So, there’s a bit of a hubbub going on at Engadget, Daring Fireball, and other Apple blogs, about a Galaxy Tab case made by Anymode, a company with ties to Samsung (the story came from 9to5mac). It is claimed the case is a copy of Apple’s Smart Cover. Of course, those of us without any special affinity for one single company remember full-well that Apple itself took the idea for the Smart Cover from InCase, while InCase’s design was a massive improvement over Apple’s original iPad case. Lo and behold, Anymode’s case resembles the InCase design much more closely than it resembles the Apple design (no magnets). Weird that Engadget would leave InCase out of the picture (no surprise when it comes to Daring Fireball, of course, even though I pointed it out to Gruber), even though they reported on it when the Smart Cover was announced. Anywho, Samsung already denied that this product received the ‘Designed for Samsung Mobile’-logo, and Anymode has removed it from sales. None have been sold.
” Weird that Engadget would leave InCase out of the picture…”
Engadget doesn’t do a good job of concealing their are a very pro-Apple site.
Edited 2011-07-19 14:31 UTC
This would be noteworthy if not the fact that Apple pulls this sh**t all the time.
People seem to have forgotten how Sherlock was a copy of Watson (and dashboard was a copy of Konfabulator).
Samsung has shown a predilection for brute force (i.e. lacking originality) consumer products. However all of these covers are a copy of another product; This product was a Bathtub Cover.
I saw the story, and did remember the InCase article from when Apple announced their smart cover. The response from the pro Apple crowd was overwhelmingly full of crazies. I dropped a comment here and there citing another article from months ago that showed Apple copied the idea from InCase, however these people are lost to any reasoning that everybody, including Apple, copies. Their CEO even shamelessly said they copied years ago, yet to the masses Apple can do no wrong.
If incase patented the idea then they should sue Apple.
And then this site will naturally post a scathing rebuke against incase. Right?
RIGHT?
Edited 2011-07-19 15:58 UTC
If it’s a hardware patent, then no.
A) you can’t patent ideas
B) designs are covered by copyright law and/or trademark laws, not patent law.
But hey, Apple can do no wrong, right?
Frankly the OP on this thread is starting to look like the most clear cut troll i’ve ever seen on this site. Comments like those are a little unhinged…
I think the most appalling thing is the overwhelming crowd of people that sees Apple like some injured bird in need of protecting. Samsung/HTC/Goolge/Microsoft are like bullies beating Apple up for it’s lunch money.
Hmmm… okay, yes the In Case design looks similar. However, Apple did add the magnetic attachment and the auto on/off locking feature. However, In Case would have problems proving their design didn’t have prior art as a folding/concertina style design is quite an old concept. No entirely original at all.
Thom.. so Twitter is not your conduit to gripe at Gruber? Like it 🙂
Well, not intentionally. It’s just that people with balls allow comments on their sites.
Unfortunately, that site would just get overloaded with comments telling him that he is wrong (it would happen nearly all the time) thus taking it down.
On second thought… that wouldn’t be unfortunate.
Don’t you see the hypocrisy in the 9to5mac? These just don’t want to recognise the fact that Apple was not the first everywhere…
Apple may make the best gadgets, however their zeal borders on religious.
Absolutely. When I saw the Apple design, it reminded me of a number of other applications (sliding doors, folding mattresses, windscreen (windshield) sun visors… probably even some stuff pretty much like the actual application. I didn’t know of the In Case one, but I didn’t think the case was innovative at all. All I thought was cool was the mangentic attachment and the fact it controlled the device sleep. Even that wasn’t ground breaking. It was more the fact they pulled a number of disparate ideas together in to a single product. That was the clever part.
Seriously? When did OSNews become AppleNews?