Samsung Cites Kubrick's '2001' Film as Prior Art Defense Against Apple's Injunction Request

[horvatic]

That defense might work against Microsoft but not Apple

That defense might work against microsoft, but not Apple.
What does Samsung have to do with that movie, NOTHING!
Those are displays that are embedded in a table, not portable tablets like an iPad. Piss poor defense that I doubt will stand up in court. Makes a good laugh as to how Samsungs defense is grabbing at straws.

In this case wins!!!!!

 

[iHEARTcartoons]

This is all a horse [bleep] debate, because it's got nothing to do with patents or right and wrong.

It's called smart (not necessarily fair) business. What better way to stop your competitors, by not even allowing them to gain a foothold since they can't put their product on the shelf.

 

[Shrink]

This whole business is becoming self-satire.

Also - something about 600 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean...

 

[divinox]

There are numerous claims made by Apple in its suit against Samsung.

But I thought you might like to compare the original Apple iOS icons for various smartphone functions with the ones Samsung chose to "create" for its Touchwiz interface:

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I don't see how any reasonable person could look at those icons and NOT see that Samsung blatantly copied Apple's copyrights. Did they HAVE to make the "Phone" icon green? Did they HAVE to use a gear icon to represent "Settings" Did they HAVE to use a yellow legal pad to represent a notepad? Did they HAVE to use a yellow sunflower to represent the "pictures" function? Did they have to use the exact same pair of musical notes superimposed on a CD to represent music?

Would it really be "preventing innovation" if Samsung had, for example, used a pair of crossed wrenches to represent settings? Would people not be able to understand a Phone icon with a blue background?

No - Samsung went out of their way to rip-off just about every element they could find to copy the iPhone and iPad.

those icons looks generic to me. heck, thats the whole point of icons. stylized graphics that are easy for the user to understand.

p.s. the phone-icon and its equivalents have always been green for call (red for hang-up).

 

[Lennholm]

dude. 1 infinite loop does not give out law degrees.

Oh snap! You're just to clever for me

 

[Porco]

If fictional designs in movies count, imagine when we start building spaceships, the design law suits will really start er, flying (literally!).

 

[divinox]

Yes. a phone head piece and the color green has been used for the answer button on cell phones since forever, did you know there were cell phones before the iPhone?
The only distinct feature Apple contributed to that icon is the striping and Samsung doesn't use that.



Maybe they didn't have to, but using gears to represent settings and configuration is standard and used by basically every GUI, not just by Apple and Samsung



Using real world counterparts to represent something is not an invention by Apple



Using nature motifs and flowers in particular in photography related stuff is not something Apple started



Two joined 8ths are probably the most common use of notes to represent music and audio. Don't know if two joined 8ths or a single 8th is the most used



Is also commonly used, so I guess some one else should've sued Samsung for that then



As I've explained; no more than Apple ripped off pre-existing conventions with their UI

Hey, i dont even see them as the same counter-part. Apple has a pad, Sammy a post-it. Or am i "looking at it wrong"?

 

[RogerWilco]

A bit off topic but 2001 is by far one of ther best movies ever made. For an interesting interpretation of that movie and conspirancy theory around check out this link. I am not saying its true but the read is intriguing.

http://www.jayweidner.com/index.html#KO

Watch George Pal's Destination Moon. For 2001, Kubrick "borrowed" entire scenes from that '50s classic.

 

[Oletros]

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If I remember correctly, the Razr had gears for settings icon

 

[erzhik]

This whole lawsuit has become a complete and utter joke.

 

[divinox]

correction: Apple patented a rectangular tablet device with[out] specific dimensions that samsung copied [even though the dimensions are anything but identical].

fyp.

 

[tbrinkma]

Most same-featured cellphones (even dumb phones, where you can't claim everyone is copying Apple) looks the same without doing a simple side-by-side comparison.

Most same-featured cellphones look *similar*, but can be distinguished, even at a distance without having to do a side-by-side comparison. That's not the case with the majority of the Android tablets I've seen. Prior to the iPhone the only time I had difficulty telling two phones apart were when they were the same model, or at least similar models from the same manufacturer. (This month's, and last month's revision, for example.)

I believe the SAMSUNG logo is not on the front on the US version of the Tab but it is in Europe, and that's where this case is taking place.

Ah. Ok, that would explain why I've never seen the Samsung logo on the front. (Wonder why they did that? Why on earth use two different production processes for an otherwise identical component?) Oddly, though, I don't remember seeing it on any of the pictures that have been posted in these threads either. (Including a large number of advertisements, which *almost* always use vendor-supplied art rather than retailer-created art.)

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those icons looks generic to me. heck, thats the whole point of icons. stylized graphics that are easy for the user to understand.

p.s. the phone-icon and its equivalents have always been green for call (red for hang-up).

Image

And right there, you've demonstrated how easy it is to come up with a phone symbol that *doesn't* look so much like the iPhone's icon. (Even while using the same general color combination.)


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And as a complete and utter aside...

"Hey, neat! MacRumors forum software appends your posts now when they'd otherwise be one after the other! Cool!"

 

[divinox]

Am I really the only one who seems to think that the iPad's design is just the logical end to a design problem? Stuff like that shouldn't be able to be patented.

So logical it was (still) very obvious at the beginning of this century...

 

[Lennholm]

Hey, i dont even see them as the same counter-part. Apple has a pad, Sammy a post-it. Or am i "looking at it wrong"?

Good point. I didn't mean that Samsungs icon is the counterpart of the Apple icon. I meant that a pad is a real world counterpart to a digital notes application so a picture of a pad as an icon just makes sense. Just as a post-it is also a real world counterpart to a notes application and is appropriate as an icon.
Hmm, that almost turned into a A == B, B == C, A != C thing

 

[AidenShaw]

Spoiler

A bit off topic but 2001 is by far one of ther best movies ever made. For an interesting interpretation of that movie and conspirancy theory around check out this link. I am not saying its true but the read is intriguing.

http://www.jayweidner.com/index.html#KO

The story is the old "the Apollo moon landings never happened, they were done in Hollywood" conspiracy mash.

The only "intriguing" thing is the suggestion that Kubrick faked all the moon footage.

 

[abaxworld]

And if it have been out for so long time, why Samsung or others haven't done it before Apple? Why they have been waiting for other to make it real to make their own? This is just the same to say that american and russians didn't invent the space shuttles because Jules Verne wrote about it 100 years before. Literature, painting, films,... can inspire devices but if they didn't really make them they are not inventors

 

[divinox]

Let's get a few points straight (for the record).

1) Prior art *can* exist in literature and film decades prior to an item actually being possible to make. Prior art is a defense against *patents*.

2) A "patent" and a "design patent" are two, *vastly* different legal constructs.

3) Design patents have more in common with trademarks, trade dress and copyrights than they do with patents.

4) Prior art is not a defense against trademark or trade dress claims any more than the claims often seen in these threads that "a black border with rounded corners is the only way to do a tablet!", despite better than a decade of prior examples of windows-based tablet PCs with greatly differing visuals and configurations. (Seriously, someone posted a picture of an HP tablet PC with a multiple shades of gray, plastic bezel and rounded edges (not just corners) as proof that the iPad was the *only* way to design a table. )

The 'tablets' shown in 2001 don't demonstrate even a single tablet-like quality. They are never interacted with, much less picked up or even moved. I'm not a lawyer, but it's a bit of a stretch to think that a TV embedded in a desktop is going to prove much of anything here other than that at some point someone thought portable displays would be possible.

Nor a movie-watcher. The device is being moved. The reasons why they (in 1968) opted out on device interaction and such should be quite obvious. Further, its format hints at its use. Portrait for TV and TV alone would make little sense, and hardly make viewers go "wow, the future".

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And if it have been out for so long time, why Samsung or others haven't done it before Apple? Why they have been waiting for other to make it real to make their own? This is just the same to say that american and russians didn't invent the space shuttles because Jules Verne wrote about it 100 years before. Literature, painting, films,... can inspire devices but if they didn't really make them they are not inventors

They have.

 

[aristotle]

The issue here really isn't just the shape but a combination of the shape and the technology used to actually implement multitouch without a resistive display.

It is really easy to have a non-working concept in a movie compared with a working model in the real world.

The 2001 movie did not show any interactive capability with that display and the PADD from Start Trek were just static resin models with a backlit film for the "display".

Mutitouch and capacitive displays were the real breakthroughs as well as using a UI design for fingers. Previous windows tablets used windows controls or simple skins on a basic grid design rather than a scrollable list of controls like iPhone screens offer.

 

[nonarKitten]

No, no, no, no, no!

People, please, we should WANT Samsung to win this one.

Why?

Patent law presently requires that a document describe the invention in such a way as to be able to reproduce it. Nothing happens in 2001 where an engineer explains how the pads work; that doesn't happen in Star Trek either.

However, if Samsung won, then that requirement has just been lifted, and any documented idea alone can be construed as prior art. Just stop and think of how many ideas have been proposed in science fiction (or any fiction for that matter) that could predate a fileable patent.

If the ruling is in favour of Samsung, this could be the end of patents as we know it.

 

[divinox]

Electrovaya should sue Apple (circa 2005)
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Rounded corners. All this predating the iPad. c'mon now Apple...

Earlier (2003), and the later ones are TabletKiosk products (earliest i've seen with "ipad look" is 2004).

p.s. the sc4000 (#2) is quite new.

 

[MacinDoc]

So would this mean that if at some time in the future someone developed a matter to energy converter or faster than light transport technology, they could not patent such inventions? What then is the point of spending research dollars developing technology; it is almost infinitely less expensive to copy what someone else is already doing. Too bad if that meant that the drive to further advance technology was lost.

 

[Garbageday]

The issue here really isn't just the shape

Actually, it is.

 

[divinox]

Try again. Reality check. The design patent is specific to a specific device. The iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Mini, etc., all have specific design patents tied to their product form factor and specific to the device and what it proposes to do.

A solid write up from a FOSS advocate:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-is-right-to-protect-its-ipad-design-patent/54538

You are both right. Apple uses incremental filing, and has their devices registrered from outlines to full devices (and variations of said devices that they will never use themselves).

 

[mytdave]

flood gates

Hey, hey, I'm going to use video footage from the original Star Trek series to mount a patent defense against anyone who develops a tricorder in the future.

 

[Meandmunch]

I actually have to side with Samsung on this one.

"Samsung hopes to demonstrate that there is little variation possible when designing a tablet and show that the general concept used by Apple for the iPad has actually been circulating for decades."

Just how exactly is a Tablet supposed to be anything but whats described in Apples Patent? All other tablets are supposed to Cubed or Spherical?

Thats like one rain drop suing another rain drop for shape and design infringements.