Samsung's 'Crisis of Design' Memo Enters Patent Trial as Early Apple Designer Testifies on Confusion

[KnightWRX]

Just because it hasn't come up, doesn't mean it WONT come up. They introduce things into court cases all the time. I don't know if it will, I am just saying that even the connector is similar (IMO).

Look, discovery is over, we're at trial. They can't introduce new evidence anymore, it has to have been already put forth in discovery, like this memo was.

This is no movie, you can't just show up after the trial has started with "surprise" evidence or witnesses.

They introduce "things into court cases" during discovery so that each legal team has time to built arguments around the presented evidence.

What don't you understand here ?

And i wasn't "ranting" about the dock connector, just making a statement. You don't need to over-sensationalize statements in others' posts just to dramatize your replies.

The post was long winded and had nothing to do with the court case. The power/dock connectors are not at issue, Apple hasn't used them in their trade dress nor can they now that discovery is over and the case has gone to trial.

 

[kdarling]

Perhaps everyone does do it. From a legal point of view I have no clue what I'm talking about BUT, as a layman, looking through that document, it's so abundantly clear that Samsung have focused on ONE competitor ...

Corporations do internal comparisons with competing products all the time to see how they might improve their own product. Doesn't matter if the product is hamburgers, or carrier phone plans, or smartphones.

Heck, often corporations go even further and will do comparisons against what they THINK their competitors will do. A good example is when Apple commissioned a designer to create a mockup of what he thought a Sony design would be like. (He did well. It definitely had a Sony look to it.) Then they used some of the ideas from it. It's all normal behavior.

@craznar, then why before the iPhone all phones has a keyboard?

What? No, they didn't all have keyboards before the iPhone.

At the time there were two types of smartphones: touch and not. Obviously the non-touch had keyboards.

The touch types had touch stylus keyboards and sometimes a physical keyboard. Physical keyboards were actually a latecomer to PDAs and smartphones, being seen as a luxury feature on top models at first.

Apple's tremendous advantage was that its business model was entirely different than the competition, and there was great risk when Apple entered the market. Apple's advantage was that the carriers weren't going to get to mess with the phone. Even Samsung has learned this.

Apple had no great risk. They'd already looked bad with the ill-fated ROKR collaboration. It'd be hard to go downhill from there

What was different about their initial business model was that they didn't allow carrier logos and they didn't allow customer subsidies (which later changed).

AT&T saw no problem with those ideas, since they were able to wrangle a ridiculously long exclusivity in return.

As for iOS calcification, I'm not seeing that this is hindering iPhone acceptance, and legacy support is still longer than anyone else in the industry.

Windows Mobile, Symbian and others had far longer legacy support. That's the whole problem. Sometimes you have to throw everything away, like MS just did with their Windows Phone rewrite (again).

Three years from now, we will be hearing of a complete rewrite of iOS, and 5 years from now, we will be seeing it. That is the way Apple works.

You really think so? It's true that Apple has traditionally been willing to toss things aside (PowerPC comes to mind), but I think in this case they're pretty locked in. I'm open to debate on it, of course!

 

[KnightWRX]

You really think so? It's true that Apple has traditionally been willing to toss things aside (PowerPC comes to mind), but I think in this case they're pretty locked in. I'm open to debate on it, of course!

I think this is especially true in light of the "Retina" display and the new rumored "elongated Retina" display. While Apple could have pushed developers to not target a single, pixel size on the display, they never built their documentation or SDK around the idea of a flexible pixel count display.

As such, when in 2010 they were definately lagging in screen resolution vs the competition (800x480 or 858x480 having become the norm on high-end handsets), their only solution to prevent fragmentation and toss out the 300,000 or so apps on the app store was to introduce 960x640, aka @2x scaling.

The elongated model is even more stuck. They simply could not go @4x this time, 1920x1280, the technology just isn't there. We're starting to push out 1280x720 or 1280x800 on 4"-5" screens now, whereas 800x480 on 3.5-4" screens in 2010 had basically already been around for a while (the iPhone is far from the first 300 PPI+ phone).

So we got what is rumoured, the same 640 width with a possible "letterbox" format for legacy apps.

 

[Imhotep397]

Apple should simply just watch and not protect anything. They will portray as criminals if they try to use the law and defend themselves.

They only portray as criminals to "Some People" and of course 99% of those people are people that own and want to continue owning photocopied iPhones. At this point it seems clear that Apple has established that they designed the portable capacitive touchscreen computer and the portable capacitive touchscreen computer with telephone capabilities. Apple's proven it by laying out the arduous process of building something that didn't exist, they've proven it in comparison to Samsung's copycat products and they've proven it by exposing multiple pieces of Samsung's internal communications that direct the company to copy the iPhone. It's kind of funny how Judge Koh immediately picked up on the fact that Samsung basically tried to cover up the the iPhone look-alike main screen with multiple changing screens like that actually made it less of a copy. Considering it's plainly obvious to anyone with eyes that the Samsung phones are actually slavishly copied versions of the iPhone it's pretty ridiculous Apple even needs to go through all of this.

Alexander Graham-Bell would have been robbed of his telephone patents if it were left to the public opinion of today...nothing is sacred anymore and it's shameful.

 

[Imhotep397]

...The problem with that argument is that you're basing your scenario with Apple being first at everything. They were not.

If everyone had been filing software patents in the 60s and 70s, Apple would not have been able to do their GUI in the first place!...

Ok, Apple didn't invent cheese burgers...However, they did invent the modern computer GUI...it's a FACT. Xerox tossed it's PARC engineers to the curb because they'd built a crude collection of disparate technologies that Xerox had no clue on how to pull together...the engineers also had no idea how to pull the technologies together, but Steve Jobs did.

The patents at their very rudimentary stage were acquired by Apple because Xerox viewed them as worthless and most of those engineers became Apple employees. The Herculean task of building the foundation of a cohesive GUI and what's become the foundation of GUI design since is something Apple can exclusively claim as their own without hesitation or reservation.

The lack of "software patents" allowed MS to basically copy the functionality of the GUI and get away with it legally. It doesn't look like that will happen a second time.

 

[smoledman]

Samsung is busted, it's over.

 

[hchung]

please go look at the moto blur icons from 2.1 on. THey are all the white phone on a green back ground.

Got a link? There's too many skins that show up in Google Images for me to be sure it's 2.1 and not somebody's custom one.

----------

View attachment 351968

Due to the colors and lack of detail on the handset, the iPhone icon looks more like the WinMo one, than the Samsung icon looks like Apple's.

I'd have to disagree. From a glance, the WinMo icon's not even square. Which device/version is that from? I don't recall ever seeing that on any of my WinMo devices.

And like I said before, it's not just one or two icons looks the same. It's that there's a whole swath of them all changed from default to have the similar styling as the ones on iOS.

 

[G51989]

Yes, I'm sure history has proven you correct.

Fortunately for Apple, Steve's same lack of "vision" has struck again with the iPad, which happened to be the first popular consumer tablet, which I'm quite sure that you would describe as a "POS" compared to other tablets.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

For me? Yes, its a POS. Its slow, it has a terribly limited operating system, tiny software base, its locked down, and its well. Just terrible. For me.

For a consumer though who doesn't do anything serious? I think its great.

I don't think the iPad/iPhone/iPod really brought anything major and new to the tablet, I just think they were the first ones to be super popular.

 

[TMay]

For me? Yes, its a POS. Its slow, it has a terribly limited operating system, tiny software base, its locked down, and its well. Just terrible. For me.

For a consumer though who doesn't do anything serious? I think its great.

I don't think the iPad/iPhone/iPod really brought anything major and new to the tablet, I just think they were the first ones to be super popular.

Yes, of course.

That must be it.

 

[G51989]

Yes, of course.

That must be it.

Hey, I didn't say it was a POS for most people, its a nice product. But for me, it is a POS. And I would never consider a device so limited in what it can do.

Thats why I use an iMac to get my Apple fix, and not an iToy

 

[Mad-B-One]

Look, discovery is over, we're at trial. They can't introduce new evidence anymore, it has to have been already put forth in discovery, like this memo was.

So, what you are saying is that if one party withheld evidence and the onther party finds out, it is not permissable after the discovery period? That would be news to me. But I am eager to learn about ther American court system. If this memo, for example, was withheld by Samsung, they surely knew about it. If Apple would find it today, I don't see why the Samsung lawyers would need time to examine evidence their own party withheld. So, that is an absolute?

 

[KnightWRX]

So, what you are saying is that if one party withheld evidence and the onther party finds out, it is not permissable after the discovery period? That would be news to me. But I am eager to learn about ther American court system. If this memo, for example, was withheld by Samsung, they surely knew about it. If Apple would find it today, I don't see why the Samsung lawyers would need time to examine evidence their own party withheld. So, that is an absolute?

This memo was not withheld by Samsung. They objected to its introduction, however, their lawyer today mentionned it in court and as such it is now allowed into evidence since Samsung themselves brought it up.

Yes, evidence not submitted in discovery is not allowed. Heck, even evidence submitted too late in discovery is not allowed. That's how Judge Koh was able to refuse Samsung's request to allow them to use Kubrick's 2001 NewsPad as prior art against the iPad design patent, because they had not submitted as such in discovery.

This isn't the movies where a lawyer barges into the courtroom with new evidence and all is made ok in the end.

 

[Renzatic]

Ok, Apple didn't invent cheese burgers...However, they did invent the modern computer GUI...it's a FACT. Xerox tossed it's PARC engineers to the curb because they'd built a crude collection of disparate technologies that Xerox had no clue on how to pull together...the engineers also had no idea how to pull the technologies together, but Steve Jobs did.

Not at all. Xerox had a fully functional, ready to go office machine that was being actively sold shortly before the arrival of the Mac. There was nothing crude and disparate about it.

The only reason we're not using Xerox machines now is because it failed in the marketplace. Why? Because it was so incredibly expensive, only a small number of high end corporate offices could afford them.

Apple gets credit for spiffying up the GUI, and bringing it into peoples homes through affordable machines, but Xerox gets all the credit for the concept and original execution.

 

[KnightWRX]

Not at all. Xerox had a fully functional, ready to go office machine that was being actively sold shortly before the arrival of the Mac. There was nothing crude and disparate about it.

The only reason we're not using Xerox machines now is because it failed in the marketplace. Why? Because it was so incredibly expensive, only a small number of high end corporate offices could afford them.

Apple gets credit for spiffying up the GUI, and bringing it into peoples homes through affordable machines, but Xerox gets all the credit for the concept and original execution.

Ah, facts :

I believe it was 20k$ for a brand new one.

 

[Renzatic]

I rest my case.

 

[G51989]

Ah, facts :

I believe it was 20k$ for a brand new one.

Facts....don't say that to loudly....the Sheep have ears....

 

[Mad-B-One]

This memo was not withheld by Samsung. They objected to its introduction, however, their lawyer today mentionned it in court and as such it is now allowed into evidence since Samsung themselves brought it up.

Yes, evidence not submitted in discovery is not allowed. Heck, even evidence submitted too late in discovery is not allowed. That's how Judge Koh was able to refuse Samsung's request to allow them to use Kubrick's 2001 NewsPad as prior art against the iPad design patent, because they had not submitted as such in discovery.

This isn't the movies where a lawyer barges into the courtroom with new evidence and all is made ok in the end.

Well, first, I wasn't saying it was withheld. My question was hypothetical. I was asking if it was withheld and found after the discovery period, would it still be not permissable? The evidence not allowed was internal evidence from Samsung defending Samsung and it was actually submitted not after the deadline but just right before it ended and it was seen as trying to not allow Apple to find countering evidence also submittable to court before the deadline. Basically, a different issue here. You stated that no evidence would be allowed after the discovery period. My question is if that is also true if the party bringing the evidence can show with some reason that they didn't have access to the evidence or it did not exist until after the discovery period ended.


Edit: Maybe I will try to set an easy example: A murder trial is totally based on circumstatial evidence: A bloody knife and a witness telling John Doe stated he wanted to kill Jane Doe. ADA thinks this is sufficient for 90% threshhold and goes to court. After the discovery period, Jane is found in John Doe's father's cabin wrapped in plasic bags having John's fingerprints all over it. The body and plastic bags with fingerprints are all not permissable in court? See, I really don't know. I am just curious. I work with the legal system as part of my job, but all I do is writing petitions and judge's orders for my own guardianship cases and my threshhold for asking for prosecution is more than 50% of evidence that a crime or missdemeanor occured. I have not more than 3 days of training for that - which is sufficient for what I do and that is the most you get in the USA for my job. Our state is actually one of 3 which trains their workers at all with a 3 week academy.

 

[linux2mac]

I guess you need to re-read the document AND KDarling's post.

Not necessary.

*Whales are flying now*

 

[pensoftware]

Did anyone else think this was totally an iPad?

 

[rjohnstone]

Did anyone else think this was totally an iPad?
Image

No... it's too small.

 

[sha4000]

No... it's too small.

Thank you

 

[pensoftware]

No... it's too small.

It's the 7" iPad, though! /sarcasm

 

[Imhotep397]

Not at all. Xerox had a fully functional...

Hold up, wait a minute...the Xerox Star was NOT a multi-application system with a complex file system for organizing multiple documents for various different applications. Star was in fact a word processor displayed on a large screen with a bunch of new disparate graphically driven technologies. No marquee drag-select for text, or icons, no multi-selecting of documents at all. It was essentially still very linear in it's operation. Yes the Star group gets a lot of credit, but Star was incorporated into Apple anyway it's not like they peered into the demos, took some notes and copied what was developed at Xerox. Changing the interface from a complex word processor to a framewrok for multiple applications made graphical computing worthwhile and Apple did that. The transformation of that grouping of elements/tools wasn't simply a matter of making a cheaper word processor. It's just a fundamentally different use of the technologies. Even to today Alan Kay still believes there should be no apps and everyone should access all of the tools from one window essentially.

 

[Imhotep397]

Did anyone else think this was totally an iPad?
Image

Yeah, I thought it was an iPad. Because the general shape, layout, and edge is identical the scale didn't even register until I read that reply saying it was too small.

 

[poloponies]

Well, first, I wasn't saying it was withheld. My question was hypothetical. I was asking if it was withheld and found after the discovery period, would it still be not permissable? The evidence not allowed was internal evidence from Samsung defending Samsung and it was actually submitted not after the deadline but just right before it ended and it was seen as trying to not allow Apple to find countering evidence also submittable to court before the deadline. Basically, a different issue here. You stated that no evidence would be allowed after the discovery period. My question is if that is also true if the party bringing the evidence can show with some reason that they didn't have access to the evidence or it did not exist until after the discovery period ended.


Edit: Maybe I will try to set an easy example: A murder trial is totally based on circumstatial evidence: A bloody knife and a witness telling John Doe stated he wanted to kill Jane Doe. ADA thinks this is sufficient for 90% threshhold and goes to court. After the discovery period, Jane is found in John Doe's father's cabin wrapped in plasic bags having John's fingerprints all over it. The body and plastic bags with fingerprints are all not permissable in court? See, I really don't know. I am just curious. I work with the legal system as part of my job, but all I do is writing petitions and judge's orders for my own guardianship cases and my threshhold for asking for prosecution is more than 50% of evidence that a crime or missdemeanor occured. I have not more than 3 days of training for that - which is sufficient for what I do and that is the most you get in the USA for my job. Our state is actually one of 3 which trains their workers at all with a 3 week academy.

The discovery process is the period where the parties exchange information. The parties operate under a ongoing duty to supplement, so they have to produce relevant documents as they find them regardless of when that happens.

In pretrial the parties have to identify which of the documents that have been produced they intend to use as exhibits at trial. This is a necessary step to ensure fairness so the other side can object to its use (and the judge can decide) before you drag it in front of the jury.

You can use documents to impeach a witness or refresh the witnesses' recollection even if its not in evidence (but that doesn't mean it automatically becomes evidence).

Finally, if you discover a document not produced through discovery at a later date you can seek its introduction if it should have been produced and the other side has opportunity to review it. Generally works when it's used by the opposing party, so you can't intentionally sandbag your opponent by withholding relevant documents.