Who cares if Samsung copied Apple? | Hacker News Reader

Who cares if Samsung copied Apple?

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People have to stop thinking about which side is more fun to "cheer" to and start thinking about what's in your best interest as a consumer. Everyone copies everyone [1]. Apple copied a lot of features from Android [2] and improved upon them. Samsung copied a lot of stuff from Apple and improved them to levels Apple had never gone to before. [3] As the author of the article shows. Copying doesn't stop innovation. It has always been like this with any innovation. There's a reason Newton and Einstein said "I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants". Any innovation made by humans is inspired by hundreds of years of history.

For us as consumers, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day we get better products from this. We gain from innovation and competition. If Apple didn't copy Android, your iPhone would be worse. If Samsung didn't copy Apple, the best selling phone in the market would be worse. And every consumer would lose.

If Apple wins this. It would be bad for every smartphone user on the planet. Including iPhone users. If you love your phone and tech innovation. You should be hoping Samsung wins, even if you have an iPhone.

[1] http://www.bonkersworld.net/great-artists-steal/

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/apple-copies-a-bunch-of-f...

[3] http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/15/samsung-galaxy-note-10-1-...

If Samsung didn't copy Apple, the best selling phone in the market would be worse.

A worse phone would still be the best selling?

Obviously if the current best-selling phone was worse then it would not be the best-selling phone. I believe that his point is that without innovating (copying if you will) it probably wouldn't exist as it is today, or if at all, which would be a loss for the consumer.

You could interpret that a few different ways, but I read it as either "the current best selling phone (iPhone?) would be worse (and not necessarily best selling) if Samsung did not copy Apple" or "the best selling phone if Samsung did not copy Apple would be worse than the best selling phone when Samsung did copy Apple."

Yes. Super cars are not best selling cars.

I agree with you re: "cheering" a side, but I don't agreew ith your broad conclusion that Samsung is innovating through copying. Here's my counter for this entire argument: There's no reason to copy certain things: http://fatmixx.com/2010/12/07/samsungs-galaxy-tab-has-a-fami...

I also don't agree that Samsung "improved" upon Apple's work, at least not for the devices Apple is suing for. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Note is not one of those devices.

Samsung is in a different category of copying from what you're describing, IMHO. That's why I'm OK with Apple suing them. I don't know if I like that Apple is suing them, but I'm not going to condemn them for it.

I agree with @vibrunazo, we have to think in term of consumer benefit point of view. competition is good thing, improving existing product segment or competitive product is perfect business model. there were smart phone before iphone, tablet before ipad, pc before imac, settop_box before apple_tv etc,,, xwindows before macos,, Apple improved existing competitive products, as Samsung did. Android is improvement over SideKick, used linux which is already existing technology and Dalvik on Java etc... wheel to automoble to air plain to spaceship? :) you got the point. it's all about reusing or leveraging existing technology for benefit of consumer needs - incremental innovation!

I'm not in disagreement and don't want to split hairs, but for posterity:

xwindows before macos

Actually, no. MacOS predates X by a few months. X Window System was introduced on June 19th, 1984 [1], while MacOS was released with the Macintosh on January 24th, 1984 [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Introduction [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mac_OS

@yesbabyyes you are right, I meant to say XPARC :)

Competition is great.

But there's a point where the "copying" that we as consumers like and benefit from crosses a line and becomes a shameless "knock-off" that we as consumers truly do not benefit from.

It's not at all clear that Samsung has crossed that line, but the line exists none-the-less and we as consumers benefit from there being a legal process to determine when the line has been crossed and penalties for those who cross it.

And in recognizing that we need such a line and a legal system to determine whether it's been crossed, we must allow that fuzzy cases such as these are inevitable. No matter how we might reform the system.

There is nothing in any of these patent cases that even approaches the "shameless knock-off" territory.

There are products coming out of China that are counterfits, or very close to existing products - and they should be banned.

You would have to be both blind and stupid to not be able to tell the difference between any two Android and iOS phones.

Yes, it's quite a bit like that old saying about pornography "I know it when I see it". But that hardly changes the point that there is no reform that can both prevent such suits and protect our interests as consumers.

A shameless knock off copies _everything_. A shameless rolex copies everything from a rolex. Rolex doesn't copy anything from their knockoffs. There has to be one way copying to classify a product as a knockoff. Instead, Apple has copied many features from android, so it's not a case of samsung / android being knockoff products. If anything, consumers have benefited from copying! Everyone complained about iOS notifications, then they copied android notifications. And consumers benefited. The fact that we are even having this discussion is nauseating. It's painfully obvious what the outcome should be in terms of what's best for consumers. A rich ecosystem which combines copying with innovation.

... a rich ecosystem which combines copying with innovation and with less money pointlessly wasted on lawyers.

How does a shameless "knock-off" hurt consumers? I own a knock-off Rolex and I enjoy it just fine.

It can hurt you if you were conned into paying a Rolex-level price, and/or thought you were buying an actual Rolex. And maybe you weren't, but I imagine plenty of people are.

I think this (intentionally or not) points out some of why people want Apple to beat Samsung. Not just win, but beat Samsung. It ties in precisely with what the grandparent is saying.

People want to choose sides and, for whatever god-forsaken reason, there are still people who haven't used it since 2.0 convinced that Android is massively inferior, and thus they see this as Apple beating a knock-off.

But it's not, and anyone whose seen Samsung's sales figures knows that.

I agree.

And I think another issue here is that it isn't the case that Samsung attempts to con people into thinking they're buying an Apple device. Even if you get up in arms saying that Samsung/Android copied certain features from Apple, it would an entirely separate can of worms if people regularly bought Samsung devices, thinking they were buying an Apple one.

> or thought you were buying an actual Rolex

He said Knock-off, not counterfeit. A knock-off looks like the original but does not falsely advertise itself as actually being the original.

I guess this is just semantics, but look where this redirects to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock-off

"Counterfeit consumer goods, commonly called knock-offs, are counterfeit or imitation products offered for sale."

I've seen that too, but it's sloppy writing.

Knock-off: A copy, but doesn't use the name of the original.

Counterfeit: A copy, that uses the name of the original.

Fake: Doesn't work properly, or is copied only partly (for example using brass instead of gold), but claims to be original.

Imitation: Uses cheaper materials, but is upfront about it.

There are two attributes: Deception and Accuracy. Each combination of those two gets a name.

If you value the status symbol of a Rolex (not I - I think they are tacky and ugly - sorry) fakes diminish that both for the producer and consumer. As another said, they also introduce the chance of fraud by intention or mistake.

That said, I think overall fakes provide excellent advertising for the real thing and probably increase profits. Anything widely faked implies the real thing must be valuable.

Fakes are only a problem if they're falsely advertised. If something says "Rolex" but it is not, then that's a major problem. This is why trademark laws exist. But if something looks like a Rolex but says something other than "Rolex" on it, that's fine.

Samsung has never done anything remotely like appropriating Apple's trademarks, so it's all rather silly. There's huge difference between a knock-off and an outright fake.

What is knock-off to you? A similar product manufactured for less or an inferior counterfeit indistinguishable from the genuine article by naive consumers? The latter was and is still a genuine problem; what is wrong with learning from others' successes? It will always happen to some extent and it's better for consumers if it happens as much as possible.

"it sounds like a perfectly functioning competitive market."

This "anthropic principle" for technology cuts both ways. The current market was made with current patent/trade dress law where people who copy too close are sometimes punished. You can't on the one side extoll it's wonders and on the other side say let's toss this whole side of it out and assume we'd see the same capital investments in the counterfactual.

Progress is not a linear measure. Patents can help to keep hardware vendors away from converging towards the same design, which would be bad for product variety.

Samsung copied a lot of stuff from Apple and improved them to levels Apple had never gone to before.

Could you elaborate? You linked to a reasonably long review. What parts of that review are you trying to refer to? I ask because this is the first time I've ever heard this claim.

I cannot quite follow that logic. The way I read it, the argument is "Yes, we keep stealing the things you build, but hey, look how good you have become at building new things! Even better: the world gets better from it. You have no reason to complain"

Should one really cheer one side because it is in one's best interest?

There's a New York Times article from yesterday making the opposite case: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/technology/samsung-and-app...

The Times article makes the argument that, while Apple didn't stop innovating because Samsung was copying them, Samsung stopped innovating because producing cheap Apple knockoffs was easier than producing unique products with unique features. I don't know if I believe it, but Allworth's claim that copying doesn't hurt the market is certainly not a slam dunk.

Yes, because every Samsung device in that market looks like a corresponding Apple product. Right. Now, where can I get the Apple product that was copied to produce the Galaxy Note or maybe just that 7" iPad I keep hearing about?

If that were true, then why is Apple copying Samsung? http://allthingsd.com/20120803/apples-eddy-cue-saw-market-fo...

There's never going to be a true counterfactual to whether Samsung would have innovated more or less if Apple hadn't come up with the iPhone. One thing that I will say: Samsung sure sell a lot of phone for a company that isn't innovative.

If you look at the evidence provided during the court case it's pretty obvious that's not true. Samsung created their own unique designs for everything, and only after benchmarking made changes to improve on them (because at the time samsung was much worse at design). If they 'copied', I would expect the earlier prototypes to look more like the iPhone, but the earlier prototypes look less like the iphone.

Also you must not know anything about the electronics industry if you find Samsung un-innovative. Aside from all innovative things that are plain to see in their devices, you also have more objective rankings like patent grants:

http://patentdocs.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451ca1469e201676730d...

Apple is not even on the list.

If they 'copied', I would expect the earlier prototypes to look more like the iPhone, but the earlier prototypes look less like the iphone.

Can you explain why what the earlier prototypes look like is relevant to whether they copied Apple in the final product?

Because the parent I was responding to talks about how much Samsung is innovating. The important thing is that their process is geared towards doing their own work and innovating on their own.

How much the end result looks like another product has no relevance in my mind because results and similarities could've been achieved independently, and the most important elements of the look and feel were, eg F700.

I don't think you understand what the word "copying" means.

It's certainly possible that similar end results can be achieved independently - that is what a court is determining, in this case.

If you take the assumption that Microsoft copied Apple, as this author has, I think the opposite conclusion can be drawn, that Apple very quickly lost in the marketplace and was circling the drain in 1997. There's a very real possibility that the iPhone will end up a marginal player within a few years, if Android maintains its trajectory.

In my opinion though, the big difference between Apple v Microsoft and Apple v Samsung is that Microsoft at least combined Apple's innovations with many innovations of their own, and Microsoft never tried to imitate Apple's trade dress.

You can't boil the Apple v Samsung conundrum down to a single paragraph, but I don't see much reason to defend Samsung -- all the serious innovation on the Android side is coming from Google, not Samsung. Samsung can make perfectly awesome devices without also spreading a bit of KIRF jelly on some products.

The article also casually throws out the iPod as an example where copying didn't hurt, when Apple was actually intensely protective of the main interface element, the click-wheel. Successfully defending that made also-ran mp3 players seem somewhat alien/weird. If anything, the success of the iPod emboldened them to continue this strategy.

The iPod won because competitors took too long to take the iPod seriously, and then too long to identify why it was successful.

By the time competitors managed to make competitive products, Apple had the iTunes Store and perhaps the most brilliant and long-lasting marketing campaign of a technology product, ever.

I think the PC won because it was cheaper and came to have better applications later not because MS copied some GUI elements.

I care. I care that if a company can copy another's innovation and (1) kill the innovative company (2) make innovative companies not willing to invest resources - time, money and talent - because these resources turn into free R&D for other companies.

I haven't given deep thought into my stance on patents in general, but to me, design - industrial design, visual design, software interaction design - takes a lot of effort and talent to get right. Implementing is easier. You can often throw bodies, hardware, money and fix implementation.

Most of the time, it is very easy to copy great design. That doesn't look right.

And I speak this as a developer.

Edit: added a line.

It's a good point, but if it's easy to copy how can we solve this problem?

It was not answered, I would like if people discussed this here, for example, if patents begins to be awarded massively on design would we have design patents trolls after some time? For example people registering elements of common use as their patents and suing people because of that.

Put 10 developers in a locked room and they would eventually come up with the same idea. Just because you thought of it first does not give you exclusive rights on elementary things. Also, you probably copied someone at some point anyway. Ideas does not simply just appear in your mind, you are influenced by everything around you.

It's very easy (and cheap) to say that after the idea has been born.

The idea of someone profiting from the trademark or patent of an idea because they 'thought of it first' may be abhorrent to you, but it's the way this patent system works. I think it's also important to distinguish between companies that think of ideas, then implement them, thus innovating in product; and companies who simply patent the ideas and use them to sue. We call those "patent trolls".

If it's referring specifically to code, I think yes, maybe if we put enough developers/teams in separate, locked rooms, they might eventually come up with the same implementation. But this is assuming they are providing code (solution) to solve an already-defined app (problem). And if we think about copying code, it is the source code that is being copied. Do we agree that copying code is wrong?

For design (again, referring to visual, UX, UI, etc, and not to software architecture design), the problem is how to make X better, e.g how to make interaction with a screen better [1]. And the solution is the design - we use fingers instead of stylus.

I'm thinking this out loud as I'm answering. So, it appears to me that what I am saying is, you can copy the problem (app or say UX issue) to be solved but you shouldn't copy the solution (be it code or design).

> Also, you probably copied someone at some point anyway.

I feel like going into this might be a digression so I'll try to keep this short - a specific example, when I was building my first iOS app, there was a competitor that was starting to be very well received. I'd like to say that I took note of what they did right and give my own twist to how to solve the problems which they saw important to solve. And I have specifically steered away in cases where it look like I couldn't come up with a better version, even if the replacement I had to use was not as good - a particular example was I have not to this date implement pull-(release)-to-refresh verbatim using any of the off-the-shelf OSS components in my app despite the original inventor giving permission to do it. So I do walk the walk.

Or maybe I did copy. But even if I smoke, I can still take the stand that smoking is harmful.

[1] I'm specifically referring to focusing on a finger/touch-based experience vs. using a stylus. I'm not claiming that Apple is the absolute first to do it since I had often used my thumb/finger instead of my stylus when I was using my Treo, but this is a good example of someone innovating.

There are gigantic piles of money being made off of the smartphone market. None of these companies are going to stop investing in this market for as long as they can, unless the courts force them to stop.

I don't think the article rigorously defends its position. Just because a company innovates after being copied does not mean it is innovating because it was copied. The article doesn't give one example of a situation where a company was motivated by being copied (or even a solid reason why they would be motivated by that).

I'll explain the correlation I see: products that are bound to be very profitable are bound to be copied, so of course a company like Apple will develop something like the iphone despite potential copycats.

Sorry, I don't see the article saying that a company innovates because it was copied. What it says is that being copied doesn't stop innovation — which is the whole premise of the IP system (if I can't recoup my R&D costs, then I can't afford to innovate).

You're right, the article argues that copying doesn't stifle innovation, but it goes beyond this and argues companies innovate because they are being copied. For example, this quote argues a correlation between copying and innovation, and hints at a causation:

>Being copied didn't stop or slow their ability to innovate at all. If anything, it only seemed to accelerate it. Apple wasn't able to rest on its laurels; to return to profitability, and to take the mantle they hold today of one of the technology industry's largest companies, they had to innovate as fast as they could.

I'd be the first to agree that an open, competitive market is a good thing. But the author is explicitly discussing "copying", which usually involves an infringement of IP a company considers novel and important to their competitive advantage. I wouldn't say the author's point is completely without merit, there's a balance at play. If the balance goes too anti-patent, companies would be better off investing very little in innovation and a lot in copy-cat products that can undercut true innovators. If Apple never existed, Samsung may today be selling 2008-era phones for 500 dollars. That's the risk.

If that's true, given that Apple felt it was being copied by Microsoft in the mid-1990s, took them to court, and lost — I'm not sure how much more "anti-patent" you can get for Apple than losing a case on its core product — then why did they bother to invest in creating all that stuff that's got them to where they did?

And, if an "anti-patent" causes companies not to invest, then how come, five years after the release of the iPhone, with it still not clear whether patents are being upheld or not (but not looking good in Apple's favor: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-09/samsung-wins-u-k-ap... ) then Apple continues to invest in the iPhone?

I get tired of hearing these black and white arguments about this case. He says who cares if Samsung copied Apple? What if Samsung created a product that looked indistinguishable from an iphone in every single way? That would be a problem.

So the question is, where do we draw the line? It's ludicrous for Apple to try to patent a rectangle, and that's what people are angry about. But somewhere in between there's a middle ground, and that's what these court cases are trying to find.

@insickness, i agree with you that patent of shape is weird. but, is iphone and galaxy really indistinguishable? they are different size, operating system, logos and even buttons are different. only similarity i can find is that they are rounded rectangle and color black when they are turned off and if you look from far distance they both looks like tv remote control,,,

Ultimately, I'd agree that Apple are being far too aggressive in this, but IMO the similarities go further than you describe. The Galaxy Ace [1] (I assume the court cases are at least in part about the Ace?) looks very similar to the iPhone and is practically the same size. My Ace is stored in an iPhone case, and it fits almost perfectly.

It also ships with a "Samsung Keypad" as the default input device. As far as I can tell, all this does is make the keyboard look more like the one on the iPhone. Compare the Samsung keyboard [2] with the iPhone keyboard [3].

As I said earlier, I personally think that Apple are pursuing this further than I would like, but in some cases it seems (to me at least) that the similarities are more than incidental.

[1] Example image: http://i.imgur.com/ZEW45.png

[2] Samsung keyboard: http://i.imgur.com/WxFt4.jpg

[3] iPhone keyboard: http://i.imgur.com/xSVdZ.jpg

I do not approve pixel-per-pixel copies, but if one takes ideas from another and improves upon them, one has my side. All those patent wars and things is just a game invented for those who do not innovate for others, but instead innovate for themselves.

In short? The companies and their lawyers. Litigation is becoming more about hampering your competition and protecting yourself than it is about consumers and things which are 'wrong.'

copying doesn't matter for consumers and improvising is better for innovation, both true facts. The point missed is that companies need to build unfair advantages to get benefits of their investments. Maybe the blind consumer does not care whether a company builds a great product or goes bankrupt, but preventing copying is one of the measures that lets a company remain competitive, and bring out more products for the long term good of the consumer.

Apple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1s_PybOuY0

Thanks for the link, that was really good presentation. I hope everybody watch it.

Is there not a sense of how absolutely broken the patent system is? Apple is playing a game that should not exist.

Apple.

Apple

"Who cares if Samsung" made a pale and horrid replica of what "Apple" is buying screens from them for.

Apple is probably one of Samsung's biggest clients.

I think patents shouldn't exists but... there's no point in making a copy of something else if you can't improve it... and Samsung couldn't even make the device decent.

> and Samsung couldn't even make the device decent.

That's your personal opinion, not the marketplace's opinion. Samsung smartphones are actually quite successful (they currently outsell the iPhone by a factor of ~2x according to latest financial results http://www.osnews.com/story/26228).

One thing I've learned from the Internet is that many people feel fine with citing their own opinion as fact. Especially when it comes to comparing electronic gizmos, college football teams and American trucks built between 1970 and 1990.

>> >> and Samsung couldn't even make the device decent.

>> That's your personal opinion, not the marketplace's opinion. Samsung smartphones are actually quite successful (they currently outsell the iPhone by a factor of ~2x according to latest financial results http://www.osnews.com/story/26228).

Selling well doesn't make any device decent, it only makes it popular.

Getting decent reviews (which Samsung's current phones do get) supports the notion that the Samsung phones are decent.

decent reviews is a small sample subset of reviewers. A better metric would be returns to the store and loyalty. Likewise sales is also capped by distribution and sales channels. Otherwise you could argue that the original iPhone was much more inferior to its competitors in 2007.

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