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Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

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

#41

Post by nitwit005 »

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 others pointed out, other phones had similar layouts. Remember that some of the graphics just weren't possible with older phone hardware. The iphone came out at a time when nicer graphics were doable, but it was still fairly expensive. They sold them for $500-$600 with a 2 year contract.

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

#42

Post by brandonjm »

rayiner wrote: post #16
asdfologist wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if they're original. No company should have exclusive rights to rounded corners.

It's not just "rounded corners." The patent addresses a very specific design, with rounded corners, a border, etc. It is basically only infringed if you try to make your product look like an iPhone, in order to free-ride on the iPhone brand, which is exactly what Samsung did.

Not to mention that Apple's rounded corners are not just a quarter of a circle stuck on the corner of a rectangle. Their corners are actually a specific design for their icons and their devices. [1] It's worth noting that they actually didn't at the time of writing have a patent on their specific corner design. I haven't read it yet but it would be interesting if corner shape this is mentioned as part of this patent.

[1] https://hackernoon.com/apples-icons-have-that-shape-for-a-ve...

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

#43

Post by iamgopal »

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 are you trying to say ?

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

#45

Post by mncharity »

From OP:

> Apple said in a statement that the case “has always been about more than money.”

> “We believe deeply in the value of design, and our teams work tirelessly to create innovative products that delight our customers,” the company said.

> After the 2012 jury sided with Apple, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said the lawsuit was about values, and that the company “chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying” its work.

From an old Samsung filing on Groklaw:[1] (seen via kregasaurusrex's comment)

> For its part, Apple‘s "revolutionary" iPhone design was derived from the designs of a competitor—Sony. In February 2006, before the claimed iPhone design was conceived of, Apple executive Tony Fadell circulated a news article to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and others. In the article, a Sony designer discussed Sony designs for portable electronic devices that lacked buttons and other "excessive ornamentation," fit in the hand, were "square with a screen" and had "corners [which] have been rounded out." Ex. 18 (DX 649). Right after this article was circulated internally, Apple industrial designer Shin Nishibori was directed to prepare a [redacted] design for an Apple phone and then had CAD drawings and a three-dimensional model prepared. See Exs. 1-3 (DX 623; DX 690; DX 562). Confirming the origin of the design, these internal Apple CAD drawings prepared at Mr. Nishibori‘s direction even had [redacted] on the phone design, as the below images from Apple‘s internal documents show: [redacted image] Soon afterward, on March 8, 2006, Apple designer Richard Howarth reported that, in contrast to another internal design that was then under consideration, Mr. Nishibori‘s [redacted] design enabled [redacted] As Mr. Nishibori has confirmed in deposition testimony, this [redacted] design he prepared changed the course of the project that yielded the final iPhone design.

> Design was not the only thing Apple took from other companies in developing the iPhone. While Apple touts itself in the popular press as a company of "firsts," it recognizes the opposite internally. As Apple admitted in internal emails, Apple was not the first [redacted]

[1] http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120726121512...

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

#46

Post by asimpletune »

asimpletune wrote: post #44

I’m an Apple fan, but I wonder how the same “component v. whole phone” debate would play out wrt the ongoing Qualcomm case.

Like, could Qualcomm potentially say that their patent licensing practices are implicitly legitimized by Apple themselves in this very case?

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

#47

Post by ShabbosGoy »

asdfologist wrote: post #25
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, you could have a world where everything was free and unpatentable.

Textbook strawman.

In what way? Do you accept the premise that certain precise design elements, organized in a precise manner, are patentable?

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

#48

Post by culturestate »

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?

The real question: has anyone bought a Samsung phone because they wanted something that looked like an iPhone but didn't particularly care or know enough to worry about it being an Apple device?

"Hey, this Samsung phone is cheaper and looks the same, I'll just buy it instead" is probably more common than we'd think.

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

#49

Post by bilbo0s »

threeseed wrote: post #38
kumarm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

I think maybe he is talking about the general IDEA, not necessarily the look and feel. You're right in asserting that there really was nothing like iPhone before iPhone, but the IDEA was there from way back with HP Jornadas and the older BREW phones. (I do concede that the UI of all of those devices was, in PRACTICE, much different than the iPhone UI. That much is undeniable when you look at old pictures of them. Back then, basically they all tried to copy MS Windows in a small screen.)

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

#50

Post by sjwright »

tathougies wrote: post #40
threeseed wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

If this was simply about rounded corners or a grid of icons, they would have been laughed out of the court.

Trade dress not about any single design choice but the combination of dozens of design choices which, when combined together, become an aesthetic trademark. And importantly, Apple spent millions of dollars on marketing to promote the fact that the iPhone looks a certain way and operates in a certain way.

The issue is that Samsung cloned this aesthetic in detail for the express purpose of hijacking Apple's existing media goodwill and advertising spend. And it also dilutes the value of Apple's brand.

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