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Comment by dataminer | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know why the judge didn't allow "inspired by Sony" evidence?

Probably because it's hard to prove, it can become a big and arguably irrelevant distraction, and it opens up the possibility for an endless line of "this was inspired by that" from both sides. It's not too difficult to argue that everything was inspired by everything else all the way back to the stone age. The crux of this case is the question of whether Samsung has been copying Apple. Whether Apple copied someone else is arguably irrelevant. Sony can sue Apple themselves if they really think that's true.

I do understand that Apple may very well have lifted ideas from Sony and others and I have to admit that it is a valid argument. I'm only speculating as to why the judge decided not to admit the "inspired by Sony" evidence. In my eyes I can see my reasoning as being realistic though I'm not sure if it's right or wrong.

As an aside, and really, beyond the scope of the law, if you look at this from a human perspective and ignore the black and white aspects of the law, I think it's pretty obvious that Samsung has been imitating Apple's designs. Forget who worked on touch screens first and forget who first created a brick style phone with the same kind of interface because I really think that's irrelevant. Lots of phones look and function like the iPhone and the iPhone looks and functions like lots of other phones but what's really important here are the details of the design and not the generalities. If you look at Samsung's phones that came out after the iPhone you see what seems to be an attempt to piggyback off the iPhones success and maybe even confuse consumers into buying the wrong phone or making them think, as they often do, "it's basically the same thing". The minor details of Samsung's phones and tablets like the middle "home" button, the radius of the corners, the thickness, and even their packaging are so similar that if you took the logos off the phones and/or boxes its easy for even an informed consumer to mistake the two from ten feet away. I've seen tons of touchscreen phones both close up ans far away and most of the time it's not difficult at all to tell an iPhone apart from the others despite the similarities they all share (that's even without my glasses on). But if you take the Samsung phones and tablets in question and compare only those then it's quite easy to not be able to tell the difference until you're actually close enough to hold it up to your face. Legally, that's probably not important but practically that's the real issue. Even if Samsung had come out with touchscreen phones in a style like the iPhone ten years before Apple it shouldn't matter because Samsung began making what really look like clones of the iPhone only after Apple put the iPhone out.

I know if I argued this in court I'd be on shaky ground but I'm not arguing the legalities. I'm looking at this through the eyes of a real person. Touch screens, sing button or multi-button, rounded corners, etc. don't matter. When you see a copy of something else, you know it. I think whether Apple wins or loses the case it doesn't matter nor will it settle the argument. People who have seen the phones and tablets in question all know and see what happened and with so many touchscreen devices out there that are obviously very easy to differentiate from the iDevices, it can't be a coincidence that two companies were working on designs so similar right down to the tiniest details at around the same time. I think Occam's Razor applies here. The simplest explanation is that lots of companies were working on similar designs around the same time but when Apple's took off Samsung purposely started designing their devices to look like Apple's to piggy-back off their success. The result? Moms who always buy the wrong thing bought a Samsung phone or tablet as Christmas gifts because "they're basically the same thing, right?" and Apple sued Samsung.

And looking at this from the eyes of another real person:

At various times over the past several years, Apple has sued Nokia, HTC, Motorola and Samsung, plus several smaller companies over a wide variety of smartphones and tablets using many of the same design and user interface patents. This isn't about Apple being offended by copying. This is about Apple using the legal system to attack their competition. Note that many of the patents involved (like "data detection" and "universal search") date back to Macintosh user interface features from years (sometimes more than a decade) before the iPhone.

Sadly, I expect the judge wouldn't allow it, but I'd love to see the Samsung lawyer show the jury the whole gallery of devices (from all vendors) that Apple has sued over using these patents. That would make what is going on much clearer.

Well, no, it seems like you're looking at it legally. You're totally right on a lot of points (maybe all of them, I haven't looked into verifying them all). Apple is very much using the legal system to squash competitors and that's shady. I'm not denying that. What I'm arguing is really outside the scope of this trial and the law. I'm saying that the allegations that Samsung has purposely copying Apple designs in some of its phones and tablets is obvious. Samsung makes a lot of touch screen phones. Most of those phones, like most touch screen phones made by anyone look very similar to each other. They're all pretty much the same basic design. But then there's a subset of Samsung's phones that so closely resemble the iPhone that even the most casual of observers has to wonder if it wasn't on purpose rather than coincidence. I think it's pretty safe to rule out coincidence in this case.

Apple's patent abuse and legal shenanigans aside, there's a handful of Samsung phones and tablets that just couldn't have come out looking like almost perfect clones of the iPhone and iPad by accident. Apple is being an asshole. But they're right that Samsung copied.

I don't know, I've had people refer to my Asus Transformer as my "iPad". This criterion doesn't seem very sensitive (although yes, the iPad must have influenced Asus).

Thanks, that's probably the best description I have come across about this case.

YMMV. Let me explain. if you walk into a tv showroom, can you differentiate tvs from 10ft away? It's a poor Rgument to use the 10ft. The real issues are 1. Is it norm for companies/people to copy each other (eg. Apple iPhone from Sony). 2. How closely can you copy before you're doing real harm? 3. WhatP is the right balance in a patent that benefits society (NOT the inventor) the most? There is no doubt that Apple copied Sony. There is no doubt that Samsung copied Apple. If Apple win this case, patent madness will get even worse and society will suffer greatly. If Apple lose this case, it will encourage copycats, but it will also challenge the patent madness and be good for society in general. IMHO, the reason the judge excluded the Sony evidence was because Apple aren't on trial. - sent from my iPhone

On the contrary there is very much doubt that Apple copied Sony. A terse description does not a design make.

Samsung wanted to fortify the claim that Apple "copied" from Sony. (The evidence was dismissed because of procedural reasons.)

However, the main problem with this story is that the "copied" design is for a Sony Walkman, not a mobile phone. Also, the Sony-inspired design submitted by Shin Nishibori, an Apple industrial designer, was just one of many prototypes that didn't make the final cut.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/01/the-sony-device-samsu...

http://www.itreviews.com/hardware/audio-video-players/sony-w...

My guess is that it's too confusing for a layperson to parse that it is not actually a Sony design. Given a lot of the reader commentary that I've seen on various tech sites and newspapers, folks seem to have difficulty understanding that the design was actually created by someone at Apple.

And Sony was inspired by iPod. This whole story was blown out.

The design was based on what a Sony designer said in an interview. Apple mocked up the design based on a vision. In any case they were able to show they had an earlier design from a year before that looks like the current iPhone.

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