even harder for companies like Sony. It's thanks to Apple that we still have loads of companies only producing "apps" to access their websites and services for the minority of Apple phone users, and not the more popular platforms (Symbian, and now Android).
And if Apple succeed with trivial patents, why would they stop with Samsung? If Sony gain market share, they'll be just as much a target, especially if they use Android too. Nokia have probably only survived attention as they have plenty of real phone patents that could presumably destroy the Iphone if they pulled the plug on them.
I think that Samsungs main problem is that Apples ridiculous patents were not challenged much earlier, meaning that the average guy actually believes that Apple really did invent all this stuff.
Also Americans are pretty protective of their 'corporate icons' so some of the jury may see it as being almost patriotic to kick the Asians.
The US would go up in my estimation if Samsung win, but for the past decades my estimation has only ever been going down, so I can't see that changing.
Ipad = tablet computer, not invented by Apple
Iphone = smartphone, not invented by Apple
You have to look past the branding, yes Apple did produce the iphone and ipad, no one disagrees with that, but as far as they are concerned they invented the whole space, did they innovate and make desirable product, yes I think so, have they marketed them well, yes they have.
Thye have taken concepts already out there and made them to many better, that is what Apple does well. They however cannot expect there to not be similar products coming to market, thats how it works, anyone would think they were struggling to make money!
An exactly valid comparison since Apple aren't claiming to have invented the smart phone and tablet PC either. In case you hadn't noticed the trial was about copying cosmetic designs, packaging and certain technical patents. Non of that prevents others from designing phones or tablets, just like others can design vacuums.
if Dyson had sued Hoover or Electrolux for making devices that look like a vacuum cleaner - then it would be a valid comparison.
Besides, Apple effectively copied and improved on several features already on the market, and packaged them in one device. That is precisely what Samsung (and now several others have done). If Apple's case is valid, then every one from 2002 (Palm, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, LG et al) have an equally valid case against Apple for exactly the same nonsense.
Can I claim a design patent on the above paragraph? Nobody has put those words together in that order before.
Your original claim that it wasn't a valid comparison because Dyson hadn't claimed to invent the vacuum cleaner. When it was pointed out that Apple weren't making an equivalent claim you moved the goalposts.
Dyson didn't claim infringement on their design patents not because they didn't have them, but because Hoover didn't copy them.
The point of the trial is to determine if Apple's designs are protectable and infringed. Best let the jury, who have heard all the evidence, work that out.
Fair comment about the goalposts, I shouldn't have let myself get distracted.
Dyson products are striking and easily identifiable. Both their colour schemes, and geometry set them apart from other upright vacuums at the time.
Can you honestly say a flat black rectangle with rounded corners has a comparably level of "original design"
That's the over simplification that Samsung would have you believe. The patent office and the courts don't believe that the sum total of Apple's design is a flat black rectangle with rounded corners, and you certainly wouldn't need 8 drawings to show that. The Galaxy Tab 10.1N is also a flat black rectangle with rounded corners, just like the 10.1, but it is considered not to infringe while the 10.1 does.
As an aside, I'm amused when people talk about the Iphone "being invented" or being an "invention" - as if comparable to say the invention of the smartphone, or another generic product. Also it conjures up the image of Steve Jobs sitting around in his garage, then suddenly having an "Aha!" moment, as he hammers out an Iphone - as opposed to phones being the culmination of large amounts of different research and technologies.
It's late (and my Friday), so I'm not completely sure if I'm reading this right, but on question 29 posed to the jury, it appears that the iPhone and iPad are listed as Samsung products.
If they've got this wrong, I wonder whether it's a technicality that the losing side can use to appeal.
Yep. Some how it took a company making phones for a living (for how many decades?) only a couple of months to change their current gen phones into one a bit more stylish. The company that had never made a phone before took 5 years worth of planning.
I sure the jury would expect it to be the opposites, right? It is opposites day?
Indeed - though you'd expect the Apple lawyer to be biased, but I'm shocked by the Register's ignorance, which isn't part of Lee's quote:
"Lee said, referring to the smartphone market that began with the iPhone launch.
Um, right. Leaving aside that the first Iphone wasn't a smartphone (couldn't run apps) - the smartphone market existed years before. It's bigger now, but there's been continual growth before and after Apple, and if you look at sales, the main contribution of the market was coming from Symbian and Android. When the Iphone was released, Nokia were selling tens of millions of smartphones a year, whilst the Iphone's share was tiny - is that market meant to have sprung out of nothing mid-2007? Not to mention BlackBerry, and even Windows Mobile was selling more than Apple. When the market grew, most of this growth was due to the introduction of Android, with Apple playing no significant part above anyone else.
Then there's the point that smartphone is a marketing term, with no objective difference to feature phone. By 2004, even bog standard phones were doing Internet and apps. This was mainstream - in 2004.
Unless this is sarcasm on the Register's part - it's hard to tell when it comes to Apple.
>"Lee said, referring to the smartphone market that began with the iPhone launch.
>Um, right. Leaving aside that the first Iphone wasn't a smartphone (couldn't run apps) - the smartphone market >existed years before. It's bigger now, but there's been continual growth before and after Apple, and if you look at >sales, the main contribution of the market was coming from Symbian and Android.
I think what he means is the market that may have been kick-started by the launch of the iPhone (much like the tablet market was tiny before the launch of the iPad). At the very least, I think you'll find that none of the contribution to that market was coming from Android as the first handset (the G1/HTC Dream) didn't launch until the end of October 2008.
In fact, the iPhone itself has never had that much of a market share, but I think it's difficult to argue that the coverage of the device hasn't had an overall effect in awareness of smartphones and probably resulted in the market moving from corporate-only to mainstream.
In case you care, these figures are from Gartner:
Worldwide sales:
2006 - 80 million
2007 - 122 million (3 million iPhones)
2008 - 139 million (11 million iPhones)
2009 - 173 million (25 million iPhones)
2010 - 597 million (46 million iPhones)
2011 - 1,775 million (you get the picture)
Not forgetting that the original iPhone didn't go on sale until June 2007, was only available on one carrier in one country, it's hardly surprising the sales were relatively low. That said, you can see the total market pretty much double in size over that 18 months to the end of 2008.
You can argue that this may have been inevitable, but as we don't have a control-planet where the iPhone never went on sale to compare with, both arguments (that it did or didn't have an effect) are valid.
Anecdotally, I was the only person in my group of friends/family/colleagues who had a smartphone prior to 2007. By the end of 2008 almost everyone was asking me if the iPhone was any good and if they should get one (how the F. would I know, I don't have one). By the end of 2009 almost all of those people had a smartphone of some kind (not all iPhones). So from a personal perspective, I'd be quite comfortable saying that on balance, I think it kick-started the consumer market and yes, Android has made it the size it is today.
If the iPhone "shocked the world" then the world is easily shocked. If anyone is really shocked by a rectangular piece of metal and plastic which shows magic pictures and talks, then they either just emerged from a life in the jungle without any other human contact or they have the mind of an imbecile.
And it's worth noting that Iphones only became used by a mainstream level of people with the 4S, by which time all those lacking features were added. People therefore were right to criticise the flaws in the original Iphone.
Saying that RIM changed their phones in response to Apple, is no more relevant than how Apple change their phones to add features from other competitors too.
...did you not use phones before the iPhone or something?
The closest thing there was was the HTC TyTN in 2006 (which Samsung copied to make the F700) which had a horrible touch screen (non-capacitive) and a slide-out keyboard which made the thing really thick and weighty and running the extremely clunky Windows Mobile with Microsoft's ActiveSync. (I still have one in a drawer). It was certainly a chick-repellant. In this market, Blackberry cleaned up by providing more svelte devices with push email as they realised that the killer app was instant messaging and practically cornered that market - a classic case of function over form. Blackberry supplied their own servers which integrated with Exchange Server (reportedly horrible to set up and maintain - I never had the pleasure) just to provide this service.
Let's get this straight - using something like a TyTN screamed 'NEEEERRRRDDDDD' and was NOT 'cool' or trendy at all. Apple released the iPhone and suddenly there was a smart phone that normal people wanted to actually use, because it worked, it was easy to use and it looked cool.
If you want proof of success simply look at the share price of RIM and Apple. Apple make more from the iPhone than Microsoft would cost to buy
It doesn't matter how much you or anyone else tries to rubbish the iPhone, these are facts. It DID change how the world looks at phones.
Yes the iphone was and is a huge success and caused a big change in the market but
not because of patentable design or technical innovations.
This was a marketing success.
Apple took a hugely successful and fashionable product with an existing fan base (the ipod) and added the ability to make phone calls.
Lots of existing phones already played music but it turns out that people would rather buy a really good music player with a crap phone function than a good phone with a crap music function. Sure it had to look nice but I doubt the success was just because it had rounded corners.
Good and insightful reading of the market that everyone else has tried to copy but not patentable.
"Yes the iphone was and is a huge success and caused a big change in the market"
You're still being too kind :) The original Iphone didn't sell much (about the same as just one single Nokia product, the 5800). Over the years, the platform has been a succees but we could say the same Symbian or Android - or of most products made by multinational companies.
I'm still waiting to see this change in the market :) Most things in phones today were introduced by other companies. Yes, we can credit Apple for being first with multitouch for example - I can credit other companies for lots of other things (apps, Internet, 3G, cameras, Wifi, GPS, mapping, etc etc).
Historical sales at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures - some people may be suprised by the facts.
The TyTN was not the cloest to the iPhone - The HTC Artemis was (Also branded as XDA Orbit) - this was the keyboardless version, had a few buttons at the bottom (not just one) and was mostly controlled by the touch screen (i still have mine in a draw) it was also launched in November 2006 BEFORE the iPhone in January 2007?...
it had all of the features of the iPhone and more and was pretty easy to use. The only improvement that the iPhone made was to have the screen flush with the surround to make it easier to touch the very corners of the screen - this improvement is probably nothing to do with Apple though as it was a change in manufacturing processes that allowed it - they just picked a newer design screen.
But didn't the iPhone come with one thing that none of the others didn't have - an app store?
All of a sudden here was a smartphone, like Fitz says, above was easy to use (an iPod with a phone in it), and regular Joe Public wanted to use. And they could add their own music and apps to it - easily.
Your wrong, there was no app store when the iPhone was released, it took a years (or was it two?) until the iPhone had an App Store and apps...
The other phones had a fairly large online community and sites full of programs available, for Symbian or WinMobile...
Hence I brought a Windows Mobile phone... IMHO, the iPhone always plays catchup with features, then buys out the competition to make it an apple product, i.e. with Siri, but it markets it well...
The original iPhone had two things going for it, firstly it had a really excellent web browser, one that would work with normal web sites, rather than the cut-down WAP rubbish the mobile operators were trying to foist on the world. The original idea was that all apps would be web apps and there would be no need for a central store to sell them (devs screamed hard for binary local apps and the rest is history).
The other thing that Apple managed was to strong-arm the cell companies to provide unlimited data rather than charging silly money per megabyte. This encouraged people to actually use it rather than worrying about charges.
About that time I had an LG Viewty. On paper it was a match or better than the iPhone (it was 3G while the iPhone was only 2G EDGE for example). The software was however rubbish, and its the smoothness and polish of Apple software which built Apple's following.
You are right - the iPhone drove cheaper data tariffs - I remember people like O2 were charging an arm-and-a-leg for data at the time - now most smartphone contracts come with 500Mb-1Gb per month as standard (something that would have cost far, far more before).
If none of the others didn't have an app store, then they all did. But I know what you mean.
Still, the only important thing the iPhone came with that the others did not have was a guy telling people it was cool and exciting. All the other manufacturers went with a guy telling people their phones were good.
The original iPhone had no App Store, or applications for that matter, until mid-08, when iPhone 3G with iOS 2.0 and AppStore was released and the original iPhone received iOS 2.0 update. At that time I and, I believe many other people, didn't believe it will be that successful.
And ease of use - my aunt, whom you may consider a typical "Jane Public" sold her iPhone 3G a week after she bought it. Main reasons? "1. Nothing can be done without connecting to the bloody iTunes first! 2. It can't send and receive MMS!" (to which I replied: <<Impossible!>> Even the cheapest phones could at least receive MMS messages) She bought a non-smart Nokia 6030 and was so happy with it, that she still keeps it in her drawer "Just in case..."
I've never understood this fetish for MMS. What's wrong with sending photos or videos via email, where you don't get charged extra by your cell company.
As for iTunes, pre iOS 5 you had to connect it once to activate (that you could do at the store) and once for each version upgrade (again which you could do at the store). As of iOS 5 you need never touch it.
Actually there was no App Store at the beginning - I was highly critical of Apple when Jobs stated there would not be any third party apps and no SDK, and that anything would have to use HTML5 running in Safari. I avoided the iPhone due to this and lack of 3G, and predicted a U-turn on the app front. (I do recall having a massive argument with some idiot on Digg (remember that?) back in the day - this was back in the days when the know-nothing mentally defective Apple fanboys really were in abundance (something which tarnished Apple's image no end) - I was right of course - and Apple did a U-turn and released the App Store, and they proceeded to make billions from it.)
One other thing the iPhone did which is worth noting was making a phone that ACTUALLY WORKED with WiFi - ever try setting up Windows Mobile with WiFi? Should a regular member of the public really need to consult with an expert for this simple thing?
No, that only came with the Iphone 3G - the first one couldn't even *run* apps(!). And yes sure, you've picked one thing that Apple introduced. No one is saying that Apple introduced nothing. The issue is the claim that they revolutionised everything, or that this is more than what any other company did. Lots of companies did various things first with phones.
Other phones could easily install apps from a link, btw. In some cases, the Apple method is harder, since you can only install via their store. So I'm at a website, on any other platform I just click the link to download and install their app automatically. With Apple, you had to click a link, which then goes to the Apple app store, and then install it. So no, it's not always easier. It's easier if you want to browse for some apps, but not for everything. The better model is to allow both installing from any website, as well as having a central repository - which you get with Android, Symbian, etc, but still not with Apple. Also consider that it's nice to have different websites to browse software - e.g., with Android there's F-Droid to browse specifically for open source software. How can I do the same on Apple?
Ther real difference is that previous smartphone (see Treos from Handspring/Palm, the were available since 2002, well before Blackberrys and whatever else) were aimed at those already using PDAs, mostly professional users, not consumer ones. Apple found from the iPod success it could turn it into a smartphone to consumers and convince them it was cool just because it was from Apple, not nerdy, and they could play games on them, and it has a lot of candy-like icons on the screen!
I always laugh when people show me they can do now things I've been doing since 2002....
Apple did completely revolutionise the smart phone market - sure there were smart phones but they were nothing like the iPhone. Now almost everyone wants or has a full screen smartphone (often very similar to the iPhone) and I do not believe they would have had otherwise. So yes it was a very significant revolution not just a minor evolution.
In the same way we had tablet computers before the iPad - but frankly they were cr@p - basically laptops with a touchscreen, clunky, poor battery, poor control, heavy - oh now look what we have - iPads (and their many copies) - thin, light, great screens, instant on, flash memory and a really nice, easy to use OS plus a huge 'app' store for free / cheap apps.
Other people have already pointed out that your first paragraph isn't true at all.
As for tablets - the Ipad is not a tablet _computer_. "Tablet" has been used for two kinds of devices: full PCs with touchscreens (which have been bulky, as you described), and handheld Internet/app devices. The Ipad is of the latter kind. But these have also been around and mainstream for years - most notably smartphones, but also other devices. It was just that these were often called PDAs or media players or PMPs, rather than tablets (except in a few cases, e.g., Nokia's Internet Tablets). There was nothing new with the Ipad, except making it less small (which is the easy bit - it's making things smaller in technology that's harder).
The lines between phone-like devices and full PCs is being increasingly blurred of course, but that's a natural evolutionary change that's been happening anyway.
It looks like we will soon have light handheld devices that are full blown PCs, but this will be thanks to Windows 8.
"had a horrible touch screen (non-capacitive)"
There's nothing wrong with resistive - each has advantages and disadvantages. I hate how I can only use capacitive with direct finger, which is a pain when eating, or wearing gloves.
Yes, you can pick one rubbish phone before the Iphone, but so what? For every criticism you can pick in other phones in 2007, we can make several in the Iphone (e.g., no apps, no 3G, no copy/paste, no multitasking). All phones were bad back then.
I could just as well say that phones were awful before the Nokia 5800, and count the original Iphone as a poor phone too. Or that all phones were awful before the Galaxy S2. It's called progress - all phones get better with time.
"Apple released the iPhone and suddenly there was a smart phone that normal people wanted to actually use"
Utterly false - look up the smartphone sales, and you'll see that far larger numbers of people were using Symbian smartphones and so on. The Iphone was not "cool" - except to Apple users who thought it made them look that way. Also the original Iphone wasn't a smartphone. Smartphone is a marketing term - by 2004, even bog standard phones did Internet and apps, they were just marketed as "feature" phones instead. Using phones with Internet and apps was mainstream and "cool", even by 2004.
"If you want proof of success simply look at the share price of RIM and Apple. Apple make more from the iPhone than Microsoft would cost to buy"
What about Samsung?
Who cares about share prices - I'm a consumer, not a shareholder. Apple has never been number one in sales, either by company (it was Nokia, now Samsung) or platform (it was Symbian, now Android).
"It doesn't matter how much you or anyone else tries to rubbish the iPhone, these are facts. It DID change how the world looks at phones."
Sorry, that's an opinion, not a fact. And I could make the same claim about any phone platform. There are vast numbers of features that are standard in today's phones, and most of them weren't introduced by Apple.
Apple are like the kid who comes third in the egg and spoon race - the parents heap praise onto him, even though from an objective point of view, it's nothing special, and we should be better praising the one who came first.
Yep. I'm certain I picked up a similar LG phone at the time INSTEAD of an Iphone. The LG had better hardware and features. I'll admit it's software was not as good and was slower, but that's one of the choices I made to get better pictures and other features. Oh, it had a bezel and rounded corners too. It shocked me people took the lower spec iPhone. ;)
Just they were toys for children, and not for adults, and had no apps.
Meanwhile Handspring/Palm, if they were still alive could tell something about who actually invented the smartphone and apps... I've been using a smartphone and apps since 2002, far before Apple turned its MP3 player into a phone.
You pretty much described the average Iphone fan. I remember in 2007 - all the people raving about Apple were people whose only experience with mobile phones were 10 year old dumb phones that they had. So this was all new to them. I remember discussions with people who were convinced that all other mobile phones could only access the Internet through WAP, for example...
We see this again with the Ipads. I've seen several people now say how the Ipad was the first device that allowed people to use the Internet in bed, convinced that computers are still only large desktop machines, and laptops and netbooks don't exist (smartphones are conveniently forgotten - indeed, it's interesting that people will happily forget Apple's own earlier phones and laptops, in order to credit them with yet another "first". Similarly, Apple's own Ipod Touch counts as an earlier tablet, but they'll conveniently forget that, so they can credit Apple twice, with "first" mp3 player *and* "first" tablet).
I was thinking this specifically about cars, quoting Top Gear when they reviewed a Mercedes a few years ago that had a HUD and Radar/laser guided cruise control Clarkson said you can expect to see this on other cars in the future.
If Mercedes were Apple would all the nice technology things, the stuff I like on cars, even ABS perhaps be so patented every other car manufacturer couldn't make anything like it?
According to (Apple attorney Bill Lee, the question was not whether Samsung infringed Apple's patents, but "whether they get a get-out-of-jail-free card."
So this patent infringement trial ISN'T about whether patents were infringed? WTF?
For instance Dyson, when they first came out with their cyclon tech it was new and non obvious so a patent should be issued.
As for design patents then people keep on that cars have 4 wheels etc but when a company come out with something like the ABS they should be able to patent the method they use.
However a phone can only be designed in certain ways, firstly you need to be able to hold it to your ear or in your hand in a way that you are not likely to drop it. A screen is always either square or rectangular with or without a keypad. The shape or the phone is restricted by these 2 things alone as being rectangular. Add to that the fact that rounded corners are obvious as they are less likely to catch when putting into a pocket etc, even the first ipod had rounded corners for this reason and I don't remember any case from Apple going to court over others producing an mp3 player with rounded corners.
The iphone is an ipos touch with built in phone, the ipad is the ipod touch made much bigger.
OK we can applaud Apple that the iphone was a great product for what it was if you were willing to pay for it and it forced others to look again at what they were producing and to improve their kit. The ipad was a game changer in that it caused the acceptance that tablets had a place in peoples lives and was for the time an amazing bit of kit for the price, most people had been predicting a price tag of around $1000 not the price that it came out at.
However there is nothing new or amazing on the design side about either of these products, add phone facility or make it much bigger than the ipod touch which they are based on is not patentable.....
WTF do you expect - let's see they could fit a 3D holographic screen / projector and you would say yeah R2D2 did that on Star Wars. It's a phone - rather than 'just another phone' they did about 10 years of other manufacturers evolution in one jump - thin, responsive, great screen, fast. You have to remember at that time about the best thing you could buy was a TyTN and in comparison it was pretty crappy and more than twice the thickness.
How many phones use a stylus now - how quaint? It's so blindingly obvious Samsung just copied the design of both the iPhone and the iPad - before their recent smart phones who wanted a Samsung phone - almost no-one - people were buying 'other' smartphones, Nokias and Motorola phones. Samsung were mostly cheap, clunky phones.
How on earth would making it thinner be patentable?
The irony is a significant portion of the tech that made Apples “revolution” possible was designed and constructed by Samsung and others that Apple are now slinging law suits at for also using the tech and making thinner phones.
All you fanbois that claim Apple invented the smart phone, or revolutionised the world, or claim no one wanted a Samsung phone before this are clearly just full of shit!
I bought a Samsung E900 from an Orange store in the UK back in 2007, just before I went back to live in New Zealand for the second time around. It had a partial touch screen, with a slide out keyboard, apps, an online app store, could do everything all other phones had been able to do up to that point (MMS, Email, etc.). When the iPhone came out, I was living in NZ, one of my colleagues camped out all night to get it, only to be disappointed that it didn't even do half the stuff my £90 Samsung did!
Prior to my E900 I had a Sony Ericson something-or-other. I can't remember the model number and it got broken in a house move and thrown away, but it was blue, had a full touch screen, it ran Symbian, with apps galore and was not even the top of the range phone available at the time, nor was it the first 'smart' phone, but we're talking 2005/2006 here, LONG before the stupid iPhone came out.
I've avoided iPhones like the plague from minute one. My colleagues have them, some of my friends have them etc. Every time I use one I just feel superior, because my phone (Currently Samsung Galaxy SIII, previously SII and prior to that an S) does more, feels better in my hand and looks better than theirs does! I wouldn't have an iDevice if you paid me!
Do I accept that Apple brought out the first, full touch 'smart' phone? No, I f***ing don't! Do I think they marketed their device so well that a bunch of people think they invented the concept? Yes, because that's what apple does! My best mate is a chef, he owns a restaurant in South London, knows very little about tech, but has both an iPhone and an iPad, he asked me what it was I 'do' again the other week, when I replied that I work in cloud, he asked me 'Oh you mean that thing Apple made?!'.
They are exceptionally good at convincing people they invented things that in reality they stole the technology to make and then ploughed tonnes of marketing funds behind! They did it with the original GUI for Personal Computing, they did it with the mouse, they did it with OSX, iOS, etc, etc, etc! Most people think they actually created the first MP3 player too! Apple has never really innovated ANYTHING! It builds on existing tech and then markets it as it's own creation, I dare you to provide me with one example of an Apple 'Invention' where the tech didn't already exist!
But completely wrong. We KNOW that Samsung was selling phones quite successfully pre 2007 and have no problems with that. They still make a whole range of phones that aren't covered by this suit. There are some issues with them adopting Android, but Google seem to be engineering those out. The big problem is that Samsung took Android, modified it to look more like iOS (the TouchWiz skin), changed their case designs to look more like the iPhone and changed their packaging to look more like Apple's.
It's those three factors in combination that caused Apple to sue.
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That's because Samsung's lawyers are absolute idiots that couldn't defend themselves out of a paper bag, and obviously didn't even know how to show prior art to ridicule Apple. Had they even shown a single old smartphone from 2004, or even a screenshot of a Star Trek episode, the judge would have immediately thrown out the case in favor of Samsung.
*OR*
Perhaps the case is a bit more complex than what you are supposing, and the prior art that you suggest does not really defend the *actual* claims of the suit. Perhaps the evidence presented to the jury by both sides has more depth and nuance than what you have picked up from blogs or Twitter feeds. Perhaps the case has more merit than what nerd-rage fueled posters in a tech rag can conceive.
Just saying...
dZ.
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