Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#31

Post by JohnTHaller » Thu, May 24, 2018, 11:50 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #24

wvenable wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an early smartphone, the Sony Ericsson P800, and it was a full screen and the home page was a grid of app icons. The iPhone design was extremely well done in comparison but hardly some radical unknown thing. The real design innovation was the capacitive touch screen

I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how you think the p800 looked anything like the iPhone, https://goo.gl/images/t3XvMA Yes, they are both rectangles. But there were massive differences aside from the capacitive touch.

Parent is referring to the fact that the phone was a full screen and had a grid of icons (reminiscent of Palm) on it like the iPhone did: https://i.imgur.com/Fdk0566.jpg

Parent post didn't say the phones looked the same. The iPhone refined a lot of existing functionality.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#32

Post by madeofpalk » Thu, May 24, 2018, 11:53 PM UTC

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

Hmm I'm not convinced. If the iPhones home screen was so obvious why didn't others do it before? Those examples you listed are fairly different from iPhone at the time in a way that the Samsung phone wasn't.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#33

Post by madeofpalk » Thu, May 24, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #29

denzil_correa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I forget, did Braun ever sue Apple for all of those stolen designs? Did reasonable amount of people confuse a Braun Pocket radio with the Apple iPod?

Has anyone ever accidentally bought a Samsung phone when they thought they were buying iPhone?

Well, the courts believed so.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#34

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:09 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #29

denzil_correa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I forget, did Braun ever sue Apple for all of those stolen designs? Did reasonable amount of people confuse a Braun Pocket radio with the Apple iPod?

Has anyone ever accidentally bought a Samsung phone when they thought they were buying iPhone?

Yes. To fit the standard at issue here, that happened every time somebody bought a Samsung phone instead of an Apple phone because they thought both phones basically did the same thing. Most people who buy phones are not as engaged with the market as HN commenters are.

The argument at play here seems to be: you can make something that looks like a Braun device if Braun doesn't already have a design-patented device that does the same thing. And you can make a device that does exactly the same thing as a Braun device as long as you don't try to make your device look confusingly similar to Braun's device. What you can't do is make a direct substitute for a design-patented Braun device, and then go out of your way to clone the design so that people have a hard time telling the difference between the two.

Another simple way to look at this (it's incomplete, but might settle the issue for you) is that a lot of people pick their phone based on how it looks.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#35

Post by threeseed » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:10 AM UTC

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

You have a complete misunderstanding of how design patents work. It's akin to those ignorant fools running around talking about Apple patenting round corners.

What Apple patented was their design for a grid of icons. You could have created your own just like Google and many others did.

What you couldn't do was blatantly rip off their design which Samsung did.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#36

Post by lyzan » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:11 AM UTC

kumarm wrote: post #30

mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

As someone who developed for Mobile Phones pre iPhone era, I can say they are people who never worked on software for Mobile before iPhone :). There were number of Phone that existed with several of those styles. How many people know Verizon Had a decent app store (Apps developed with Brew) in US before iPhone? This included similar testing that you see for AppStore TODAY.

I've probably used more brew apps than play/appStore/etc combined since. Was a wonderfully useful store with generally high quality, useful, apps that we easy to find.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#37

Post by threeseed » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:15 AM UTC

zumu wrote: post #19

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

There's also a decade or so of PDA's with grid of icon interfaces that predate the iPhone.

And do those PDAs have the same style and layout of icons as the iPhone ?

No. Because I still own a Treo 650 and it looks completely different.

This is a design patent remember.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#38

Post by threeseed » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

kumarm wrote: post #30

mi100hael wrote: post #3

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

As someone who developed for Mobile Phones pre iPhone era, I can say they are people who never worked on software for Mobile before iPhone :). There were number of Phone that existed with several of those styles. How many people know Verizon Had a decent app store (Apps developed with Brew) in US before iPhone? This included similar testing that you see for AppStore TODAY.

I commercially developed both Windows Mobile and Palm apps.

None had exactly the same design nor look & feel as the iPhone.

Which phone are you referring to ?

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#39

Post by sjwright » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:19 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #32

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

Hmm I'm not convinced. If the iPhones home screen was so obvious why didn't others do it before? Those examples you listed are fairly different from iPhone at the time in a way that the Samsung phone wasn't.

Why is that comment being voted down? It's exactly on point.

Re: Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

#40

Post by tathougies » Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #35

zik wrote: post #4

They patented "a grid of icons" when it's literally the first way you'd think of doing the UI - basically the definition of an "obvious patent". Not to mention that it'd already been done that way many times before and was the standard thing on smartphones by that point. So both obvious and massive prior art. For instance here's a Nokia phone from 2005: https://phys.org/news/2005-03-nokia-3g-imaging-smartphone-sh...…

You have a complete misunderstanding of how design patents work. It's akin to those ignorant fools running around talking about Apple patenting round corners. What Apple patented was their design for a grid of icons. You could have created your own just like Google and many others did. What you couldn't do was blatantly rip off their design which Samsung did.

What is special about Apple's grid of icons? Icon sizes are -- due to convention -- almost always some power of two, or other standard size. The number of icons you can fit on a rectangular screen is going to be pretty similar because of the size of the appendage that will be interacting with it (a human thumb).