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I'll admit that the earlier Galaxy phones and Touchwiz are the most similar to Apple's original design. It's kinda hard to deny that Samsung took obvious inspirations from iOS.

...but it's still not exactly the same.

So I guess the question is, is "similar" in this case illegal? Is not being different enough just as infringing as completely copying? Did similar harm Apple's bottom line? These are some pretty difficult questions to answer.

Yep you are right, i can't answer those questions easily either. However, this document is doing Samsung no favors, and trying to argue semantics (which is their only viable defense) doesn't seem very...viable.
 
Again, read the rest of the 131 pages. A potato can understand this.

Ouch. I agree.
After page 55 you pretty much get the gist. The other 76 pages just make things more clear - in case you missed the first 55 pages.
A blind child could arrive at clearer conclusion than some of the people posting on this forum.
 
A lot of people do this all the time– competitive analysis is a normal tool to compare against your peers and to generate ideas. However, this seems to take it a step further. This seems to indicate that the Samsung team didn't have a design process to lead them to innovation. You can't simply look at what everyone else does and copy it. And here's what this lawsuit boils down to, to me ...

1. Samsung did not have a design team in place to innovate the user interface of phones.
2. Their competitive analysis resulted in design changes that would never have taken place had the iPhone not come to market.

... and as a result, they COPIED Apple.

The bottom line is that they could have taken that research post-iPhone and come up with their own ideas and visual language. But they didn't. That takes time. It was cheaper for them to copy a good example, right down to icon language, colors, layout, and shapes. It's such a blatant rip-off, that you can't say Samsung did much of anything of their own.
 
Very true. Their original implementation was horrible and really illogical. It's no coincidence that their ui looks the way it does.


Oh yeah. I mean it would be completely different if they looked at the iPhone and instead of saying "we need to improve on the iPhone". They didn't. They didn't go the route of "we have another way of doing this and making it easier or look better" or whatever. Not just saying "Apple did it right here, lets change ours so it works like it". It's pretty damning with how much they looked at to change on there end. Not like 5 or 10 things. But, like A LOT. Things that may seem "obvious" to many people, CLEARLY was not for them pre iPhone. And I take it, other companies too.

I mean, I guess its good they went so deeply into it. They could have cheeped out I guess and not looked at it so closely. But, in doing so they didn't really give themselves any room to do it better. They pretty much didn't allow themselves to make it better. You can't if your just looking at something else and not coming up with anything new.

(sorry my previous post had my words all mixed up, long day!)
 
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this is all just so dumb and I kind of feel bad for all the giggly fanbois that thinks that either apple or samsung are their "team". It's just pathetic. I for one like the innovation that apple and samsung copying each other brings

What, of Samsung, did Apple copy?
 
Ok you are not a pundit. You are, a person who makes comments or judgments, especially in an authoritative manner; AKA a critic or commentator.... better? ;)

Just laughing at myself and an old blog post I made re: the touchscreen keyboard as well as several other objections I had to the original iPhone. Apple eventually addressed most of my concerns....and this is why I bought the 3G.
 
What the hell are you talking about?

Why even respond?

Exactly.
The document proves that Samsung choose not to innovate.
They chose to copy.

It's a sad day for Samsung. I like them as a company. They make great LED TV's.

The case hasn't been decided - how is it a sad day?

And the document doesn't prove anything. It can support an argument. And can certainly be argued either way. But as "proof" - not so much.

p.s. It's also not as cut and dry. Innovate is not the antonym of Copy and vice-verse.
 
The case isn't over. And your analysis is Eye Opening - especially on page 19 of a thread.




It must be wonderful to live in a world that is so black and white to have good guys and bad guys. First - they are businesses - not guys. Second - there's a lot of grey area involved. And third - not one company is an innocent.

Not everything is black and white, you proclaim (i.e. there are no absolutes) - which is itself an absolute statement. You see axioms (existence exists, absolutes exist), have a funny property whereby trying to deny one results in a contradiction - you end up using it in your attempt to disprove it.

1. Businesses are groups of people collaborating towards a common purpose. The ethics of a business's actions are the result of the ethics of the people who constitute it.
2. Correct, there is grey area. When does "inspiration" become so over the top that it constitutes outright copying? Or when is it so pervasive that it constitutes a clear pattern or mode of operation?
3. Not one company is innocent? In this one sentence you have a) accepted the premise of innocence existing as a concept and b) said no entity has achieved this concept and c) made an absolute, black and white statement that nobody is innocent.

Let's establish our premises, and where the grey area is:

1. Private property is a right. This is the "good".
2. The courts are here to protect our rights. They defend the "good".
3. Apple has design patents it claims Samsung infringed.
4. If Samsung infringed Apple's rights, they did something "bad".

The court is the objective arbiter that will evaluate (3). If the court concurs, (4) is the case.

1, 2, and 4 are black and white. 3 is not - that is why we need a court to make an objective judgement.

If Apple infringed a trade-dress/design patent, they too would be "bad". Samsung has not claimed Apple has infringed on any trade-dress/design. Their patent suits are FRAND suits. It is not the same. In FRAND cases, if both parties cannot agree on "fair" fees, the court is in fact the proper venue to determine them. This is because FRAND has a built-in grey area - i.e. what is "fair".

This is why your claim that "there are no innocents" falls flat - saying that everybody is guilty because there are lawsuits in both directions is an equivocation.
 

Android's notification menu vs. Apple's is about as similar as Android to iOS themselves. Yeah, they look similar, yet are both quite different in implementation.

So why do some people call Android a "stolen" product, a copycat OS because it's superficially similar on the surface, yet consider the other completely original and innovative despite being superficially similar to things that have come before it?
 
Android's notification menu vs. Apple's is about as similar as Android to iOS themselves. Yeah, they look similar, yet are both quite different in implementation.

So why do some people call Android a "stolen" product, a copycat OS because it's superficially similar on the surface, yet consider the other completely original and innovative despite being superficially similar to things that have come before it?

Android is so "innovative" that a judge ordered them to strip out universal search because they copied Apple's method.
 
Again, read the rest of the 131 pages. A potato can understand this.

Why even respond?



The case hasn't been decided - how is it a sad day?

And the document doesn't prove anything. It can support an argument. And can certainly be argued either way. But as "proof" - not so much.

p.s. It's also not as cut and dry. Innovate is not the antonym of Copy and vice-verse.

It's a sad day because this damning document has come to light about a company that I like.
It's just freaking sad. I wanted so much for the bottom portion of each of these 131 pages to say something like "the iPhone has X feature - How can we make it better? How can we push the envelope? How can we innovate here?"

Instead it was page after page of the same copy this, add this, get this, put it here. It was disappointing page after sad disappointing page.

Hope that answered your "how is it a sad day?".
 
Yes they "learned" from it. "we have learned that apples way is better way, so we learned to do it the same way"

How did Samsung improve apples implementation?

They added the SMS slide to unlock which apple actually copied back from Samsung, had the home screen seperate from the app drawer with widgets. Many other features as well.

Their unlock screen is also completely different. Its an image and you can slide it in any direction.
 
It's a sad day because this damning document has come to light about a company that I like.
It's just freaking sad. I wanted so much for bottom portion of each of these 131 pages to say something like "the iPhone has X feature - How can we make it better? How can we push the envelope? How can we innovate here?"

Instead is was page after page of the same copy this, add this, get this, put it here. It was disappointing page after sad disappointing page.

Hope that answered your "how is it a sad day?".

Agreed. There was absolutely zero effort put forth by Samsung. Seriously what possible defense could they possibly present other then nitpicking the definition of "copy"? (which is what their defenders are doing here...)

I can't think of one. Can you?
 
Well played. However..

I didn't proclaim what you say I proclaimed. And saying not everything means that some things can be and some things aren't. So it's not really an absolute statement. It's acknowledging that there are variables. If I had said everything is grey - well then - that would be absolute.

Further - someone or some entity (company) can do something bad. That doesn't make them a bad company. It makes their action bad. The OP said "good guys and the bad guys will each get what they deserve." That's simplistic, don't you think?

And I say no one is an innocent because whether they have been caught or not, every company engages in behavior which would put them in a court on the side of the defense. To think otherwise would be naive.

Not everything is black and white, you proclaim (i.e. there are no absolutes) - which is itself an absolute statement. You see axioms (existence exists, absolutes exist), have a funny property whereby trying to deny one results in a contradiction - you end up using it in your attempt to disprove it.

1. Businesses are groups of people collaborating towards a common purpose. The ethics of a business's actions are the result of the ethics of the people who constitute it.
2. Correct, there is grey area. When does "inspiration" become so over the top that it constitutes outright copying? Or when is it so pervasive that it constitutes a clear pattern or mode of operation?
3. Not one company is innocent? In this one sentence you have a) accepted the premise of innocence existing as a concept and b) said no entity has achieved this concept and c) made an absolute, black and white statement that nobody is innocent.

Let's establish our premises, and where the grey area is:

1. Private property is a right. This is the "good".
2. The courts are here to protect our rights. They defend the "good".
3. Apple has design patents it claims Samsung infringed.
4. If Samsung infringed Apple's rights, they did something "bad".

The court is the objective arbiter that will evaluate (3). If the court concurs, (4) is the case.

1, 2, and 4 are black and white. 3 is not - that is why we need a court to make an objective judgement.

If Apple infringed a trade-dress/design patent, they too would be "bad". Samsung has not claimed Apple has infringed on any trade-dress/design. Their patent suits are FRAND suits. It is not the same. In FRAND cases, if both parties cannot agree on "fair" fees, the court is in fact the proper venue to determine them. This is because FRAND has a built-in grey area - i.e. what is "fair".

This is why your claim that "there are no innocents" falls flat - saying that everybody is guilty because there are lawsuits in both directions is an equivocation.
 
:eek:

I mean, I've been with Apple the whole way through this trial, and yet I still wasnt expecting something quite this bad. Wow.
 
Android is so "innovative" that a judge ordered them to strip out universal search because they copied Apple's method.
The judge ordered no such thing.
The judge issued an injunction on the premise that Apple could argue the case successfully.

No actual infringement has been found as it hasn't been brought to trial yet.

Google chose to pull the feature until the case is heard. This keeps their product on the market.
I have a pretty good hunch the patent gets tossed or Google's implementation is deemed sufficiently different as to not infringe.
Remember.. you cannot patent a concept. You have to be specific in implementation.
 
Android is so "innovative" that a judge ordered them to strip out universal search because they copied Apple's method.

I missed the part where one feature = an entire OS.

I also missed the point where Android was on trial here. I thought this was Apple V Samsung specifically
 
Agreed. There was absolutely zero effort put forth by Samsung. Seriously what possible defense could they possibly present other then nitpicking the definition of "copy"? (which is what their defenders are doing here...)

I can't think of one. Can you?

Nope. Not one.
I have about as much ideas as the Samsung design and R&D team.

"My team is better and smarter than your team"
- Stefan Jobes
 
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