“While Apple’s technology is a ‘very nice invention’, the technique used in Android differs from the iOS solution, argued Bas Berghuis van Woortman, one of Samsung’s lawyers. Because the Android based method is more hierarchical the system is more complex and therefore harder for developers to use, he said. […] Apple disagrees. ‘They suggest that they have a lesser solution, but that is simply not true’, said Apple’s lawyer Theo Blomme to judge Peter Blok, who presided over a team of three judges, in a response to Samsung’s claim.” I just wish these companies and their lawyers could see and hear themselves. If only for a few seconds. Not even Monty Python could write this. By the way, all these patents were already thrown out last year by the Dutch courts, but Apple started a ‘bottom procedure’, a more thorough handling of the case. Three expert IP judges preside, and due to the earlier ruling, Apple is fighting an uphill battle.
Even the Samsung lawyer’s name seems mocked up by Monty Python.
Edited 2012-09-08 12:31 UTC
That’s quite a normal Dutch name, actually. (Edit: if his name is Berghuis, and Woortman the firm as I interpreted it. Otherwise he’s just pretentious
)
Edited 2012-09-08 21:44 UTC
No one should buy their stuff, you do not feed trolls.
They are all trolls… get the phone that suites your needs.
All trolls are equal but some are more trolls then others . . .
Not even close to being true and Apple started all of this.
No they didn’t. Samsung decided to adopt a strategy of copying Apple. That’s where these problems started. Samsung could make it’s own dent in the universe. It chose not to. Which is a shame. Even Microsoft managed to come up something original for the smart phone. It’s not impossible. Just hard.
The question that begs for an answer is: at what point does being similar become copying, and at what point does copying go from flattering to wrong? I, for example, own a Galaxy Note that very, very clearly is nowhere near an iPhone yet I’ve still seen comments from Apple-fans claiming that it, too, is copying Apple’s products.
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/09/is-samsung-copy…
Neither Apple nor Samsung should be allowed to patent that, there’s simply absolutely NOTHING new or inventive in either patent application. Those things — including the controls and all — have been done already in the 80s.
I agree, but that’s a whole different subject. This is about Samsung yet again copying Apple stuff. It’s becoming hard to sum up all the stuff they copied without leaving something out.
Samsung copies Apple and sells a lot of stuff, Nokia (and RIM) doesn’t copy and doesn’t sell lots.
This makes me wonder why people claim the Apple vs Samsung verdict is bad for customer choice and innovation. If companies kept on copying Apple we’d end up with iPhones and iPhone look-a-likes. Nokia, who does offer a good and different product, doesn’t even get a chance to show its goods because everybody wants an iPhone or something that looks like it.
But as I said, that has been done already 30 years ago. How can it be copying Apple when Apple themselves aren’t doing anything new either, and are in fact copying what’s been done before?
If I replace my house with a pyramid and a few months later my neighbor suddenly also lives in a pyramid then I’d conclude he copied me.
Yes, pyramids have been around since aliens visited earth thousands of years ago, but really where did my neighbor get the idea from?
Samsung copied Nokia, BlackBerry and now Apple. Each time the went for the company who was doing best. The recent court case revealed how they were going to make their current products look and behave more Apple like.
The bright white earphones were a sign of an iPod in someone’s pocket. Of all the colors and designs Samsung could have picked/copied they chose Apple’s.
If Nokia suddenly sells millions of phones in all kinds of colors you can bet we’ll suddenly see Samsung phones in all kinds of colors.
Well, let them, but don’t claim Samsung innovates or offers customer choice. They offer copies, more of the same.
He’d be imitating you, yes, but that’s not wrong. It just shows poor taste.
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/smartphones/
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/mobile-phones/
Hmm. I see A LOT of stuff there that doesn’t resemble anything by Apple. The fact that you are completely oblivious to all the products Samsung ships does not negate the fact that they exist.
Then why copy Apple? My guess is that their Apple knock-offs sell much more than their Nokia ones.
That’s hardly their fault.
Hardly their fault that they put in a lot of effort to make their products look like Apple and launch a whole marketing campaign to promote these products?
I have seen their commercials regarding their Apple “inspired” products, but I haven’t seen any regarding their Nokia/BlackBerry ones.
These are just fillers, the money is in the middle to high end smart phones. That’s why they copy the leader in this category, that’s why they market these actively.
It would make no sense to market the lower end phones. They don’t make enough money and people who want a cheap phone will buy one without any commercials. They just go to the shop and buy based on looks ‘n’ price. These products sell themselves. The more expensive models need to convince customers why to spend their money on them.
You keep jumping from one claim to another every time I rebut them.
That’s not what I said. I said it’s hardly their fault that people want what they want.
Also, you keep saying that their products look like Apple’s ones like it was some sort of a universal fact, but well, as the saying goes the beauty is in the eye of the beholder: just yesterday I was looking at phones and I just do not see the resemblance between e.g SGS III and iPhone except that both have flat, rectangular screens.
That I cannot help you with.
People want iPhones. That’s why Google went from a Blackerry clone to an iOS one, that’s why Samsung made TouchWiz and made their products look like Apple ones.
I don’t think it’s wrong to go with the flow and give people what they want, but Samsung went very far in their copying no matter how you try to spin or excuse it.
This probably hurt Nokia more than it did Apple. People are now used to mobile phones with an iOS type of interface. Nokia is different with WP. This will put a number of people off, because they think they won’t understand it and prefer something they know they understand.
I just hope Nokia will get back in to the game so there will be true choice in the mobile phone world.
You my friend are displaying deep ignorance of how the technology world works. Claiming that Google copied the Blackberry then the iPhone is clearly an example of abject ignorance of the tech industry. And someone reading OSnews should have much more sense that what you are displaying here. In the tech world we have a thing called “Form Factors” and different segments of the industry employs different types of form factors.
In the mobile segment you have half-screen devices such as Palm and Blackberry and full screen devices such as PocketPC and Iphone and others. Some devices have flip out keyboards while others do not. Your feeble claim that Google copied Blackberry first then Apple based on the form-factor of the device when the fact is Android was designed to span all form-factors is laughable at best. It makes me wonder if you are just chiming in from some public relations firm such as Burson-Marsteller. They have been quite active in forums and places like Slashdot lately spewing this same line of reasoning.
You don’t seem to be aware that Android looked a lot like the BlackBerry OS before they changed it to be more like iOS.
http://m.gizmodo.com/5905142/the-original-google-phone-was-almost-a…
[Warning: I’m going slightly^W OT, sorry].
I hope so, too, but I can’t see it coming in the near future. Nokia screwed up big time by alienating their existing customer base, which was used to many great features that have been thrown away along with some UI sluggishness when they moved to WP.
They switched to the platform that had the least in common with their previous offering – no doubt why they failed to convert a vast majority of users. They contributed some great added value (Maps, Drive) and WP would have been far less competitive without their offering.
But the inability to save SMS drafts, to have a standby screen, to use a phone as a mass storage device, to transfer files via Bluetooth, to manage internal storage and so on really sucks for those who enjoyed their old Nokias. They could mean nothing to others, but many of them already went with other platforms and making them switch back will be even harder.
Moving to such a different OS is too much of a change for the ones who grew up with Windows Mobile and Symbian – you could do whatever you wanted with them. Not because of the tiles – something Microsoft managed to do right – but because of everything else.
This is directed at Microsoft, too – while offering a fresh user experience in terms of interface design, they copied the Apple walled garden approach (no patent on that, unfortunately), even replicating the majority of its shortcomings – closed BT, lack of file management, even missing copy/paste features on the first version of WP.
If I had liked that approach I would have chosen Apple right away – I had stayed with both MS and Nokia because of the openness of their platforms. They’re not a choice anymore for those who care about it. Linux-based efforts – Android, MeeGo/Nemo, WebOS, Tizen and such – are the natural haven for those who feel orphaned by Nokia.
If Nokia manage do get the WP platform some traction – and their hardware is really gorgeous btw – good for them, but if things don’t change in the WP ecosystem they will need to build a completely new userbase – and that’s not going to be easy at all.
[I get the feeling my English sounds very unnatural, if not downright wrong, so please bear with me.]
Sometimes you need to take a step back to (one day) make a leap forward.
WP8 seems to be more the real thing than WP7 was. I do think Nokia and Microsoft listen to user feedback and WP8 will feature features WP7 was missing.
Now they just need to bring their new Lumias to market, which they have not publicly set a date for.
@ MOS6510
Just for the record, where would the IT industry be today had IBM forbidden to clone the first PC’s?
There is no way to know for sure.
The period in which there were a large number of different computer systems probably would have lasted much longer. Commodore and Atari may have had a longer run or even still be around today. New companies would have had a chance to bring out new systems with some hope of grabbing enough marketshare to survive.
The difference between a Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc… is really just the logo they stick on the front. Even an Apple iMac is just a x86 PC running OS X.
I guess you just gave proof that patents are no good.
Never said they were, my only claim is that simply copying does nothing to improve choice.
A better parallel would be if several other people on your street had purchased pyramids before you – but you still conclude your neighbor copied you specifically, because of some superficial similarity. That’s not only an example of the post hoc fallacy, but a sign of narcissistic personality disorder: assuming that everything is somehow about you.
Apple fanboism is nothing more than narcissistic personality disorder by proxy: iFanboys assume that everything is somehow about Apple. And if there’s anything more pathetic than a narcissist, it’s a narcissist who needs a proxy.
And, in turn, Apple copied Microsoft (Windows Mobile), Palm, and Nokia with the iPhone – Apple released a smartphone years afterward, so the only possible conclusion is that they were copying. Or, at least, that’s the conclusion you would reach if you were honest enough to apply your “post hoc” reasoning consistently.
Of course, that’s just SOP for Apple. They couldn’t even be bothered to come up with an original name for their smartphone, and instead choose willful infringement of CISCO’s “IPhone” trademark.
If the neighbor has a dossier on his living room table titled “How to make our crappy pyramid look like the next door one” I think it’s safe to assume who he is copying. Even more when his dad told him not to be so obvious about it.
What’s that “whoosh”, I hear? Ah yes, that’s the sound of you moving the goalposts.
I moved them back. When you wrote “A better parallel would” you started moving them and did this by including some theory about fanboys.
My point is that Samsung copied Apple. Samsung proved this themselves with their “How to make our stuff look more like Apple stuff so it will suck less” documents and each time this is pointed out the Tea Party ignores this and goes off in another direction.
Apple may not be original, things have been done before, sometimes a very long time ago, but you can’t claim Samsung’s inspiration came from prior art if there is a whole list of stuff they copied from Apple and they actually have a list where they showed us how they did it.
This was illustrated with my parallel: the pyramid. It has been around for a very long time, but if nobody in your town builds one until you do and then your neighbor does it’s very clear he didn’t look at the Maya’s.
Wether Samsung should or should not be allowed to copy Apple/RIM/Nokia is a different subject.
That’s the problem here. The jury in the US ruled that Samsung phones with keyboards and phones with like 5 weirdly arranged buttons below the screen infringed iPhone *design* patents. If those phones infringe, then sure AS HELL Nokia’s Lumias would have been found infringing as well, had they been part of the case.
Many people seem to think this is only about the Galaxy Ace – it’s not. A whole sew of CLEARLY different devices were found infringing on design patents, and arguing that’s okay is arguing nobody should be allowed to compete with Apple at all.
I don’t argue that’s okay, it is weird.
If one gives a verdict one should motivate why. If a product is found to be infringing it should be stated why. If you don’t know why what you did is wrong it’s rather difficult to do it different next time or change the current situation.
Also if the motivation is wrong you have the opportunity to say so. If product A on the bad list, because the verdict says it has feature B, but it doesn’t have feature B it’s easy to point out.
Going way off topic here 🙂
I just noticed your avatar, I loved that game!!!
I’m guessing you played on the C64 due to your login, I played it on an Apple ][ back in the day 🙂
Sadly a number of people see this, the Avatar from Ultima V, but I keep seeing my previous graphic, the Commodore logo. 🙁
But it is a great game! I haven’t played it on the Apple ][, but since it was designed on one it should be great there too. And it would be the original one, just the way Richard Garriot intended it to be.
I just can’t seem to get hold of an Apple ][.
Ahh, Ultima V – at least I guessed right that it’s some RPG, when asking recently IIRC ;p
Well, I never really got into Ultimas, never really had the chance; more a thing or two about Fallout, Planescape, Icewind Dale (but strangely, not Baldur’s…), with a touch of “middle-gen” FFs. Just some brief contact with Ultima VIII Pagan.
But looking at http://www.mobygames.com/game/ultima-v-warriors-of-destiny/screensh… I suspect “just the way Richard Garriot intended it to be” is not the most fortunate choice of words…
PS. Clear cache/proxy? And maybe load a new version of that Avatar avatar (
) – the one you have seems to be getting automatically up-converted in a “modern & nice” way at some stage, blurring the pixels …which just doesn’t fit it, IMHO.
Edited 2012-09-12 04:53 UTC
Yes, you did mention it earlier, but you have an annoying habit of replying just before the replying-deadline so I can’t replay back. :-p
Yeah, I cleared all the caches, but I couldn’t get the Avatar to appear on any computer or phone in any place. But after reading your reply I noticed it did appear! An now I’m on another computer and there it is too.
Regarding Ultima V, maybe “as intended” doesn’t describe what I meant the best way. Richard may have wanted it different, but hardware restrictions held him back. So let’s change it to: how he (and his co-programmers) made it. The rest are conversions.
The Amiga being a very bad one. Music would play, you’d pick something up, the music would stop, the picking-something-up sound would play, the music would start again… at the beginning! How on earth did that ever get past play testing or deemed acceptable!?
Well, it’s more or less organic (as in, ~emergent), I guess – just going through still fresh but not “breaking” news (when the tumult dies down; no reason to follow & get embroiled into unfolding flames, let others to take care of that) …and, when an impulse to reply shows up after all, of course it’ll work only in stories which are before the limit
Your Avatar avatar shows up to you now, but it’s still blurry… ;/
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_V#Development description & mobygames screenshots, it seems the C=128 version might be the closest to what the original would be like, if not for GFX weirdness of Apple II …and the PC version perhaps already all-around nicest (or maybe FM Towns one); maybe you wouldn’t be so allergic to DOSbox emu, after all that’s a PC on a PC ;p
when HTC was selling a lot, Apple was suying HTC.
Now Samsung beat HTC to that and got sued by apple
I guess the Nexus One looked like an iphone to you?
I have no idea what a Nexus One looks like, because I have never met someone who had one.
But apart from that, I don’t see how your statements bear any relation to what I said.
Let me see if I understand correctly… if a company sells a “copy” that’s comparable to a more expensive product, then in your mind that’s bad for consumer choice? And to you, being able to produce a product that’s comparable to a competitors (but less expensive) isn’t innovative? So rounded corners on a rectangle are innovative, but more efficient manufacturing processes aren’t?
Even if everyone followed your example & blindly accepted the notion that Samsung does nothing but copy Apple, then you still have to ignore all of those details to conclude that it has no possible benefits for consumer choice.
So Samsung is copying Apple because they both have “volume up”, “volume down” and “answer call” on the earphones remote control? That’s a ridiculous claim. There are tons of earlier earphones with a similar design. What other buttons would you put on a earphones remote control?
http://nicklazilla.tumblr.com/post/29202801252/samsung-is-apples-bi…
This sort of back and forth could go on a long time. It seems to me that one should clarify what one is arguing about.
Does anyone think that Samsung did not deliberately try to copy Apple’s iPhone, iOS and trade dress (packaging , retails styles etc)?
There seems to be a lot of evidence that they did, not just lists of obviously similar designs (in some cases very, very similar) but also the documents that came out in the trial that showed that copying Apple was a strategy. It’s probably not really worth arguing about whether they did or did not because if you think they did not, in face of the huge amount of evidence that they did, then I doubt anything would change your mind.
A more interesting argument is that which says that Samsung did copy but there is nothing wrong in doing that and that there should be no legal restraint on copying (or at least the sort of copying Samsung undertook).
A lot of people deny human induced climate change and I’m starting to suspect these are the same people who deny Samsung copied Apple.
Samsung admitted they did it via their how-to-copy-Apple documents.
Troll!!!
Ah, the Fin from Finland who hates Finland.
If I consider all the information at hand, what you write, how you write, how you comprehend what others write, your English language skills in general and your avatar I assume you are about 14 years old. So it’s hard to hold you entirely responsible for your “style”.
I’ll give you this tip:
When you make statements, claims or even insults MOTIVATE them. Tell us why you think/say stuff. I’m pretty sure you know why you decided to type something and hit the submit comment button, just write that down. If you don’t then don’t.
Until now you’ve been posting one liners and sometimes even less than that.
If you don’t understand what someone says then either say so or don’t reply, don’t shout out random things.
AND: don’t complain you’re being voted down if you yourself use 49% of your votes to vote comments down. It makes you look hypocritical.
Troll!
I can’t say you’re improving, but keep practicing and stop hating Finland.
Have you stopped hitting your wife ?
What makes you think I hit my wife? For the record: I don’t.
That is low. You’d do well to apologise.
he can go to hell!
That in the tech space you have one multinational trashing its own technology, and a competing multinational praising, all because of some patent litigation.
Is this competition?
I’m to blame for reading the comments before the article but, from this blurb, it sounds to me like Apple is disagreeing with Samsung about Android having a lesser solution to multi-touch rather than still attempting to attack. My own fault, but a bit humorous anyway. Silly me, of course Apple is still on the attack. I’m going to go slap myself for being irrationally optimistic.
It does not matter whether Samsung “copied” the iPhone or iPad. Both are not “unique designs” as apple wants us to believe. Patenting a “rectangle with rounded corners” shows how sick that (us)-system is. There is loads of prior art and apple as a company has always taken designs from others for their products. Apple is good in marketing but not in designing nor in technique, it never was.
If you look at the smartphone market they all look alike: thin, touchscreen, rounded edges in some way. That should not be patentable.
If one should mix up the two brands although the name is pretty large on both, then I doubt such one is able to use the device.
So Apple has become a patenttrol and I don’t like patentrolls.