Samsung might not have tried to copy the iPhone
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
Groklaw is arguing that he cannot find the actual phrase that the media used over and over again in the documents but the jurors didn't decide on the case over that phrase (I'm not getting into the actual verdict or my personal opinion on it), nor they decided according to what the media said on those days.
They did based on what Apple and Samsung attorneys argued on the trial, and they both presented a lot of evidence to make their own case.
Whats more, even Groklaw admits "I didn't grab all the exhibits, simply because it got incredibly expensive. But I have almost all of them, certainly the ones that seemed most interesting".
Id admire that he is willing to sit through the paperwork but this is beyond pointless. If something was said that was not on the evidence records and somehow misrepresent the situation I'd assume that Samsung lawyers would jump on it. Same for Apple.
If Groklaw is making the case that the media did a poor job and started using and reusing a phrase that was not on the records, well, thats a problem for the media but not, as CNET suggests, a problem with the veredict itself.
Or did they based on what some over-bearing jury foreman argued, a man who wanted to prove a point with patents, and has a reasonable bias against Samsung? I think that's the point Groklaw are making. The more they dig in, the more it looks like this guy has and continues to have an agenda.
That said, how did the Samsung attorneys not weed this guy out pre-trial? That was a huge blunder.
That, and the lawyers from both sides have only limited time to investigate all of the candidates.
We can see clear bias now, after the fact. Samsung had to weed through a much larger haystack that featured much more obvious bias that they did catch.
(the other pictures of external design are pretty similar though, no disagreement there)
> wall of icons design was around forever
Edit: there is. That was not a Samsung store but a Euronics one in Italy. Samsung had nothing to do with decorating the store.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/23/samsung_shop_featu...
http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/23/samsung_shop_featu...
Not normal icons. Look at the red arrows: They point to the icons of Safari and the Apple Store. Which makes no sense in a Samsung store.
Same for Google Maps: why is the search field above the maps gray, rounded, and has a light gray x inside a circle to clear? This is not an arbitrary search field. This is not a typical "Google Maps" search field. There are millions of different styles of search fields, why take exactly the same search field as on the iPhone?
Because the screen is a certain size and icons need to be big enough and small enough, up-down scrolling would be less ergonomic (longer swipes to switch pages), and there are a few features you always want access to, respectively.
How else would you do it?
As for the maps picture, I have a feeling that's faked, or that it's Google's mapping app, in which case consistent interface would be downright expected.
(see this for example: http://www.gadgetnutz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/map.jpg - not similar to what's in the posted gallery)
But trade dress protection is not intended to prevent intellectual dishonesty or protect intellectual property or any other notion of fairness between companies. It is there for a specific practical purpose: to protect consumers from confusion.
But Apple's branding is so effective and distinctive that confusing consumers about what is or isn't an Apple product would be quite difficult without straight up violating their trademarks. Look again at the gallery you linked to, and instead of asking "Did Samsung copy Apple?", ask yourself "Could a shopper looking for a smartphone in a store honestly confuse these two products?"
Also, the iPod connector? Nothing to do with the Galaxy S. That's probably just a Samsung iPod connector, for you know, iPods and iPhones. The Galaxy S uses micro-USB.
That is the stock galaxy tab cable.
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab-accessories/ECC1...
I'm not talking about technical differences. You can look at phone, or the box, and instantly recognize which one is an Apple product.
>Many people just want an iPhone, walk into a store, and end up buying some Android phone because they are told it's the same thing but cheaper.
On what planet do a salespeople try to mislead customers into buying less expensive products?
>That's what trade dress protection should prevent.
That is simply incorrect. Trade dress protection is to prevent customers from mistaking one product (and/or manufacturer) for another. If a customer understands that product X is not product Y, but believes that the two products are functionally equivalent, then that has nothing to do with trade dress protection.
I'm sure there's something more authoritative:
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/05/04/verizon-employees-pu...
I would also like to remind everyone about the popular chinese tech blogger (self proclaimed) that thought a knockoff iPhone was the real thing.
(Random video of this)
http://www.clicknetwork.tv/watch.aspx?c=1&p=8&v=112
Its obviously in the interest of a manufacturer to create some confusion over the branding in order to produce more sales.
> http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/05/04/verizon-employees-pu...
That's not a question of trade dress. Verizon sales representatives are well within their rights legally to push Android over iOS (contractually, maybe not, but that's a separate issue). Saying "X is better than an iPhone" is entirely different from saying "X is an iPhone". And actually, neither case is relevant to trade dress, which is about customer confusion due to product appearance, not customer confusion due to salespeople.
> I would also like to remind everyone about the popular chinese tech blogger (self proclaimed) that thought a knockoff iPhone was the real thing.
You'll note that the knockoff was branded as an iPhone. No one disputes that counterfeit devices are designed to confuse. That's why they're call counterfeit devices and not competing devices.
Sorry, but that just sounds like the delusions of an Apple fanboy. If your theory had any truth to it, Android sales would've plummeted a year ago, when the iPhone 3GS became free on contract. But instead, the Samsung Galaxy S3, which has been selling for $200 (the same price as the latest iPhone) has had phenomenal sales.
It simultaneously puts the iPhone buying public down as ill-informed shopping sheep and elevates those that go in intending to buy an Android phone from the get-go.
I personally think better of most people. They buy phones for a variety of reasons, trickery by nefarious phone store salesmen, taking advantage of poor victimized and gullible iPhone buyers is probably very low on the list.
You certainly have a very interesting definition for "progress."
Ever notice that basically all cars have 90% identical feature sets while only a small handful of special features differentiate any particular model from the rest of the market? How did that situation come about? Did God come down from heaven in 1970 with some stone tablets describing an AMC Pacer and declare "Here is the basic idea of the automobile. Now go forth and add superficial features to this design"?
Of course not. What happened was that manufacturers competed for many decades, incrementally adding new features. And when one manufacturer found a feature that succeeded in the market, other manufacturers copied it.
This is how technology advances: by building on past success.
What does not lead to progress is imitation, where the feature in question is copied to be completely identical without any incremental improvements or adjustments for context.
I'm sure much of the "evidence" can be debunked in such a way as this article has, but taken as a whole I think Apple's case was convincing.
If you want to see other good examples of wholesale copying, go to a brick & mortar computer store (such as the new Microsoft Store) and view how all of the PC laptops have island key keyboards, aluminium or similar metal casings, cameras on top, drop hinges, and massive button-less touchpads.
Particularly interesting is the last slide, #126, which includes in its Directions For Improvement "Remove a feeling that iPhone's menu icons are copied by differentiating design"
From my cursory review of the document, all I can see it doing is compare the user experience between the two products. To me it's the difference between a clean-room reverse engineering exercise to build a competing product (implement, compare, revise) vs. a cloning manual (nowhere in that document does it instruct Samsung hardware/software engineers to copy Apple's form and function, it simply highlights areas of improvement; there are areas where I'm sure they concluded Samsung's implementation was better but they didn't write "hey guys we're busy cloning here, stop innovating!").
Look at #114 for example, which describes how Apple's phone has an animation when deleting notes. They don't write "we need an animation when deleting notes" (which would be copying). They identify the purpose of the animation ("fun factor") and recommend introducing some kind of "fun factor" in their own product, and leave details to designers to independently arrive at.
In fact, I recommend reading the very last paragraph in that document: "Remove a feeling that iPhone's menu icons are copied by differentiating design." This is no more sinister than making car wheels round.
Now you could argue that Samsung was just very clever about the way they went and copied things, but there's no concrete evidence of this theory of intent that I've seen presented.
As a matter of practicality, are you honestly telling me if you manufactured [cars, fridges, stoves, watches, laptops, televisions, software, ...] you wouldn't look at your competitor's [cars, fridges, ...] to make sure your design didn't miss anything obvious?
After the first reviews of your new product come in criticizing basic design flaws and viewing it as a "step backwards from competitor A", are you seriously telling me you'd be totally happy to stand there in front of your shareholders and say "Well yeah we could have done some competitive research but that'd be really unfair to our competitors they're actually pretty nice people and we don't want them to be mad!"?
Yes Apple probably spent a fair bit of money researching their UX and Samsung piggy-backed on their research. No more so than Apple piggy-backing on Xerox's work 30 years ago. And their payoff was they were first to market and have become the biggest company in US history. I'm struggling to see where the damage is, or the loss for consumers.
Obviously it was their job to present the evidence in this way. Samsung's lawyers should have countered that with the full picture.