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Comment by lurch_mojoff | Hacker News Reader

The important thing is not whether Apple should or shouldn't have won, but that they did. A court of law, as biased as it may be, has concluded that Apple’s complaint has merit. And now that may serve as precedent for Apple to use in other jurisdictions. Samsung are getting deeper into the crapper.

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You are 100% right, but Apple has seen the last of my purchases. Not that they could care one bit but this kind of lawsuit is utterly ridiculous in my opinion, which may not be as powerful as the German courts but it counts for something.

Apple has won this battle, here's to hoping they will lose the war.

Imagine if every car manufacturer would have to come up with a new user interface for the basics of the vehicle, if having front, rear and side windows would somehow be considered something that you could have the rights to.

>>if every car manufacturer would have to come up with a new user interface for the basics of the vehicle, if having front, rear and side windows would somehow be considered something that you could have the rights to.

120 years ago, it might have been...

Also, xPads before Apple looked different. The same with phones compared to iPhone.

The good part is that Samsung might start hiring designers and get ambitions in that area, too.

Disclaimer: I just bought a Ubuntu laptop instead of a Mac, but might buy another Mac next time. (And I love my iPad.)

>The same with phones compared to iPhone.

Except, of course, for that phone reveled before the iPhone that had the same basic style. It was a style that the industry was headed towards anyway, apple just helped the momentum.

Reference please?

(You aren't talking about that Samsung phone which were announced before the iPhone but not shown until a good while after the iPhone was released?)

http://mobile.engadget.com/2006/12/15/the-lg-ke850-touchable... on December 15, 2006.

While the design doesn't necessarily predate the iPhone, it was at least developed concurrently, supporting the thesis of industry heading that way.

Cool, new to me. I note that the Wikipedia page says LG muttered about suing Apple over the iPhone. :-)

Do you think that BMW wouldn't sue Volvo if they built a car that looked identical on the outside, regardless of what's on the inside?

Brands each have a signature look. Sure, when there are frivolous patents that are a poison on the industry, but this is about whether Samsung crossed the line in how deceptively close their tabs look to an iPad. The German court seems to think they did. And I bet they did more analysis than most of us.

Try this: just look at the side of a bunch of cars, if you can tell them apart you've got a better eye for this than I do, but ever since the 'windtunnel' took over as a designer I am having a harder and harder time telling cars apart. Plenty of brands have caught on to this and actually share 90%+ of the basic design of the car and concentrate on the interior to differentiate the brands. The biggest difference on the outside is the logo on the hood.

Once physics and usability enter in to the design process the constraints can be such that there will be fewer and fewer options and room to play without impacting those in a negative way.

Design is always a compromise. By going for a minimalist design you remove all of that room so any minimalist design for a device will likely be very much like every other minimalist design.

You can always spot the BMW by the Hofmeister Kink. If Volvo copied that, I bet BMW'd sue.

How does that impact functionality?

? This lawsuit is not about functionality at all. It’s purely about looks, it’s about a design patent.

My point is that once you take away all design and go for minimalist that you can't change it much beyond that without impacting functionality.

The Hofmeister kind is an addition that does not impact functionality, it is the opposite of going for something minimalist. It is a design component specifically added as a signature.

Now if Apple had added a feature that is not relevant to functionality instead of removing a whole pile of stuff that was not relevant and someone copied that particular element they'd have a case imo. As it stands all they've done is taken the device to its logical conclusion. That should not be a protectable configuration.

Replace the word "car" with "wheel" to more realistically compare with the iPad functional design and you'll spot an awful lot of alloy wheel designs that untrained observers will be able to distinguish only by the badge.

So, um.

iPad: aluminium back, aluminium stretching out to create a visible border around the front of the device. Prominent single physical button on front of the device. 4:3 form factor.

Galaxy Tab: black textured plastic (?) back, front of the device pure black. No physical buttons on the front. 16:10 form factor.

But sure, identical on the outside...

thin device with a touchscreen is not a concept invented by apple. neither is thin device with a touchscreen that has rounded corners.

http://twitpic.com/67ykpa

nice argument, although a little manipulative and misleading. maybe one could fool the german court with this. but of course these were not the only tablets before ipad.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Tab...

remove the physical keyboard and replace it with a soft keyboard provided by the os. voila! you've got an ipad!

by the way did you know hp's iPaq precedes iPad? aren't these two names are dangerously similar? they both have rounded corners.

Relevant to note that the keyboard here was a detatchable dock.. so its 'default' form was closer to the ipad.

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2003/06/02/the_digital_writin...

-2003.

http://i.imgur.com/NbDRW.jpg

A ridiculous game to play, don't you think?

So, iPad is not looking as previous tablets, and not all recent tablets look like iPad.

Ridiculous indeed.

People think that Apple did a lot of things on the iPad, but all they did was removing the pen, removing some useless physical buttons, using a tailored touch-oriented OS instead of adapting one from desktop computers, bootstrapping this operating system on years of success of the one for phones, using a single sheet of glass instead of plastic screen + plastic bezel, using the internet for app and media distribution, cutting corners to provide a midrange-laptop instead of costing an arm or a leg...

Don't forget how much they disappointed their geek fan base when they announced that their tablet was just a "bigger iPhone" instead of a "smaller iOS". And that's where Android wins: Android managed to actually change the opinions of geeks.

Seriously, Apple did some breakthrough changes. Android follows suit. Those lawsuits might piss you off, but give credit where credit is due.

All this forgets technical progress that allows for slimmer tablets.

plus I suspect that SSDs and similar non-mechanical parts means you no longer need to worry so much about drop damages, so you can remove all the rubber bumpers and get a cleaner look.

Non-English speaking Europe generally has the civil law system as opposed to common law and doesn't use precedents except in the most ambiguous cases where precedent can be used as guidance for interpreting the law. Precedent alone cannot be used to make a decision and it cannot contradict the law. Judges also have much less freedom in their interpretations of the law.

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