Samsung's Massive Document Outlining How to Improve Galaxy S by Adopting iPhone Solutions Surfaces

[alfonsog]

You know Apple did invent a way to create rectangles with rounded corners (on the original Mac); it's in Jobs biography. Did they patent that? They could sue everyone!

 

[TannerH]

So, no one knows how Apple's lawyers got it from Samsung?

It would be ironic if they stole it from Samsung.

 

[SvenSvenson]

The fundamental flaw with almost all the pages in that document - is that the decisions are obvious.

They can't be that obvious, or else they would have done it the 'obvious' way the first time, and they wouldn't have needed to compare the two designs.

 

[Trhodezy]

And yet Apple has stolen a ton from Android. Come off the high horse.

Show us the damming evidence?

 

[Jimrod]

You said it yourself, companies. Believe it or not, this document wouldn't have carried any relevant weight has it, for example, compared the Galaxy S to the iPhone AND Blackberry Torche, Palm, or even Windows phone.

The fact that Samsung are disecting the iPhone, and only the iPhone, plus the other 'crisis of design' memo from 3 years earlier, gives Apple's case some merit.

I see where you're coming from but to give an example - I design speakers for a living, when working on a new model we get in the most popular competitor to see what we're up against, usually the latest "What Hi-Fi?" Award Winner. It's just to see what we have to beat, there would be no point getting in every product out there but just the best.

As it happens we rarely find those particular Award-Winners very good so it doesn't usually help us that much but it's a subjective industry!

 

[Hellhammer]

Where are the slides/memos that shows that? I'm sure Samsung would show that evidence if it existed.

Android is not Samsung's product, its Google's. Besides, just because Apple has not shown such document does not mean it doesn't exist. Was it just a coincidence that Apple's notification center is so similar to Android's which came first?

 

[craznar]

They can't be that obvious, or else they would have done it the 'obvious' way the first time, and they wouldn't have needed to compare the two designs.

Well - the challenge still stands. How would you make a button bigger without increasing the size ?

Come on ... there is only ONE way of doing it. Samsung recognised a problem, and proceeded to fix it the only way possible.

The fact they looked at a device doing it the obvious way, is not stealing anything - it is just showing something obvious.

 

[bazinga!!]

This sure isn't going to help Samsung's case.

LOL "Highly confidential, for attorneys' eyes only"

However I disagree with you, why on earth shouldn't a company learn from the competition? Let Samsung learn from Apple, it'll be a challenge for Apple to stay innovative.

 

[jca666us]

Any big company will see what their competitors do well, they want to make sure they're as good as can be. Samsung didn't say "Let's copy this..." they say "Apple do this well, we don't, how can we improve it...". That is just good business sense, you can't be blind to your competitors in the marketplace.

The difference is that they didn't just improve their old functionality, they "improved" it by copying the iPhone verbatim in many cases.

 

[basesloaded190]

So, no one knows how Apple's lawyers got it from Samsung?

It would be ironic if they stole it from Samsung.

They had it the whole time, it was now just admitted as evidence.

 

[vampyr]

My question is... isn't there a design patent out there that Apple has that simply states that they own the design of having apps identified on a phone using small icons that allows the user to interface with the phone??

Any phone that has a touchscreen, and has small icons that represent apps should automatically be in violation of Apple's design patent.

I guess what I'm saying is... what would prevent the first inventor of a car to go out and get a patent on his invention that says anything with four wheels, a motor, etc... belongs to his patent??

 

[craznar]

Show us the damming evidence?

Notification system is the obvious one.

Of course - again, that is a pretty obvious way to do it.

 

[MkNuII]

The really interesting question here is not so much that of the patent dispute or the specific details here. I tend to agree that Samsung has tried to copy Apple's solutions and to make their products more similar to Apple's in order to gain sales. If there is a real leader in terms of customer experience and that leader is very famous and popular, the "this one is just like that one, only it's cheaper" sales pitch is very useful. Whether this amounts to patent infringement is not for me to say, I'm not a patent lawyer.

This all being said, there is a difference between aping someone else to gain sales, standardising certain aspects of a solution in order to make things easier for switchers and being "inspired" by something else.

I think Samsung has done a fair bit of the former - they seem to have chosen to copy or closely mimic Apple's iPhone in order to improve their own product and thus increase sales. This is morally grey and legally, well, we don't know yet.

The middle item, standardising elements, is a bit complex. For instance, using red text to highlight a mistake on an electronic form has now become fairly standard. If someone had patented that and enforced that patent, each place we go on the web, each time we filled in a form, we'd have to look out for a new kind of marker. That would be bad for all of us. Some things that are really, very obvious and very natural probably need to be open to all. I'm not sure how that can be properly defined.

But then we move on to inspiration. A lot of people like to bring up Jobs' quote about being proud to steal ideas but they tend to do so out of context. Stealing ideas and copying solutions are not the same thing. The idea to create a social network on the internet didn't belong to Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook wasn't the first and it won't be the last. But the implementation, the solution, that had to be his own. Had he just copied Myspace and slapped Facebook on it he'd have been in trouble. This is what Jobs meant when he spoke about stealing ideas. An idea is an idea and no one can own it. A solution, however, that can be owned. I think I'm roughly correct on that but, once again, I'm not a lawyer.

Now, taking inspiration from something as amazing as the first iPhone is not only a good thing but it's inevitable. Apple utterly blew away the competition with the iPhone and there's really no point denying it. Nokia, Samsumg, RIM, Palm - they were all shocked by what Apple had created. I'm sure if you ask the engineers working at RIM at the time they'd tell you they were amazed. The iPhone did us all a favour because it spurred the competition on to create better phones. That's inspiration. Showing people a new way and letting them use that information, use that knowledge, to come up with something better. That's the difference between using someone's research to support your own, and plagiarism. You can't just copy but you can be inspired.

I think that's the interesting discussion here - where does inspiration end and copying begin. Is it in the intention or is it about the end result? Can we even apply a hard and fast rule? I don't know but I think that's a great discussion that's worth having - and we don't need to get into any silly fanboy battles over it.

I agree with most, if not all, of your post. I think there's a thin line between inspiration and copying.

I don't think problematic that Samsung inspires on iPhone and or on any other brand. Samsung looks to the competition, specially the superior products and tries to improve and probably "get" some ideas from it.

The main problem is to slap copy these ideas and implements too similar. Some of them are a natural that became equal. A phone app will have a phone icon or a dial-pad icon. But some of them could be more original.

Samsung is just too similar to iPhone with their top-class devices, either on the shape of the OS or the shape of the mobile phone itself.

I follow HTC and I don't see "design" infringement. HTC tries to innovate and produce nice quality smartphones with nice design. Why can't Samsung innovate the same way?

If Apple didn't the dispute the design patents, there would be thousands of iPhone-wannabe's and every smartphone would look the same until one company makes a breakthrough. After that.. everyone will copy the new design

To some extent, I think patents are a good thing. Limited time they can be upheld, but enough to generate competition.

 

[2bikes]

Exactly! So instead of this legal crap how about some innovation instead of a longer iphone 4S..... The galaxy has has actually evolved nicely while Apple is about to give an a longer 4, so disappointed with Apple.

Apple needs to start innovating again!

You are talking as if the lawyers are the ones that are innovating and when they are suing people they drop working on innovation and have to deal with legal activities.

Breakthrough innovation doesn't happen in couple of years. Looks at how long it took for iPad and iPhone to come about. A lot of people are disappointing because we all got used to what Apple brought to us in several years but there is a lot of build up to that in years before that we haven't seen. And if I worked my butt off for so many years to develop something, I would sue them for stealing it. Apple has the money to do that. Just because they are not the underdogs anymore doesn't mean it is not their right. And it also doesn't mean they are not innovating.

 

[SvenSvenson]

So when apple made the iPhone, they made it in a vacuum right? Then didn't pull up a windows phone or a blackberry or nokia and say "Gee here is the current market leaders smartphones, what can we do to improve upon it?"

No - they said "This UI is a dog's dinner and these are supposed to be the best. What can we do to blow it out of the water?"

 

[basesloaded190]

LOL "Highly confidential, for attorneys' eyes only"

However I disagree with you, why on earth shouldn't a company learn from the competition? Let Samsung learn from Apple, it'll be a challenge for Apple to stay innovative.

Learning and taking what you have learned and turning into something very identical are two very different things.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Anyone who's read the document can clearly see that. Most "solutions" are not to "copy the iPhone", simply to make improvements. This document in a sense is proof that Samsung did not copy the iPhone, but made usability improvements based on the fact that their initial designs had flaws the competition didn't have.

IE, the consumer got a better product thanks to Samsung revising their usability in light of what was on the market. Something Apple also does and that every company does.

Normal competitive development process.

Don't think Lexxus looked at a Volkswagen beetle to copy a Mercedes.

 

[Blorzoga]

I'm all Apple.. But all they did was make the date show up on the Calendar and a call button bigger as well. If they stole the iPhone's layout thats a problem, but they saw good in the product and made it their own way using the ideas. I mean eventually if you copy too much stuff the phones become too similar and this is what Apple may be fighting.

Yeah, that's all they did...

 

[Trhodezy]

So friggin what!!

Samsung solves a problem that the button is too small by making it bigger?

Is that really some sort of amazing design copied off Apple ?

NO.

It is just common sense ?

Unless someone else here could come up with another way you can make a button bigger - that doesn't involve increasing the size ?

Is it just common sense? If it was common sense, Samsung would have come up with it, no? or do they lack the ability to think with sense, instead they rip off others ideas?

Whichever way you look at it, Samdung may be as common as muck, but they don't have any common sense and sure as hell don't have any measurable amount of design intellect.

 

[craznar]

LOL "Highly confidential, for attorneys' eyes only"

However I disagree with you, why on earth shouldn't a company learn from the competition? Let Samsung learn from Apple, it'll be a challenge for Apple to stay innovative.

Learning from your betters, is not the same as stealing from them.

If Samsung had stolen HALF of what makes an iPhone, then they would have a phone worth buying.

The simple proof that Samsung is all original, is obvious when you actually pick up and hold and use a Samsung phone - they are junk.

 

[swarmster]

Anyone who's read the document can clearly see that. Most "solutions" are not to "copy the iPhone", simply to make improvements. This document in a sense is proof that Samsung did not copy the iPhone, but made usability improvements based on the fact that their initial designs had flaws the competition didn't have.

IE, the consumer got a better product thanks to Samsung revising their usability in light of what was on the market. Something Apple also does and that every company does.

I'm not sure if you're trying to introduce doubt in people who don't have time to go ahead and read the whole document, but whatever the case, if you do you would have seen other slides like these:





Which basically are direct violations of Apple's trade dress and even admit that the design should be modified so it's less confusing and less obviously ripped off from the iPhone.

So, really not sure where you're coming from.

 

[KnightWRX]

Yes, but if their "solution" is to solve the problem the same way as Apple then that is copying, not making improvements.

Read the document. Don't "but if" it. The solution often times is not to do it the same way Apple did (except in cases where there's really no other way), but just to improve the design because the iPhone does it better.

There was one about saving pictures after it is taken. Samsung noted the iPhone had a visual cue to indicate a picture was saved. The solution was to make it clear that the picture was saved. Not to do it the same way the iPhone did, just to also have some visual confirmation.

It's all small tidbits like this.

Frankly, I'm surprised that it's only 132 pages long. With a massive software project like a whole mobile OS is, you'd think they'd have more than 132 usability issues.

 

[craznar]

Is it just common sense? If it was common sense, Samsung would have come up with it, no? or do they lack the ability to think with sense, instead they rip of others ideas?

You only need to come up with ONE WAY of making a button bigger without increasing the size, and I'll say in BIG letters I'm wrong.

Until then - the OP's example excerpt is an OBVIOUS decision and not ripping off anyone.

 

[ajvizzgamer101]

Anyone who's read the document can clearly see that. Most "solutions" are not to "copy the iPhone", simply to make improvements. This document in a sense is proof that Samsung did not copy the iPhone, but made usability improvements based on the fact that their initial designs had flaws the competition didn't have.

IE, the consumer got a better product thanks to Samsung revising their usability in light of what was on the market. Something Apple also does and that every company does.

Are we reading the same document... I see Samsung comparing their product to Apple products and then coming up with a similar solution. Admit it, Samsung copied Apple's handwork, and instead of spending money on innovative design solutions they spent it on all those ads telling people they are iSheep standing in line for a product Samsung will copy year later. That is not fair to Apple who worked hard to come up with these design. At least Microsoft is trying something new and fresh... Android is a jailbroken iOS.

So if Samsung is looking Apple to see how they can "improve".... why is the call screen for Galaxy S3 almost exactly like iPhone?

 

[topmike]

And yet Apple has stolen a ton from Android. Come off the high horse.

I might be a bit off here, but didn't the Android OS come after the first iPhone release???

The version history of the Android operating system began with the release of the Android beta in November 2007. The first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in September 2008.

The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007,and released on June 29, 2007.

How did Apple copy Android when it was released before their beta?