Apple wins EU-wide ban on Galaxy Tab 7.7; Tab 10.1N not covered | Hacker News Reader

Apple wins EU-wide ban on Galaxy Tab 7.7; Tab 10.1N not covered

arstechnica.com

45 pointsmootothemax42 comments

I await the apologetics from the "It's an extremely narrow design patent" camp who claimed that this would never apply to a device even slightly different, physically, from an iPad. Sigh.

Obviously the action itself isn't a big deal in isolation, being against a device that isn't selling much anyway. But it's time to admit to ourselves that Apple is simply a bad actor, and it's only a matter of time before they hurt something for real.

> a device that isn't selling much anyway.

In EU, Samsung Galaxy Tabs (either 10 or 7) are the only non-iPad tablets I've seen in the hands of not technical people. Most phone carriers offer cheaper mobile data plans bundled with a Galaxy Tab. I have no data at hand, but I'm pretty sure that they are the only non-Apple tablets with a 2-digit percentage of the current EU market.

They are also much appreciated by people that call them "iPads", the kind of people who mostly use the Facebook app, the camera app and, seldom, the browser.

I am really getting seriously disappointed in Apple. I don't care at all about their excuse that 'we are just buying patents to fight patent trolls' anymore. Obviously, they are patent trolls themselves and should be treated as just that.

Pathetic of a close to trillion dollar company to stave off competition by throwing lawyers and BS patents around.

I'm not a fan of how Apple is going about this, but.

To me, a patent troll is a company that holds a patent and wields it aggressively without producing anything, and that's the way I've generally seen the term used. Clearly Apple doesn't fit this definition, as they are both making and selling tons of devices that use these patents.

In fact, there's nothing you can really say that indicates Apple is misusing patents. They are, unfortunately, using patents exactly the way patents are meant to be used. Patents are meant to stifle innovation in a direction that's already been taken. It's their purpose: exclusive rights for however many years in exchange for public disclosure. The only critique that I think can be made of Apple's use of patents at this point is that they're using them at all (which is a perfectly valid critique, mind you).

The issue is, you should never be granted obvious patents like "swipe to unlock".

Mobile phones / tablets are fairly trivial by now. Computer, touchscreen, software. It's not rocket science. Nothing there should really be patentable IMHO.

Truth to be said, the things that are obvious now were not obvious at all in 2007.

That's exactly it.

Any of us could write a program to calculate E=MC2 in a minute. These anti-patent types think this means they're all Einsteins.

Your example is very apt. Isn't it great that you can't patent mathematics? Software and hardware should not be patentable like it currently is.

Sorry, but since I can remember, (20 years ago say), the idea of a touchscreen tablet/smartphone was obvious. It was absolutely inevitable, and it was boring waiting for the technology to appear to allow it to happen. Absolutely nothing on any smartphone, tablet, etc is innovative to the point where a patent should be granted.

The devil is always in the details. Since the first internal combustion engine, the car was an obvious development. But it turns out that there is more subtlety to making a car than simply swapping a horse for a motor on a carriage. Would you say that absolutely nothing in any car or truck is innovative to the point where a patent should be granted?

Tablets are an interesting case study because we've been down this road before (google for Windows XP Tablet Edition, 2001). Anything in a modern tablet that wasn't in XP Tablet, or the Apple Newton, you can say required innovation to do.

Personally, I think patents do far more harm than they do good. They reward complacency. They reward laziness. They stifle innovation.

Then I hope you never need to do anything more complex than copying something someone's already done, least of all invest your own money in risky research that may yield no results.

FWIW I'm listed as inventor on around 10 patents.

The only area I think patents do make some sense is for medicine, where the R&D costs are astronomically high. But most other fields, R&D isn't that big a cost.

The thing is that it just isn't that obvious. Not one cell before Apple's iPhone had swipe to unlock. Not one cell had touchscreen that works without stylus.

Same thing with tablets. Sure, Microsoft started making them long time ago but using styluses on the same GUI was not that practical. That's why they never entered mainstream market. iPhones and then iPads brought new GUI for whom you didn't have to use styluses and you didn't have tiny unclickable icons. Everything is made for touching from the ground up.

Sorry for going off topic.

  Not one cell had touchscreen that works without stylus.

Incorrect: LG Prada.

For me, pointing to one or two features of the iPhone as proof of it being innovative misses the target. I regard Apple products as innovative and successful principally because they are consistently usable, designed well, marketed well and technically innovative at the same time. Apple's competitors rarely hit all those targets in a given product.

(Likewise, sorry for off-topicness!)

Neonode N1 had swipe to unlock before iphone.

>> Mobile phones / tablets are fairly trivial by now.

"Trivial" would imply that bootstrapped companies would be turning them out by the millions. Maybe they are a little harder than trivial?

In any case, I think you mean "trivial" in the sense that an answer to a test question is always "trivial" when you're looking at the answer.

There's quite a ton of different android smartphones, which all look and function basically the same - same with tablets.

They're likely all made by the same few factories in China for a few dollars each.

Here is comparison between original (banned) 10.1 and new 10.1N model that court deemed sufficiently different from iPad - http://i.imgur.com/NhlGO.jpg (top one is 10.1N).

I'm positively surprised that such slight change is OK. If this is how things work I don't really have problem with bogus apple design patents. Such us for Air that could hurt one or two manufacturers but not others. And even those two can avoid it with just a few cosmetic changes (so not a huge economic impact).

People were afraid that it's much more dangerous.

It got the device banned from the market, how is that not "dangerous". It's not like you can ask the court ahead of time. Manufacturers are forced to go to production, enter the market and roll the dice awaiting lawsuits. You think Apple would have just said "gray is OK" if you asked them ahead of time? (edit: and just to point out the inanity, I got the distinction wrong . Gray is not OK, the lighter one is the infringing model. I guess it's something else.)

And note that it's not just any "slight change" that works. Shrinking it by 30% did not, for example.

My point was, the court probably brought into consideration the Apple device itself and not just the design patent. With that design patent (iirc it was just some sketch and a few words) you could ban practically every tablet. As we see from this decision it's not the case. Differences between those two Samsung Tabs are only cosmetic.

I still think that design patents should not exist. If there really has to be a design patent, then it should be very specific and not like the one for iPad.

… or maybe they could come up with their own designs instead of copying what others are already doing? If their design is so like another company's design that they're not 100% sure that it's allowed, that's a sign that maybe a tweak or two is in order.

There isn't really much you can do with a tablet design. There isn't room for variety. Sharp edges are uncomfortable, so you round them. You need to hold the thing, so you need a frame. The screens come rectangular from the factory, so you make it rectangular. Apple's design patent seems to cover any reasonably comfortable tablet designs.

Perhaps, just to differentiate, for the next iteration they could go with a sea urchin inspired design and put spikes all over the back. I'm sure that would make a great tablet. Or they could use a design that makes sense, and risk getting sued again.

If changing the size dramatically, using a different aspect ratio, and having different styling isn't enough, what is?

>> There isn't really much you can do with a tablet design. There isn't room for variety.

Edit below: clarifying that the whole product is the consideration. Also, they all look like a blackberry a few miles away; the point is what do they look like to the user.

So you'd have trouble distinguishing among the Microsoft Surface Tablet, the Kindle Fire, and the iPad? How about when they are on?

At what distance? From across the room, they'd all look pretty much the same to me, outside of size:

http://geekntech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Surface-tabl...

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/galaxy...

http://www.eweek.com/images/stories/slideshows/ipad_security...

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4ec2a063eab8eae47e0...

If one of those had a keyboard, that might help it stand out...

Ah. Gotcha. Here's an iPad with a keyboard. http://www.warepin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ipad-keybo...

Ok, I'm not entirely serious with that. The thing is that the keyboard is an accessory for the surface, and the styling of all the tablets is quite similar. (I was actually surprised by how similar when I looked up the images). If shipping an accessory is enough to prevent design patent infringement...

Did you read the article? It was the 7" tablet that was banned.

That's pretty much the point of design patents. They're there to make sure that purely ornamental design decisions(for example, the metal bezel on the outside of the iPad) cannot be copied by a competitor to confuse potential customers.

A metal bezel on the outside of a rectangle made of metal doesn't seem like a very important design decision that is worthy of a patent.

Does Apple have a patent on displaying "PM" next to the time? ;-)

Apple's patent covers the use of English, le pad superior est en Français. [Edit] or maybe German, all I could make out at first before zooming in was the "Mai" and "M" for presumably mercredi, but on closer examination, I see Mon instead of Lun for Lundi/Monday.

I am the only one that is really tired of all those silly disputes between apple and samsung? I think apple is being so silly in all these that to protest I purchased an samsung tablet.

I am just 'done' with Apple. Getting the Google Nexus and retiring my iPad.

I don't think they are being silly, they are being malicious and anti-competitive.

As long as the courts reward that silliness, they seem to care more about hurting competition to worry about whether they should continue on this path.

I wonder what the Apple execs are thinking.

1) "Steve wanted to nuke them, this is what he wanted! LETS KEEP DOING IT FOR STEVE!"

2) "Damn, we don't know whether we should release product A or product B. Neither of them are really polished and nobody cares anymore now that Steve is gone. Let's go to plan C which always works: sue the competition!"

Either way, I fear Apple is going to end up in the same state as they ended up without Steve last time.

News flash from 2022:

"Cauliflower wins APAC-wide ban on Broccoli; Broccolini not covered"

This makes Apple look rather pathetic. Can't they just spend the energy to improve the product? The correct response to competition is to be better, not appeal to the law to stifle competition. I think the term here is "patent weasel".

And the patent abuse continues...

That sucks. I have been a long time Apple supporter and I am disappointed in them. That said, Samsung should play the game and make their stuff look different.

I just got a Samsung Galaxy S III phone: fantastic device (1280 x 720 pixel screen). Really awesome :-) I find myself using it instead of my iPad (although the iPad is great for web browsing and Netflix).

I suppose the following deserves downvotes in the HN context, but man, I'm just fucking tired of all this BS.

Patents are granted, ultimately, by "the people" (U.S. context, at least) to promote productive activity.

At this point, "the people" should rise up and tell this army of lawyers and designers that, ok, you can't have your patents anymore. (Now go do something useful.)

Reality is that property, including IP, is a social contract, not some divine absolute.

Star Trek... (whatever number the movies are up to).

The team comes back from the future, to invalidate countless destructive patents by presenting a "pad" mockup from the set of "The Next Generation".

Counter-point: They are promptly stripped of their "future-ware" by lawyers (and the DOJ, of course, who does the actual stripping in full battle armor) who point out that there's now a patent on "pants having two legs " that will most certainly be extended ad infinitum into their timeframe.

Side plot: What happened to the whales' residuals?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com