Apple vs Samsung let the fun begin.

[PixyMisa]

That has absolutely nothing to do with obviousness as it pertains to patent law.

 

[PixyMisa]

Trade dress complaint: http://www.scribd.com/doc/53458125/Complaint-iPhone-Trade-Dress

Love one of the first parts: "...before the iPhone, cell phones were utilitarian devices with keypads for dialling and small passive display screens that did not allow for touch control....".

Yeah apart from of course phones like the P800 or the XDA - and the XDA (1 & 2) is one of the best prior art arguments about Apple's claims.

Or Palm's Treo range, which came out around the same time as the P800 - five years before the iPhone. That sentence is simply a lie.

 

[Darat]

Or Palm's Treo range, which came out around the same time as the P800 - five years before the iPhone. That sentence is simply a lie.

Surprised that Apple aren't going after Samsung because you can "copy and paste" on a phone - after all until Apple introduced that in iPhone 3.0 OS it was unknown but I bet a lot of people will still make the claim "oh that was obvious".

 

[TheL8Elvis]

I know that Apple is one of, if not the, most profitable companies, and people on the internet love to talk about them. But you wouldn't know it from market shares.

I very rarely even see people with Apple phones or computers.

Apple doesn't even have 5% of the worldwide PC OS market share, and are lucky if they have over single digit in the US, compared to nearly Microsofts nearly 90% PC OS domination.

AFAIK the only thing Apple has a majority OS market share in is tablets and that's just barely. They have 54% compared to 44.6% of tablets running Android. With the Android % rising, and the Apple % falling.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/14/2869858/apple-54-7-percent-tablet-market-q4-11-kindle-fire-idc

Yeah, IDC is pretty awesome ...

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08...rter-court-documents-show-samsung-sold-37000/

The discrepancy in the estimates of independent market researchers is even greater. According to an IDC press release issued just last week, Samsung sold 2,391,000 tablet computers worldwide in Q2 2012, up 117.6% from the same quarter last year. According to Samsung's court filing, it sold a total of 37,000 "accused" tablets (see UPDATE) in the U.S. last quarter, down 86% year over year.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1924314

Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Soared in Fourth Quarter of 2011 With 47 Percent Growth
Apple Became Top Smartphone Vendor in Fourth Quarter of 2011 and in 2011 as a Whole

But yeah, you would be hard pressed to actually see someone using one in the wild

 

[AvalonXQ]

Thanks to Wangler for finding and citing a piece of prior art. That at least lets us take a look at the existing tech and evaluate it against the claims -- something we can't do with unsupported assertions of obviousness.

 

[WildCat]

My prediction: if he bothers to answer at all, it will be to an second-hand source, like an article or blog post with a misinformed title like "Apple patents rectangle." Essentially saying, "Hey, I'm not the origin of this fact-free opinion; I'm just passing it along!"

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2602...g_for_releasing_documents_in_iphone_suit.html

Apple gets to claim in court that the Samsung F700 copied the look of the iPhone. Judge Koh refuses to let Samsung counter that the F700 preceded the introduction of the iPhone. Also see Darat's pics of this design years before the iPhone existed.

Koh also placed a 25 hour limit on arguments by both sides. This means that Apple, the plaintiff, can make accusation after accusation, and Samsung is forced to use all their alloted time defending the accusations and not in making their case. Apple may win this lawsuit the same way creationists "win" debates with those supporting the ToE, by making use of the fact that it takes far less time to make a claim than it does to counter the claim. By limiting the time to respond, it ensures that claims will go unchallenged despite their being wrong.

Koh seems way out of her league in this one, too bad a competent judge like Richard Posner isn't the one hearing the case.

 

[WildCat]

That's odd, because the Judge in this case told Samsung they could not present their earlier phones that had these features as evidence.

Also, as I already pointed out, sometimes tech can arrive at a point where something is possible. It can be both obvious at that time and obviously not been done before. Just because it wasn't done before does not mean it isn't obvious! It's because it only just became possible ! That flat out makes that part of patent law ridiculous. Sure, that can be a good way to sometimes tell if something is obvious. But there are clearly situations where it is not.

Exactly, component hardware is advancing at an astonishing rate and the uses of the new hardware to make finished products is obvious to everyone in the relevant industries, yet we have the patent office awarding patents to the one that wins the race to the patent office.

This has nothing to do with innovation, and everything to do with using patents to engage in anti-competitive behavior and stifles innovation. This is not what patents are supposed to do.

 

[ConspicuousCarl]

Trade dress complaint: http://www.scribd.com/doc/53458125/Complaint-iPhone-Trade-Dress

Love one of the first parts: "...before the iPhone, cell phones were utilitarian devices with keypads for dialling and small passive display screens that did not allow for touch control....".

Yeah apart from of course phones like the P800 or the XDA - and the XDA (1 & 2) is one of the best prior art arguments about Apple's claims.

OMG. That whole first paragraph is BS and marketing speak. Sophisticated! Elegant!

And even if Apple had been the first to use a touchscreen on a phone, which they were not by a long shot, touch screen displays already existed on fixed devices. In that case, it would just be a BS claim to have "invented" the use of a feature on a portable device which already exists on fixed devices.

I was avoiding getting into one of these big debates in case Apple actually had some valid claim which I wouldn't know about without reading hundreds of pages of patents and court documents. Maybe they still do. But that paragraph shows that, whatever legitimate complaints Apple might have, they are also completely delusional (or just willing to lie).

 

[AvalonXQ]

OMG. That whole first paragraph is BS and marketing speak. Sophisticated! Elegant!

Yes, that's what you do in the opening (introduction and background) sections of a brief.

It's clear why that was what was quoted - it's much easier to poke holes in the empty rhetoric than in the substantive arguments.

 

[Sideroxylon]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2602...g_for_releasing_documents_in_iphone_suit.html

Apple gets to claim in court that the Samsung F700 copied the look of the iPhone. Judge Koh refuses to let Samsung counter that the F700 preceded the introduction of the iPhone. Also see Darat's pics of this design years before the iPhone existed.

Koh also placed a 25 hour limit on arguments by both sides. This means that Apple, the plaintiff, can make accusation after accusation, and Samsung is forced to use all their alloted time defending the accusations and not in making their case. Apple may win this lawsuit the same way creationists "win" debates with those supporting the ToE, by making use of the fact that it takes far less time to make a claim than it does to counter the claim. By limiting the time to respond, it ensures that claims will go unchallenged despite their being wrong.

Koh seems way out of her league in this one, too bad a competent judge like Richard Posner isn't the one hearing the case.

Bu won't any clear mistakes made by the judge be easy grounds for appeal?

 

[WildCat]

Bu won't any clear mistakes made by the judge be easy grounds for appeal?

Of course, but realize that time is on Apple's side. Even if Samsung wins their appeal by that time the products they are fighting over will be obsolete.

eta: I agree with Richard Posner that such rapidly developing technologies shouldn't be patentable at all.

 

[Darat]

Yes, that's what you do in the opening (introduction and background) sections of a brief.

It's clear why that was what was quoted - it's much easier to poke holes in the empty rhetoric than in the substantive arguments.

It was quoted because it is from actual Apple legal documents... you know the stuff that a court uses to decide the merit of a particular case...

 

[BadBoy]

Are you still demanding evidence that touch screens invented long before Apple existed were intended to be manipulated by fingers?

And are you completely unaware that Apple is claiming "trade dress" on rectangular phones with rounded corners?

As far as I can see the whole concept of a nearly completely touch screen phone was invented by Apple.

Try to think what phones were on the market before the iphone. Think of all the different ways phone manufacturers were inventing ways to navigate the screen content. We had nipples, touch pads, buttons, phones that slid open to display a complete keyboard.

The whole concept of a touch screen phone with the simple icons representing apps that are attached to pages that the user can select with a sweep of a finger was completely original. There was nothing like it. The GUI design was spectacular. They Aced it by making something that was becoming quite complicated (phone navigation and interaction - e.g. Microsoft Mobile which was rubbish IMO) very simple. IMO that was the essence of the iPhone success. I couldn't believe you could copy/cut and paste very small text with a single finger.

The touch phones that followed were an obvious copy of the whole concept. Sometimes when this happens competitors do something better, but I think in this case they cant keep from complicating the essence of the GUI design apple first created. Every release of the iPhone software since has kept the really simple and intuitive design, because they realize thats what the trick is.

As for the rectangle with rounded corners. It may seem a bit OTT to patent that design. However the iPhone doesn't even have Apple written on the front of it. How bold is that, to market a product that doesn't even have its trademark stamp on the front. Stroke of genius! Samsung just had to do it, missing the point entirely. That point being that the iPhone is a masterful stroke of Iconic Graphic Design. The phone when its off is nearly completely blank, but anyone anywhere in any developed country would know what it was instantly. That I assume is what they are trying to defend.

 

[AvalonXQ]

It was quoted because it is from actual Apple legal documents... you know the stuff that a court uses to decide the merit of a particular case...

Yes, it's from the opening introductory paragraphs of Apple's complaint. It's not a legal argument they're relying on; it's a piece of persuasive writing designed to set the stage for the legal arguments to follow. Hence why the section is called "the Nature of the Case."

 

[ConspicuousCarl]

Yes, that's what you do in the opening (introduction and background) sections of a brief.

It's clear why that was what was quoted - it's much easier to poke holes in the empty rhetoric than in the substantive arguments.

They could have left it out. And the line about touchscreens wasn't just marketing speak like the rest, it was an actual lie.

The BS is less explicit as I read on, but not entirely gone. Paragraph 13 mentions the "Multi-Touch(tm)" interface by name, but they describe it only as allowing users to navigate by swiping and tapping (rather than describing the actual unique feature of allowing MORE than that by recognizing more than one contact point). Funny that they describe only the non-unique aspect of their interface as if that is the invention.

Their icons are a mixture of validity. They show pictures of Samsung's green phone icon, and how similar it is to Apple's. Here's the problem...

One of those things is not like the others, and it didn't come first. If Apple wanted their icons to be unique symbols of the Apple experience, they sure didn't try very hard when they chose a green background with a 45-degree white handset to represent a telephone. All they did was use an existing and common icon without text.

Other icons are less generic. The music-note-in-front-of-CD is two common symbols combined, so I'll give Apple that one (unless/until that exact combo is found prior to apple).

Samsung's notepad icons are similar to Apple's, but then again the Apple icon for the notepad is... a flat picture of a common notepad. Not much effort on Apple's part to be unique; they chose the most generic icon imaginable.

The one Apple icon there which does have a truly unique presentation is the settings icon. It has unusual spiky teeth on the gears and a large gear which fades behind the two foreground gears in the corners. But Samsung's is just a plane flat-toothed gear. Gears are stinging cliches in logo design. We were designing a tech blog logo around 2002, and the first thing we said was that it should not have any g__d___ gears in it because it is pathetically trite. Apple did manage to make gears look fresh, and Samsung clearly did not copy any of the unique details.

 

[AvalonXQ]

As for the rectangle with rounded corners. It may seem a bit OTT to patent that design. However the iPhone doesn't even have Apple written on the front of it. How bold is that, to market a product that doesn't even have its trademark stamp on the front. Stroke of genius! Samsung just had to do it, missing the point entirely. That point being that the iPhone is a masterful stroke of Iconic Graphic Design. The phone when its off is nearly completely blank, but anyone anywhere in any developed country would know what it was instantly. That I assume is what they are trying to defend.

The problem is that it's a very, very uphill battle to try to protect minimalist or "negative" design. Legally, design is primarily protected by identifying certain non-functional elements and claiming that the use of those elements in combination is a novel look for the product. Lack of elements is a much harder sell.

That's why Apple appears to be taking the "trade dress" route, where the most important metric is consumer confusion -- whether the total look of the product is identfiable to a consumer, and whether a consumer confuses the defendant's product as being made by the plaintiff because it shares the same look.

 

[AvalonXQ]

They could have left it out. And the line about touchscreens wasn't just marketing speak like the rest, it was an actual lie.

The BS is less explicit as I read on, but not entirely gone. Paragraph 13 mentions the "Multi-Touch(tm)" interface by name, but they describe it only as allowing users to navigate by swiping and tapping (rather than describing the actual unique feature of allowing MORE than that by recognizing more than one contact point). Funny that they describe only the non-unique aspect of their interface as if that is the invention.

Their icons are a mixture of validity. They show pictures of Samsung's green phone icon, and how similar it is to Apple's. Here's the problem...

[qimg]http://the-gadgeteer.com/assets/apple-iphone-48.jpg[/qimg][qimg]http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/img2/dialpad_flower.png[/qimg][qimg]http://www.smartphoneforums.com/forums/attachments/samsung-i700/4116d1093752741-removing-verizon-logo-phone-dial-pad-pc_capture13.jpg[/qimg]

One of those things is not like the others, and it didn't come first. If Apple wanted their icons to be unique symbols of the Apple experience, they sure didn't try very hard when they chose a green background with a 45-degree white handset to represent a telephone. All they did was use an existing and common icon without text.

Other icons are less generic. The music-note-in-front-of-CD is two common symbols combined, so I'll give Apple that one (unless/until that exact combo is found prior to apple).

Samsung's notepad icons are similar to Apple's, but then again the Apple icon for the notepad is... a flat picture of a common notepad. Not much effort on Apple's part to be unique; they chose the most generic icon imaginable.

The one Apple icon there which does have a truly unique presentation is the settings icon. It has unusual spiky teeth on the gears and a large gear which fades behind the two foreground gears in the corners. But Samsung's is just a plane flat-toothed gear. Gears are stinging cliches in logo design. We were designing a tech blog logo around 2002, and the first thing we said was that it should not have any g__d___ gears in it because it is pathetically trite. Apple did manage to make gears look fresh, and Samsung clearly did not copy any of the unique details.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Apple is arguing based on the similarity of specific icons. I think they're arguing based on the similarity of all the icons collectively -- and also based on the use of transparency and other specific details that we know from Samsung's design documents that they literally did alter away from an old design to copy Apple.

 

[ConspicuousCarl]

As far as I can see the whole concept of a nearly completely touch screen phone was invented by Apple.

You aren't looking very far.

Try to think what phones were on the market before the iphone. Think of all the different ways phone manufacturers were inventing ways to navigate the screen content. We had nipples, touch pads, buttons, phones that slid open to display a complete keyboard.

They had those things because touch screens were expensive. To try to imply that Apple invented the touchscreen phone is ridiculous. As screens got cheap enough to make large touchscreens affordable, screens on phones got bigger.

Slide-out keyboards exist because many people prefer to type on them, not because nobody had thought of anything else.

 

[monoman]

"Ex post facto analysis"

If it's so "obvious", why can't either you or WildCat ever seem to point to anyone who even hinted at this type of scrolling prior to the filing date of this patent?

Just a hint, is all we need. I won't even hold you to the standards of an "enabling disclosure" that the patent office is legally required to follow.

I'm not sure about multi-touch but you'll generally find that there are papers dating decades back before a technology finally makes it.

 

[Horatius]

I'm not sure about multi-touch but you'll generally find that there are papers dating decades back before a technology finally makes it.

...which no one seems willing to cite. If they exist, they'll knock this patent right out. If they exist, why hasn't Samsung cited them? demonstrating existing, publicly available, prior art is step #1 is defending yourself against a charge of patent infringement.

Also, remember, strawman versions of the patent aside, the claims of this patent are of a very narrow scope - which is a tacit admission that some elements recited in the claims were known or obvious based on the prior art. It's the claim as a whole that must be evaluated. I hope that eventually people here will begin to understand that.