Swiss railways ticked off at iOS clock knock-off As hipsters and tragics queue for new iPhones, Switzerland's railway operator, SBB, has complained that Cupertino copied its design for the clock display used in iOS6. Your rounded corners might not save you: SBB's railway clock (left) and Apple's iOS6 clock icon (right) While expressing "joy" that iOS6 uses what it …
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If you take a swiss clock from 50+ years back second hand is nearly always red and blobbed at the end. Even Omega used to do them this way.
These are the sole distinctive features - the rest is bog standard. So even if they had a trademark on it then, they have failed to defend it (as per trademark law) by chasing everyone and their dog in their _OWN_ country who did clocks to the same design.
So even if they had a trademark on it then, they have failed to defend it (as per trademark law) by chasing everyone and their dog in their _OWN_ country who did clocks to the same design.
Is that how Swiss law works? Not having studied Swiss law, I have no idea. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if patent law worked the same way. That'd kill of a whole section of the patent trolls business model.
Looks like a lot of clocks I've seen was my initial thought.
But if SBB have the Trademark, I do hope they take Apple to court. Sause for the goose and all that. The Apple/Samsung lookylikey battle was stupid and this would highlight Apples ridiculous stance. (The Samsung looked like most other tablets I'd seen, and I'm writing this on my iPad so I'm not totally antiApple)
Similar but not the same... You mean like Samsung phones?
Apple did rather open this Pandora's box, so this story does make me smile. The rash of over litigious companies is not good for progress, with lawyers (and BMW dealerships) coming out on top.
Didn't God invent the Apple? Isn't it just about one of the first things like, ever!
I wonder when the Vatican is going to take legal action? I guess they've failed to enforce protection on the apple (or maybe they haven't ! )
OR, perhaps it was truly given to the Son
(Down vote in, 3,2,1...)
True. Two illustrations.
I was standing on the platform at Hardbrukke, on a frosty, foggy morning. The train was 45 seconds late and a chap started to have a panic attack. "Where is the train?"
I was in Chur, and as people were getting off they were being given leaflets. The train had been 1 minute late 3 days running, and this was the explanation.
I love the way the second hand *doesn't* move continuously. Or at least, it does move continuously for fifty-eight and a half seconds, then it *stops*, and clicks up to the twelve o'clock position as the minute hand moves from one minute to another. If I had found a replica that duplicated that feature when I was in Switzerland, I'd have got it. As others have noted, you can buy souvenir SBB clocks all over the place, but they're usually just a cheap (by Swiss standards) movement with a ticking second hand.
"I love the way the second hand *doesn't* move continuously."
Always been told the reason for this is that all the railway clocks were kept in sync by sending a sync pulse every minute ... so second hand mechanism was designed to be slightly fast to get to 59 secs and then wait for the sync pulse which marked the start of the next minute. That way all the clocks showed identical time apart from a possible very sligt variation in the second hand.
I wonder if the Apple one ticks? The other feature of SBB clocks is that the second hand takes about 59 seconds to do the sweep, then it stops, and the whole thing kicks off again with a pulse exactly on the minute. Has anyone been on a Swiss railway station in the early hours in March or October to see how they do the summer time adjustment?
I thought about buying a Swiss-style clock once but they are horrendously expensive for what you get.
But did the Swiss think of filing for copyright *in the US* ?
Because , you know....
Other than that, I think yuo'll find that tons of station, bus stop, and wall clocks have a face like that, there's only so much you can do with a white background, black indicator stripes in a circle, and numerals.
Unless you're willing to argue about tenths of millimeters and next-to-indistinguishable numeral fonts.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_agreements
And given that Apple seem to spend so much time suing other people over the general appearance of iThings, I suspect they'll find it hard to now argue that its not relevent in this case. What goes around, comes around.
"'See, we didn't copy Google Maps'"
Well, that much is true. They lifted mapping data off OSM[1]. Not that they bothered to acknowledge that much[2], but in a way it's a good thing they didn't, seeing how they have managed to mangle[3] the (old) data they used.
[1] http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/03/08/welcome-apple/
[2] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/two-months-later-apple-acknowledges-use-of-openstreetmap-in-iphoto/
[3] https://alastaira.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/apple-maps-aka-apple-are-thieving-bastards/
I was told as a kid that "hoist your own petard" meant something along the lines of "you can carry your own bloody bomb to the castle walls sunshine. You made it, you plant it!" - similar to "you made your own bed, you lie in it." It seems to be a similar but slightly different interpretation.
Interesting, I have never heard the phrase ""hoist your own petard" before.
Often I hear "hoist on your own petard" which is, I think, where the confusion most people have regarding this phrase comes from. Basically they don't know what a petard is and assume it is something akin to a pike, or a spear and are visualising somebody being lifted up on the end of it.
That is the only other variant I am familiar with.
The context for both of these usages (the correct and incorrect one) is the same however. I is always in my experience used to describe a situation where an agressor has damaged themselves with their own weapon.
I've never heard it in the context of "carrying your own weapon" though.
A petard is a small bomb used to blow open castle walls and gates.
"hoist by your own petard" can be translated as, "blown upwards by your own bomb", and being "really quick" (to get away) is normally something you would require to avoid enduring such a humiliating situation.
Sticky Jumper?
I would think Canary Wharf bought the right to use that design, or even the clocks themselves, from SBB, the same way anyone can buy an SBB-styled watch.
The complaint here is that Apple ripped off a trademarked design without permission. Trademarks begging what they are, SBB is obligated to defend it and ask for compensation.
According to Apple, well over $1 billion would be fair...
For the Fandroids and hard of thinking, the point is that this design is very little different from many other clock faces (take a look at the face of a Rolex sometime). If Apple are infringing a trademark and SBB inform them then they have three options : 1) Apologise and change the icons (not hard), 2) come to a license agreement (this could be as little as simply acknowledging the trademark) or 3) fight it in court. There's no up side for Apple to use option 3.
What cost Samsung the money was going for option 3 over 7 patents and 28 devices. One design and 2 devices would cost Apple money if they lost, but nowhere near the $1bn amount. There is no advantage in continuing to use the icon in the face of legal opposition though. The cost of legal fees would far outstrip the cost of the redesign and the image used isn't key functionality.
Timmy, I'm not a judge but I can't really imagine the number makes that much of a difference since the all other design aspects are similar. Just slapping a number in there doesn't it make it sufficiently different.
Not sure why Apple hasn't done so but it's possible they didn't think they'd need it since they're not actually making clocks, only computer representations of them. I'm also not sure what kind of protection the SBB has on the clocks, the reports mention trademark but that has many specifics regarding fields of use.
Registered designs (aka design patents) are another option however those "only" last 25 years, so not a possibility in this case.
The issue at stake here is trademark. Not copyright, not patents. By using an image that is a registered trade mark, creates an association between where the image is used and the company that owns the trade mark.
Whilst I'm not a lawyer, the possible outcomes are:
1. Apple does not distribute iOS6 into any country which has this trademark registered / respected.
2. Apple changes the image used.
3. Apple wins at court based on that the images are significantly different.
4. Apple licenses its use, and brands its time keeping as provided by the swiss train company.
As switzerland is particularly agressive about trade marks, and passing off issues (fake designer goods do get siezed by customs in swizterland from people visiting the country, not just commercial imports), option 1 would make me nervous to take an apple product there.
The minute and hour hands on the Apple version are rectangular against SBB's trapezoidal. The Apple minute hand doesn't reach the tick marks, while the SBB one sweeps over the ticks. The blob on the end of the Apple clock is rectangular against round on the SBB clock.
Distinctions of this sort would be enough to identify font designs, so why not a clock?
What's special with the original design is that the second hand is running a little too fast and has to pause for a second at the top, symbolising a conductor's use of a signalling disc.
On the following page, click on "SBB Widgets" on the bottom and then "SBB Clock" there (Flash):
http://www.sbb.ch/en/leisure-holidays/allgemeine-informationen/wallpaper-en/sbb-uhr.html
Swiss railway clocks are *weird*. The second hand goes around until it reaches 12, but it seems to reach 12 too early, so it pauses - for 1 or 2 seconds - then the minute hand moves and the second hand starts off again. I'm imagining a Helvetica-wide pulse is sent to all the clocks in the country to say "now it's the next minute", so they all keep perfect time to minute accuracy.
Oddly the exact behaviour is reproduced on the digital clock images in the on-screen passenger information display. I guess the Swiss are used to it.
Also oddly, the trains in Switzerland usually arrive exactly when they're supposed to. I can get used to the clocks but this scheduling behaviour is just freakish.
But... I don't think Apple's designers and managers are idiots. As with the "iPhone" trademark, I suspect they felt it would cost less to let SBB contact them if there was a trademark involved and set their price (although how you "trademark" a machine's user interface I've no idea; trademarks are usually static images).
I also can't help noticing a pattern emerging here. I wonder if SBB said "No," knowing full well that they'd get a ton of free publicity by doing so and demanding Apple pay them on their own terms. (And by "their own terms", I suspect they first had some meetings with Apple's people to decide what those terms would be.)
Whatever you may think of Apple, "incompetent" isn't a term you can apply to their management team. There's more to this than meets the eye.
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they might be in the process of renewing it, so the renewal won't show up yet.
if you look at the status it does say it's an ACTIVE trademark, so SBB might have a grace period to renew the mark
Status Active trademark
Trademark no. 512830
Filing date 03.09.2002
Expiry date 03.09.2012
Source of first publication SOGC no.145 to 31.07.2003
Application no. 07606/2002
Braun's ET22 calculator was (and I choose my words carefully) blatantly ripped off on the first iPhone OS - it was rapidly changed when they got a stiff telling off from das legaldepartment, but they still use a design closely based on it.
However, it's not all Apple stealing from others: I've got a leather writing set and a wooden magazine rack that TOTALLY rip off Apples unique design style.
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