Netherlands judge rules Samsung Galaxy S, S II violate Apple patents, bans sales
engadget.com
engadget.com
Samsung does not violate Apple patents, it just violates one patent.
And sales are not banned, they are just to be banned (in more than a month's time), if Samsung does not make changes.
But it made me click through, which is probably what all those inaccuracies had been introduced for.
Apple did not invent the patent system, nor did they bought that court decision.
I've always been pretty neutral towards Apple but I this is just appalling. Seemingly they cannot compete with Android in the normal way so they try the patent troll angle. I hope this backfires on them big time.
I don't want to live in Apple's locked-down walled garden.
NB: I'm typing this on a Mac. I really like the OS and the desktop/laptop systems, but since they've become the big mobile player, there's not a lot of progress in those fields and they're getting increasingly litigious. Time to install Arch on some spare machine again…
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...
Ah yes, it's overwhelmingly obvious that Apple is the underdog in the mobile phone space! They've never been able to compete on their own, and that's why they resort to such tactics.
Look, everyone is suing everyone in utterly ridiculous greed/patent-lawsuits: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/whos-suing-whom-i...
It's just the way the sad, sad game is played.
Take some of your anger and let your representatives know how sick the patent system is. Then do it again and again. We need to get the message to them!
EDIT: Yes, this case is Europe, but if America became more intelligent with patents, Europe, who already is more intelligent, would likely follow.
That doesn't make it acceptable. I'm tired of making excuses for Apple, personally. I like their products, but they've worn my goodwill towards their brand down to a nub by being one of the most ruthless and (in my opinion) unethical brandishers of patents worldwide.
There is no doubt Apple is in the middle of things and they are being extremely aggressive, and this particular suit seems over the top. However, I can't judge all of Apple's lawsuits with the current information I have. They are too prominent in the press and too little real information is being presented there.
Put another way, if we assume all the patents were valid (which is the lawyerly assumption) and companies really are infringing, is Apple wrong? If we were talking about people stealing the core of Mr. Fusion and putting out Mrs. Fusors, would Mr. Fusion be in the wrong to sue?
I would love nothing more than for all software patents to get dumped, but until that day comes, they are part of the rules of business. Apple could choose not to fight, but I don't think that would be keeping with fiduciary responsibility.
(Re-reading this, I realized it kind of turned into a stream of consciousness thing. Hopefully there is something to follow here).
Interesting to note at that point, Apple was being sued over twice as much as it was suing. Patents are so screwed up right now.
What I find annoying with the patent situation is the fact that people seem to think this is something new with Apple for example. If they would compare the situation with other businesses they would note that patent suits are really common. Just on design patents alone car companies make the computer industry look like a kiddy playbox. The major auto manufacturers seem to love suing for the most basic of similarities. Which might explain why almost all cars are universally ugly in some way. But I digress.
Apple sued Samsung & HTC first (although Samsung isn't shown on that diagram for some reason)
You should direct your anger at the source of the issue, software patents. Getting angry at companies doing what they need to in the current environment isn't very productive.
It has less to do with sales. The whole patent suit situation is systemic to the patent system. That and Apple tends to get into the news often it becomes "newsworthy" enough to report.
Oh? Not simply because they are one of the worst offenders?
How may patent law suits is Google engaged in right now that is instigated by Google?
Since when has "everyone else is doing it" been a good justification? I'm tired of this kind of lowest-common-denominator-thinking in business. I'm tired of this implicit assumption that the only rational purpose for companies is to maximize profit and minimize their competition.
Maybe that's unfair, ridiculous, or childish. I don't really know.
> You should direct your anger at the source of the issue, software patents.
I do. I've also sunk software patents. While working at Microsoft I worked hard to find prior art for every patent proposed from any work I touched.
> Getting angry at companies doing what they need to in the current environment isn't very productive.
What's unproductive is maintaining the status quo. Apple is using patents to tactically bludgeon their strongest competition, and raising the cost of innovation in the process. This translates into less innovation, less competition, and higher prices for consumers in the mobile space.
Samsung didn't sue Apple until Apple sued them. This kind of "everybody's doing it" thing doesn't quite wash. Google, for example, isn't playing this cheap game.
There is plenty of reason to be mad primarily at Apple.
Edit: according to the judgment summary the Galaxy Tab does not violate said patents.
[1] Dutch: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/76361/samsung-blijft-galaxy-s-ii-...
[2] Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...
EP 2,058,868 - method of scrolling / browsing gallery;
EP 2098948 - recording a "flag" in connection with multiple screen taps, of which Samsung would use the system by using Android 2.3 or later version;
EP 1,964,022 - method of "unlocking" of a portable device through the touch screen an "unlock image" in a way to drag.
Patenting phone unlock and how to browse through pictures is a douche move.
But they did invent the "Swipe to Unlock" interaction did they not?
Previous to that it was always a clunky button combination (Menu + * on the old Nokia handsets) and this is an elegant alternative.
Why can't other manufacturers come up with a new, novel unlock method like Apple did?
I know I'm swimming against the tide here, and actually I think there are huge problems with the patent system globally.
BUT - I find it a little strange that company A invents something, protects it, then company B does the exact same thing - knowing there's a patent.. should we be surprised that Apple are using that which the law allows them?
Yes. Your argument seems to be that we should expect companies to behave exactly as badly as the law can possibly let them do so and that they should receive no reproach for doing that. If you use this argument then you are implying that the law should enforce good behavior in every single thing every company does, since there is no other force to make them do good things (remember, you just argued that nobody should complain about what Apple does because it is legal).
Clearly the above is ridiculous and the whole premise of "free" societies is that people and companies are granted wide freedom to do things and the law only regulates the most severe of these and that people will motivate good behavior by each other and companies by shaming them and judging them and refusing to deal with them when they behave poorly.
So yes - when Apple behaves badly they need to feel judgement from the community and this is how it happens. The company does something bad (suing over a frivolous feature to block an entire competitor's product), and we express surprise and shock that it did such a bad thing.
For mine, I just have to rub my thumb along anywhere on the screen to open it, and I can choose a special pattern if I want (I really don't trust that one to work).
How else would you open a screen without buttons? By tapping on it in a pattern? Or by rubbing it in a pattern? Tap-rub-tap just to avoid a patent?
Do you remember how we unlocked phones before the iPhone? On Nokia phones it was Menu, * which was great but my mom never remembered to use it and was always pocket-calling me. I promise you that problem has not occurred since she got an iPhone. The first time I saw slide to unlock I was amazed, yes over such a small thing. And it's a great example of why I like Apple's products. They take the time to find good solutions to common, everyday problems.
Now everyone uses slide to unlock. I like competition as much as the next guy but it's hard to see how most of Apple's competition is not riding on their coattails with Android. We all know what Android was going to be prior to the iPhone's release, a BlackBerry wannabe.
Microsoft is notably not just copying Apple. HP/Palm also. Mostly just the Android OEMs who seem to wish Android were iOS.
This is a clear case of adding "...on a computer" like that was some great revolutionary advance. It isn't. It's the obvious translation of an existing concept.
Doesn't mean I like software patents, just saying.
Would you say, "Oh Amazon? Whatever they're not doing anything new. They're just selling shit except their store is on the web. Big deal, that's not innovative just because they're doing it on a computer."
My mom owned a Nokia slider back in the late 1900s, but the model preceding that one. If Nokia had kept making top-end phones like those were in their day I would probably still be buying Nokias. I swore by them. You could drop them, throw them, soak them, anything. Dry it out, take it apart, and it was fine. About 7-10 years ago, with a lot of their models, the worst case scenario was you bought a new case. And the UI was actually quite good, definitely superior to other phones of the time (that I tried anyway).
I had a Nokia phone from the late 1900s until 2008. The last Nokia product I bought is the n810 and it was not very good. I loved the idea but the execution was poor (and I got the 3rd version). I rarely used it and then never used it once I got an iPhone. The iPhone 3GS was a better browser than the Internet Tablet, better GPS (it's using other location data but I don't care, it's still better), and happened to also be my mp3 player and phone.
It's sad to see Nokia today, I really hope they can turn around but I have less hope for Nokia than I do for webOS :(
Because it didn't make any sense considering the technical constraints and the physical design. Smartphones before the iPhone had much smaller screens, usually resistive (requiring a stylus to operate properly) and had keyboards, which were much more practical for unlocking. Just look at the best smartphones of 2007: http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6452_7-6600061.html
>Would you say, "Oh Amazon? Whatever they're not doing anything new. They're just selling shit except their store is on the web. Big deal, that's not innovative just because they're doing it on a computer."
Basically, yes. Other people had the same idea, and there were other ecommerce websites launched before or at the same time. It was a matter of understanding sales - particularly mail order - and the Web, which wasn't exactly common.
Was it innovative? Yeah. Was it innovative enough to get a 20 years monopoly over it? No. Is Apple's slide to unlock innovative enough for that? Hell no.
Except as I pointed out that sort of thing just doesn't work for a lot of people. "Press this strange combination of keys in the right order and it unlocks" is not a usable solution for the masses. This was the status quo for at least 10 years, I remember the Menu * thing from 1998 and my last Nokia phone in 2008 had it.
Doing something in a different way than the way everyone else had done it for over 10 years prior is innovation. I'm not saying it warrants a patent and I never did say that. You say it's not innovative but it clearly is. As you pointed out the slide to unlock feature is trivial compared to the bigger change of using touch as the main input mechanism.
This is what innovation looks like, the iPhone changed the status quo: http://www.marco.org/2010/08/19/a-smartphone-retrospective
Except as I pointed out that sort of thing just doesn't work for a lot of people. "Press this strange combination of keys in the right order and it unlocks" is not a usable solution for the masses. This was the status quo for at least 10 years, I remember the Menu * thing from 1998 and my last Nokia phone in 2008 had it.
But they did that because they were limited by the keyboard, and Apple did not innovate on "ways to unlock the screen using a keyboard". They innovated on a different part of the phone, which allowed them to take a different approach on phone unlocking.
Doing something in a different way than the way everyone else had done it for over 10 years prior is innovation.
Unless it's obvious, which taking as the starting point the actual innovation - the big capacitive screen - it was.
As you pointed out the slide to unlock feature is trivial compared to the bigger change of using touch as the main input mechanism.
Well, exactly. But the patent, which is what's being discussed, is only about slide to unlock, nothing else.
You don't see movie producers suing eachother for incorporating eachother's plot devices... it's ridiculous. If someone is incorporating design elements with intent to confuse the consumer, or incorporating complex design elements, then I am prepared to entertain the validity of legal action.
From the perspective of fostering general innovation in the marketplace and increasing the greater good, software and design patents need to go bye-bye. Apple's just playing the game according to the current rules, and the current rules really need to change.
The battery is user replaceable. I can plug in an sd card. On an iPhone I can't.
On the G2 I can switch between recent applications by holding the home button. I can access the contents of my phone by using a web browser. I can sync without iTunes.
Doesn't sound like a carbon copy to me.
The Home, Back and Menu actions are required by Google and who suggests manufacturers make them hardware inputs. They're not "differentiating their product from Apple", they're complying with the specified requirements to run the OS they chose. They could have innovated by making them gestures or a touchpad or something, but they didn't.
Switching applications with home buttons and other OS behaviors are not Samsung's ideas, they're part of the stock Android OS.
For Samsung's actual contributions to the product, compare their first Android device, the I7500, to their Galaxy II line. Which direction did the design travel?
I7500: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2009/04/i7500_...
iPhone: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/iphone...
Galaxy II: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/04/11z428...
But Apple's new version of iOS "copies" several of the features from my phone.
I find Samsung's inability to innovate and subsequent willingness to carbon-copy the iPhone and iPad to be reprehensible and wrong. It's sad that Samsung seemingly can't come up with much original on their own.
And you countered with an HTC G2 example, tangential to the Samsung vs. Apple story. My point was circling back around to the linked story and GP post which was Samsung vs. Apple. Feature copying between Google and Apple is an entirely different debate.
Samsung is very clearly trying to ride Apple's coat tails in ways that HTC and Google are not.
While I don't have any need for HDMI output on my phone, I applaud Samsung's efforts to add differentiating features. That said, adding an HDMI port falls short of the type of innovation to which I referred in my original comment.
Look at the following photo and tell me that Samsung didn't completely rip off the iPhone's look and feel, right down to the icon layout:
http://www.gadgetfolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Samsu...
Samsung had an opportunity to innovate in a way that would make the Galaxy S2 look and feel nothing like an iPhone and instead look and feel like a new, innovative product. They clearly didn't do that.
Comments like "My G2 has a back button unlike the iPhone" or "But the icons have square corners instead of rounded corners!!", in my opinion, completely miss the point. I'm not claiming that Samsung copies Apple's products down to the last molecule/pixel, nor do I believe that Samsung is incapable of adding ports/buttons that Apple chooses to omit.
The point is that Samsung is clearly trying their hardest to make their products look very similar to Apple's products. I personally believe Samsung should try to imbue their products with their own brand design/identity.
Why do people always compare the Applists? There are not many ways to display a list of icons in a meaningful way. The Windows Desktop has had a grid of icons for years and there was much else like that beforehand, but in addition the Android handsets offer more useful ways of using the screen when not starting apps(widgets&live backgrounds).
I won't admit that Samsung sure took inspiration from Apple, but that is true for most of the things, if not only because of usability reasons. There are just some design patterns that have proven to work and which people have come to expect. The race should be about who makes the best phone, not who made the first design patents.
Apple didn't have copy and paste on a mobile phone long after windows mobile had it... should microsoft have sued because of that?
I just want the best of all worlds and Samsung delivers there. If they have to stop selling the Galaxies in Europe, i'd import them from Asia.
Pointing out one of these things and saying "Should Apple have a monopoly on X?" is, once again, missing the point. It's the combination of X, Y, and Z that makes the product look like an iPhone instead of a differentiated product.
Defending this practice with "There aren't many ways to do X" doesn't seem like a very persuasive argument. Before the iPhone was introduced, companies seemed to find a myriad of ways to do these same things. Once the iPhone became overwhelmingly popular, however, companies like Samsung stopped trying to raise the bar and just made their products as Apple-like as possible.
So to reiterate my original point, I think Samsung should differentiate their design functions and aesthetics instead of mimicking Apple. Samsung isn't going to hit the ball out of the park if they keep making conservative bets -- they should take some chances.
But as I said from the very beginning, the common good is better served without all this software patent litigation crap. As much as I think Samsung does itself a disservice by mimicking Apple so closely, it probably should be regulated to a moral question rather than a legal one.
The device is always going to have corners; are Apple the only ones who are allowed to evenly round the corners? I'm viewing this on a Samsung monitor, which has evenly rounded corners...
I don't deny the Samsung device has similarities, but... Apple have gone out of their way to make the iPhone look very, very generic quite frankly. Call it minimalist if you want, but it has so few visible features as a piece of hardware that if you're going to produce a competing device then there really aren't very many ways to make sure it doesn't look at least slightly like one or other design generation of iPhone.
> Look at the following photo and tell me that Samsung
> didn't completely rip off the iPhone's look and feel,
> right down to the icon layout
> Samsung had an opportunity to innovate in a way that
> would make the Galaxy S2 look and feel nothing like an
> iPhone and instead look and feel like a new, innovative
> product. They clearly didn't do that.
> Comments like "My G2 has a back button unlike the iPhone"
> or "But the icons have square corners instead of rounded
> corners!!", in my opinion, completely miss the point.
> The point is that Samsung is clearly trying their hardest to make their
> products look very similar to Apple's products.
You can unless the difference is attributable to Samsung. The back button was present on Android prototypes in 2007. Samsung didn't hop on the Android bandwagon until 2009.
A grid of icons with text underneath is considered *ripping off*
Apple now? Are you serious?
It's not just the app icon layout. It should be obvious to any
casual observer just how many things Samsung copied: the
highlighting on the bottom row of icons, the dots that represent
different pages of apps, the overall aesthetics of the handset
itself, etc.
Pointing out one of these things and saying "Should Apple have a
monopoly on X?" is, once again, missing the point. It's the
combination of X, Y, and Z that makes the product look like an
iPhone instead of a differentiated product.
Have you actually used a Samsung Android phone? The "look and
feel" is nothing like an iPhone. [...] Just because one screen
happens to look similar to an iPhone doesn't mean the entire UI
is copied.
You can not say on one hand that Samsung is incapable of
differentiating their product, and then wave away all the ways in
which their product is differentiated.
In any case, I'm guessing we disagree on how much differentiation Samsung has done here, but different opinions are what make the world go 'round. :)
Recall that iOS 5 has been announced with a notification tray
that is a carbon copy of Android's notification tray. Taking good
features from the competition and iterating on them is par for
the course.
why would you expect these two products to be differentiated on every feature? do you actually expect two touch screen phones to be different in every way? is it ridiculous that iphone's voice calling feature (where you can talk, and someone on the other side can hear you) is a "carbon copy" of old dumb phones?
Maybe that's a small nit, but Samsungs's home screen looks nothing at all like the iPhone. You have to go to the less used "applications list screen" on their phones and compare that to the iPhone's default home screen so that they look similar. It is less used because on android you put you most accessed stuff on the main screen and click the icons/widgets form there.
Here is a pic: http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/iPhone_vs_Galaxy-...
Left is iPhone's main screen, middle is Samsung's application list (I heard it repeated so much even I used to think that was Samsung's home screen), right is Samsung's actual home screen which is very different.
People keep using this same argument, but there's a little more too it than that. For example, if a graphic designer took the Coca-Cola logo and changed it just slightly. By your logic, they are in the clear because it's just "type", it's not like Coca-Cola invented fonts, right?
I think most people agree that there are enough similarities between the phones that it could be confusing, hence Apple is trying to protect it. You don't hear anyone complaining that MS ripped off Apple. MS came up with something that is different. All though it's still just a "grid of icons with text underneath".
That's how I'd do it, unless the next update already had those fixed and it was very, very close anyhow.
Seeing how much difficulty they had supporting the 1st Generation Galaxy and updating the device in a timely manner, probably not.
As you can see the law has been widely spun out of it's original scope to include all types of things design related.
(At its core the EU is all about creating a common market. Harmonized patent law and enforcement is obviously a big part of that.)
The Netherlands has Europe's largest port (Rotterdam) owing to its lucky geographic position at the end of the Rhine and Meuse, two of the largest rivers. Since transportation by boat is several times cheaper than rail or truck this has caused most logistics companies to set up shop there.
While the ban doesn't stretch across Europe, they would have to change that to get devices into other European countries.
I didn't see any outrage from Apple fanboys then.
Although I hate Apple's heavy-handed approach to this, I also like the message that this sends to Asian companies, who have quite a cavalier approach when it comes to "borrowing & adapting" the designs and innovations from others. The list is long and is by no means limited to Apple: Routers from Cisco, phone designs from Motorola, etc. etc.
It may be impossible to properly enforce copyright and trademarks in China and other neighbors but at least this shows that Europe may be a different battle ground.
EDIT: As I've said in my comment, this doesn't mean that I think Apple's ruthless approach to patents and its draconian methods of platform control are good things. It's just that the other guys do have a copy and paste problem. Maybe not in this case, but generally definitely they do.
Given how successful they are, that's very unlikely. However, the converse is actually true, China is quite hostile to Western business, you can read up on this on the many articles published, e.g. on the Economist. If you want to be treated fairly, you have to treat others so, too, isn't this the golden rule?
It does not change the fact, that yes, China is very hostile to Western businesses.
Add in the fact that most people here think software patents have serious problems, at the least... And it's pretty easy to see why it was down-voted to me.
Now, this not an "evil" thing to do. I am up for abolishing the current atrocious use of software copyrights as the next person: let all the copy cats come out with the stuff and let the market decide in a fair battle. However, to do this, the market conditions must be made level, which it definitely is not, especially in China (I don't know the situation in Taiwan or South Korea).
This certainly is no "cultural pudding match" and if you are in the tech sector it is very relevant.
As for downvoting: People's comments are their opinions, you may disagree or they may be wrong. What do you do when you get stuck with a boring person in a meetup, you just ignore them and move to the next person to talk. I do the same for comments here (or in any other forum) and do not downvote, unless they are offensive or badly formulated.
I think that's also why people were down-voting. (I don't have the ability yet.) Because your initial post comes off as blaming Samsung for copying a software feature, when it's Google's code. Samsung just distributed hardware that uses it.
Or to relate it to this case, how is claiming that only you can make rectangles or any of these patent hold-ups not "theft" that everyone knows about but can't do anything about?
However, why did Apple focus on Samsung? Yes they are #2, but could it also be how the original looked imitated an iPhone, e.g. http://www.edibleapple.com/did-samsung-make-last-minute-desi...? Compare these looks with a aMotorola Droid 3.