Google Warned Samsung Galaxy Tab Was "Too Similar" 251
tlhIngan writes "Some interesting news has come out of Apple's filings against Samsung. First, Google warned Samsung that their 'P1' (Galaxy Tab) and 'P3' (Galaxy Tab 10.1) tablets were 'too similar' to the iPad. In addition, Samsung's own Product Design Group note it was 'regrettable' that the Galaxy S 'looks similar' to the iPhone. Finally, how designers at a Samsung-sponsored evaluation noted the Galaxy S 'copied the iPhone too much' and 'innovation is needed.' Of course, Samsung has some ammunition of its own, including how Apple copied Sony's designs. In unrelated news, Judge Grewal has sanctioned Samsung for not preserving emails from automatic deletion, even after litigation has begun."
Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you are sick of it just move on, why comment?
Re:Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm sure that most of us are. It seems that our only recourse, though, is to simply not buy Apple products to show them we disapprove of their actions. Good luck getting the masses to part with their iToys though.
Similarly, those of us who think Samsung are in the wrong will avoid buying "iToy" ripoffs.
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That's the beautiful thing about capitalism and the free market.
The peasantry is in control rather than a few Robber Barons.
"Too much like Apple" doesn't suit my requirements. It has nothing to do with confusing some corporate brand fixation with something that actually justifies some kind of loyalty.
Not Really (Score:5, Informative)
That's the beautiful thing about capitalism and the free market.
The peasantry is in control rather than a few Robber Barons.
With all due respect, you are just flat wrong. Laissez-faire Capitalism puts control primarily in the hands of the people who have the wealth (AKA "capital"). I assume you are referring to the United States. In this country the "peasantry" doesn't have much of a voice because we do not have a real democracy. Some may say we have a Republic but I think it's closer to an Oligarchy at this point. Here the most wealthy 1% control 35.6% of the wealth while the top 10% control 75% of it. The Forbes Top 400 has a combined wealth of $1.37 trillion dollars. That's who is primarily in control not the "peasantry".
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I said the free market, not the Mad Max approach to economic policy.
Of course total lawlessness is going to benefit the biggest bully.
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free market != laissez-faire
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Don't you mean, "Not buy anything but Apple products." You know, to show them we disapprove of the copiers?
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Re:Lots of good reasons not to buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Feel free to not buy from them. Other consumers clearly disagree with you, and so does the competition, which is selling products at the same price.
What competition? What features? What performance?
Apple is pretty open about their business practices. What exactly is it that you don't trust about them? You may dislike their business practices, but that doesn't mean they can't be trusted.
Regarding the rest of your comment, can you provide evidence regarding that slave labor, lack of environmental concerns, and litigious scams you talk about? Do you even know what you're talking about? Are you aware that it has been shown that none of that is actually true? Please provide evidence so that I can provide counter-evidence.
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which is selling products at the same price.
This is disingenuous, because it says nothing about what you're actually *buying* for that price. If an iPad is $500 worth of hardware in a $700 package, and a Galaxy Tab is $600 worth of hardware in a $700 package, then it really doesn't matter that they're the same price; the Galaxy Tab is the better deal, all other things considered.
But then, IMO, anyone spending $500+ on a toy that's going to be mostly collecting dust and then worthless in a year or two is a moron IMO. Google finally got the price poi
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which is selling products at the same price.
This is disingenuous, because it says nothing about what you're actually *buying* for that price. If an iPad is $500 worth of hardware in a $700 package, and a Galaxy Tab is $600 worth of hardware in a $700 package, then it really doesn't matter that they're the same price; the Galaxy Tab is the better deal, all other things considered.
I disagree on that one... the better deal is what gives you the best experience, and fits best with your needs. Things like software, future software upgrades, software ecosystem, support etc don't show up in hardware costs either, but might have a large effect on my experience with the unit the next couple of years.
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>>>and so does the competition, which is selling products at the same price as Apple.
Not true. :-o].
See my signature [Bought an i7-equipped PC for $650. An equal-speced MacMini costs almost double that.
I'm curious what make/model you bought, or what parts and components you used if you built it yourself.
One of the appeals of the Mini (maybe not to you, though) is its small size. In this discussion [macrumors.com] they were having a hard time finding Mac mini-sized, fan-less PCs that weren't crippled with slower CPUs or graphics. Admittedly Apple cheated a bit by excluding a built-in optical drive.
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Well I tried to find a "normal" sized Mac, but those cost over $2000! Th bottom line is that the HP Pavilion or Dell XPS desktops were much much less money. They also come installed with Windows so I don't have to deal with the hassle of trying to make MS Visio run on OS 10.7 and do work from home.
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The same product? Just because you choose the cheap, bottom-line stuff, doesn't mean that's ideal for everybody, or that the more expensive products aren't actually superior. Your standards are not everybody's standards, and if I
Re:Lots of good reasons not to buy Apple (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite.
Samsung's alternative options cost HALF of what the Apple version does. That is, I can choose a different set of tradeoffs and spend less. It's rather similar to how I use ION nettops in the place of Mac Minis.
A diversity of options is nice this way. I get what I want rather than the singular package deal that some monopoly wannabe wants to offer me.
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Most things cost half of Apple.
Not just Macs (see my sig) but phones too. My ISP VirginMobile is selling the iphone 4S for $650, if I recall correctly. The non-apple phone with equivalent function is a mere $200..... 1/3rd the cost. The HTC Evo4 with enhanced functionality (4G; larger screen) is $300.
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Do you mean to compare a subsidized HTC Evo 4G to an unsubsidized iPhone 4S without even talking about the rest of the cost?
It looks to me as if the EVO 4G is $599.99 [bestbuy.com] instead of your $300 which makes it a heck of a lot closer to the Apple 4 that is only only 519€ [apple.com] unlocked in France (couldn't find a price unlocked in the US).
Don't forget most reviews did give the upper hand to the iPhone 4 vs the EVO 4G so comparing it with an iPhone 4S is probably a bit of a stretch.
Geez, and they say Apple users are f
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>>>Apple products are way over-priced
Indeed. Look at my sig:
Was it the same form factor?
And why is that worthy of putting in a sig? I mean congratulations on your accomplishment. I'm sure I could custom build an i-7 equipped PC for cheaper than whatever one you bought.
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What are the dimensions of your PC? I'm looking for a small one I can put next to my TV.
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Having the same specs is not the same as being equally functional. For one thing, you don't get OS X on a PC. Clearly that doesn't matter to you, but it does matter to some people.
Have you factored in resale value? For whatever reason, Apple products retain a great deal of value. I've always partially funded my new computer purchases with selling my old Apple hardware. I can get 30-40% of the purchase price of a new machine if I sell something 3 years old. So the fact that the new price is double isn't actu
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I'll alert the courts. I'm sure they'll wrap this up immediately, sire.
Re:Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would question the IQ of any customer buying a TV or a computer or a tablet device based on how it looks from 10 feet distance; and not bothering what's inside it. I would ban design patents for ALL electronic goods based on the above principle.
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I often hear Android fans say that they refuse to buy Apple as a sign of disapproval, so how about not clicking on these stories for the same reason?
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It's the classic catch-22.
If you don't copy the market leader, you are dismissed out of hand.
If you do copy the market leader, you are accused of copying.
It's just that it usually doesn't lead to patent trolling suits and your product being banned from sale anywhere.
"Why does god need a starship?"
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If you don't copy the market leader, you are dismissed out of hand.
Did Apple copy the market leader when they released the first iPod? Did they copy the market leader when they released the iPhone? Or the iPad? Or the MacBook Air?
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Exactly. A screen with a bezel around it can only take so many forms. Why do you think all the big plasma/lcd televisions look nearly the same? And they aren't suing each other. Apple is abusing the patent system to stave off their demise, and taking the piss out of consumers.
Phillip.
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This is wildly different. In the case of the Coke bottle, it is a recognisable sculpted design due to the waist. If they had patented the regular straight-sided bottle shape, it would have been just as ridiculous trying to defend that as it is to defend a rectangle with rounded corners.
The plain straight sided bottle is a basic shape (As are numerous other bottle shapes). The coke bottle is not a basic shape.
The rounded rectangle iPhone is a basic shape. If they wanted to "Think Different", maybe they shoul
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I think you meant to reply to the post before mine?
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Actually, no, it doesn't The logo is on the back.
It's worth noting, though, that I got mine before this case fired up.
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A bottle of coke is a design that is not primarily functional. The tablet design is.
My Mac sucks! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
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my god, somebody reached back into the 1990s for that copypasta.
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Then you're a Samsung lawyer?
Or maybe you're just looking at a turned-off tablet from the front from 3 meters away. And even then, one of the two lawyers in question supplied the correct answer.
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If we do not require basic literacy to vote, we sure are not going to require it to buy computers.
It's a rectangle. (Score:5, Interesting)
There were featureless rounded corner rectangle tablets before the iPad.
There were touchscreen driven grid of icons phone user interfaces before it iPhone.
Apparently the slide to unlock is so obvious that Apple have to publicly apologise for claiming otherwise.
They're similar because it's an obvious idea which had been done before.
Re:It's a rectangle. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that those lawsuits aren't about rectangles or corners and that it is a bit more detailed then that and also much broader.
Really in all honestly I can't really look at the total package of Samsung tablet offering without having the feeling that they clearly looked for inspiration to some of Apple offerings. You can debate all day long about how stupid is that companies can "patent" designs, but you really must be blind what the source of inspiration was for some things. Look at Samsung Kies for example.
If you take some steps backs and forget about the rectangle stuff and see it in more detail and especially as whole package, the fact that Google warned Samsung that it was to similar may be not that stupid after all.
Then again this is slashdot an this may be the same like "cursing in a church" but hey... .
Re:It's a rectangle. (Score:4, Informative)
Look at the design patent Apple is suing over. It is exactly about rectangles and corners. There's not much else to it. Electronic device, flat, rounded corners, glass front, rectangular screen area.
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It also doesn't really look all that much like the iPad they did ultimately produce. That alone should have invalidated the claims, if not the patent itself.
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Really in all honestly I can't really look at the total package of Samsung tablet offering without having the feeling that they clearly looked for inspiration to some of Apple offerings.
So? You can look at the Apple designs and see others that they clearly looked to for inspiration. For example, the TC1100 cited in the infamous rounded corners parent and the AT&T broadband phone for the now familiar touchscreen and grid of icons on a phone look.
You can debate all day long about how stupid is that compan
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Doesn't work that way. It's who patents their method first that gets the legal claim.
For example, there are infinite ways to unlock a device. Why choose slide instead of twist, for example? Apple claims that it's because they copied and that's a valid point.
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This is a design patent, not a useful system or business method patent.
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Oh, back to the slider. The first to file gets the patent. However, that just means that if there is a first to invent instead, who can prove the prior art, the first to file doesn' t get the patent, neither does the first to file. In the past, in the US, if you could prove first to invent, you might get the patent even if you filed previously.
There have been numerous examples posted showing slide to unlock on other devices. Though it is a stupid argument... it's trivial enough to change that UI.
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> Doesn't work that way. It's who patents their method first that gets the legal claim.
THAT is nonsense and contrary to the intended purpose of a patent system.
Patents aren't a virtual land grab. They are a means to encourage the disclosure of trade secrets. They aren't meant for every stupid little trivial idea that might pop into your mother-in-law's head.
They're more for things that have been stumping engineers for decades if not centuries.
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Sure there are infinite possible ways to unlock a device, but they are not all equal. For example twist can't be done with one hand.
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While it's correct that hundreds if not thousands of people worked to bring the first iPad to market, it's absolutely untrue that hundreds or even dozens worked on the physical design. That's all they're talking about here. Apple's designers, and Mr. Jobs himself, were inspired by what came before, both in what didn't work, what did work, what looked cool... and of course, the iPhone before it, which is a nearly identical design on a smaller scale.
Samsung did no less work in delivering their tablet. Ok, sur
So they look alike. It's called "form factor." (Score:5, Insightful)
There's only so many ways to build a computer, and when you're trying to stuff as many electronics in a slender LCD screen as you can, it's probably going to look like a plastic slab.
Re:So they look alike. It's called "form factor." (Score:5, Informative)
that's because seatle's best is owned by starbucks. they are a wholesale brand of starbucks
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It also looks like ones I've seen from Peets, from Jittery Joes, and from McDonalds. My point is that there's only so many ways to make a coffee mug.
Among the idiotic things posted here, this is among the more idiotic ones. There are collectors who have thousands of totally different coffee mugs.
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How many clamshell phone designs are there? (Score:3)
If you look at e clamshell phones, how many look like the razr? One.
How about the candy bar phones? They look similar, but different no manufacturer wants users to confuse their phones with someone elses.
Look at Samsung. They want their stuff to look like Apple's because it helps them sell. Period. In the documents they say as much.
People here freak out when a developer copies another developer's game...but when Samsung and google copy Apple people are like "oh, there's only one way to do it so we have to c
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Kenmore appliances are just rebranded appliances made by other manufacturers, including LG. That Kenmore washing machine looks like an LG and vice versa because very likely they are the same model with some slight enhancements.
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Re:So they look alike. It's called "form factor." (Score:5, Informative)
Apart from LG who announced this blatant iPhone ripoff [wikipedia.org] in December 2006, a month before the first iPhone was announced.
Re:So they look alike. It's called "form factor." (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, you're insinuating that Apple scrambled with one month before announcement and redid their entire design to rip off the Prada, which I'm taking from you involves redoing the iPhone to be a touch screen based product. And, of course, this was a blatant copy, but LG never bothered to sue.
Although it is an oft repeated meme on slashdot, Apple did not sue over a curved rectangular design. I know that you've read that here a number of times in highly moderated comments, but that doesn't make it the case. I also know that you've read a number of times that the iPhone was ripped off from the LG Prada, but if you look at front, back, and side profiles, plus screen shots of the GUI, it will be obvious that this wasn't the case.
What Apple sued Samsung for was the fact that the Galaxy lineup copied the iPhone experience as a whole - the appearance of the device beyond a simple front profile, the user interactions, the general feel of screen layouts and icons. Any of these items on their own wouldn't be worth suing over. It is the combination of all of these elements together to create a user experience that is essentially identical to the iPhone that Apple is suing over.
Of course, why wouldn't you make a comment about the iPhone copying the Prada, or Apple suing Samsung over black rounded rectangles? The first visible comment in any story mentioning these items is guaranteed a +5 mod.
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Of course, you're insinuating that Apple scrambled with one month before announcement and redid their entire design to rip off the Prada, which I'm taking from you involves redoing the iPhone to be a touch screen based product. And, of course, this was a blatant copy, but LG never bothered to sue.
Your sarcasm detector must be broken, clearly grandparent is insinuating that there aren't many ways to design a touch screen phone. Which there aren't. So it follows that all touch screen phones look more or less alike.
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And this one [wikipedia.org] looks quite similar too.
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That's like saying that the first guy to ever make a mass market color TV invented color television.
Of course the capacity to do something greatly preceeded the technology to make it into an affordable consumer product.
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From TFA: http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/07/samsung_designs.jpg [allthingsd.com]
You'll see there that, prior to the announcement of the iphone, Samsung had produce many bar-touchscreen designs. The iphone is similar to some of them, (since they were first), while some are more obviously just ancestors of the Galaxy S. Models like the Slide and F700 (of which I had one, prior to the announcement of the iphone) very obviously evolved into the Galaxy S.
A great comparison is the car market. In Australia
7.7 ? (Score:2)
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Compaq should sue everyone (Score:2)
for copying the TC1000:
http://pencomputing.com/frames/tpc_compaq.html [pencomputing.com]
- Silver and black
- rounded corners
- screen takes up almost entire front surface
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And a bunch of others (year indicates introduction, not shipments):
HP Slate 500, 2009: http://h71016.www7.hp.com/html/Slate/index.asp [hp.com]
CrunchPad, 2008: http://www.esarcasm.com/8319/crunchpad-dead/ [esarcasm.com]
Axiotron Modbook 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiotron_Modbook [wikipedia.org]
Knight-Ridder tablet, 1994 : http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2010/09/ipad-like-newspaper-tablet-concept-from.html [blogspot.com]
Arthur C. Clarke's Newspad: 1968: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3949GAIokg&feature=player_embedded [youtube.com]
Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just rounded corners.
As the summary and article state plainly, Samsung made what amounts to a copy of the iPad. If you have difficulty telling the products apart after covering up the brand logos, then they are too similar. It's that simple. From there, it's not a large leap for the original manufacturer to claim the subsequent manufacturer was riding on the firsts success. Hell, didn't that exactly happen in court a few months ago? Samsung's lawyer was asked to tell the court which tablet was which, and he couldn't.
And when that original manufacturer happens to be Apple... well... That's like pissing off someone high on bath salts and PCP, and then crying foul because they start beating the crap out of you and eating your face.
There are SO many ways that Samsung could have differentiated their products, but they chose to make it as similar to the iPad as they thought they could get away with. Other manufacturers havn't had any difficulty doing so. There are tablets in various colours, with textured non-slip backs, varying kinds of frontal designs. There were an almost limitless number of ways Samsung could have avoided this right from there start. But they chose not to. And now they're paying the price.
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Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:4, Informative)
As the summary and article state plainly, Samsung made what amounts to a copy of the iPad.
The article and summary also point out that Apple's internal emails apparently show that they copied Sony's designs. If that is true, it will be interesting to see how Sony respond.
Also interesting to note that Samsung have produced their own before and after [allthingsd.com] graphic for the court, which disproves the Apple fan claims that "all Samsung phones look like the iPhone".
Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple's internal emails apparently show that they copied Sony's designs.
Found the details. Apple’s iPhone Has Sony Style, Says Samsung (Full Trial Brief). [allthingsd.com] The emails show an iPhone designer being instructed to create a "Sony-like" design, the initial CAD drawings he created even had the Sony logo on. The emails then show the existing iPhone design being abandoned for the new "Sony" design, and the Apple designer has given sworn testimony that his "Sony-style" design changed the course of the project and led to the final iPhone design.
Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:4, Informative)
Samsung made what amounts to a copy of the iPad.
The British courts disagree: Apple must run "Samsung did not copy iPad" ads. [yahoo.com]
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Well he was a lawyer, he probably couldn't pick between a tabled and a microwave oven either.
Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:5, Funny)
LOL! Reminds of when everyone jumped on the "translucent plastic" bandwagon. I recall seeing microwaves, and even irons, in blueberry iMac colours. I was amused.
The best though, was when I was flipping through a department store catalogue (in the late 90s) and came across a wooden breadcutting board that was advertised as "Y2K compliant." To this day I regret not having cut out that item and saved it somewhere.
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No, it isn't that simple. Only if the key design elements are orignal does it get protection.
Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone familiar with the two products could tell easily. Sure, someone unfamiliar could not.
With the logos obscured, I doubt someone unfamiliar with the latest Corollas & Civics could tell the difference either...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CVC2012aaa.jpg [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2011_Toyota_Corolla_--_NHTSA.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Shocking new: Similar product looks similar!
Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple and wrong. LCD displays, keyboards, laptops, cardboard boxes, polo shirts, blue jeans, soda cans, bicycles, heck, even many cars look similar once you cover up the logos.
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Cars are the poster children for similar designs.
My first car quite often got mistaken for it's other branded kin.
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If you have difficulty telling the products apart after covering up the brand logos, then they are too similar. It's that simple.
Try doing that with beige box PCs from the 90s. Hell, I can barely tell my GF's toyota corolla from the neighbors honda civic.
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f you have difficulty telling the products apart after covering up the brand logos, then they are too similar.
If you place the two side by side, they are clearly different: they have different aspect ratios.
If they are not side by side, well I couldn't tell which was which between any brands of electrical appliance, and I couldn't reliably tell Ford versus Chevvy either. I can usually spor a Peterbilt because they look cool, but the rest look the same to me. Cat v. Hyundi? also a wash. Nike versus Puma with
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Not just that, but AllThingsD posted a new story today [allthingsd.com] that expands on yesterday's report (i.e. the Slashdot article) and goes into even more detail on a few aspects. Here's one snippet:
Samsung was forced to release a bunch of documents it had been keeping under seal that show the likeness between its products and Apple’s. Examples outlined in the documents include comments from Samsung workers discussing similarities with Apple’s products, and reports Samsung got from retailer Best Buy that Samsung tablets were being returned because customers thought they were getting iPads. Samsung still has a pending motion to prevent all of this information from being included at trial.
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> Samsung made what amounts to a copy of the iPad
So what?
We need to get past the idea that copying someone else's work is somehow an inherently bad thing. Copying other people's work is the only way any human progress ever occurs.
If people aren't allowed to copy each other, then all innovation stops.
YOU should be forced to use no computing tech newer than a patent monopoly term. You should actually live what you are advocating for the rest of us.
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And YOU should pay more attention to what the ACTUAL issue is, instead of lining up your own strawmen arguments.
It's one thing to copy from another. That's how all human progress has occurred. That is not the problem.
It's a different thing entirely to duplicate someone else's product so exactly that people will accidentally buy the copy, when they intended to buy the original. THAT is what Samsung did, and they are now trying very hard to hide that evidence.
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when they intended to buy the original.
They must have been pretty ignorant. How do you go into a store wanting an APPLE iPad and leaving with a SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB. It doesn't have the same name. It's not made by the same company. It's a different price. It doesn't have that little single circle button. It doesn't have the Apple logo.
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> There are SO many ways that Samsung could have differentiated their products, but they chose to make it as similar to the iPad as they thought they could get away with. Other manufacturers havn't had any difficulty doing so. There are tablets in various colours, with textured non-slip backs, varying kinds of frontal designs. There were an almost limitless number of ways Samsung could have avoided this right from there start. But they chose not to. And now they're paying the price.
Exactly. Samsung went
Re:Why are people obsessing with rounded corners? (Score:4, Interesting)
But we DON'T cover up the brand logos. This, right here, points to the REAL problem:
PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TO, OR INCAPABLE OF, BASIC THOUGHT.
If you walk into a Best Buy, and you intend to buy an iPad but you walk out with a Galaxy Tab because you couldn't tell them apart, then you, sir, are a FUCKING IDIOT. If you can't turn them on and tell the difference, you deserve what you get. I mean, what happens? Do you hold them up side-by-side, can't tell them apart, so, what, just fucking randomly pick one?!? Do you not read the damned info cards below them and compare and contrast them? Do you not ask a sales person some questions? I mean, come on already, this is nuts!
This ISN'T about two admittedly very similarly-designed products (and ok, maybe one is a flat-out copy of the other, I might be willing to stipulate to that) that people can't physically tell apart (And you know what? They're different enough physically anyway that *I* as a not-stupid person, wouldn't be fooled anyway, but I digress). This is about a world full of stupid people that can't be bothered to, you know, GET INFORMATION and make an INFORMED DECISION with it. It's either stupidity or laziness, you're choice (and probably a bit of both). Either you are incapable of basic thought or you just don't like to do it and so when you get "fooled" you get mad because, damn it, SOMEONE should have been PROTECTING YOU from your own fucked-upedness!!
See, instead of tackling the real problem head-on we want someone to protect us from ourselves. We want the legal system to say "oh no, you can't BOTH have rounded corners because all these GRADE-A FUCKING MORONS out there won't be able to tell them apart and will wind up buying something they didn't want. No, we have to do the thinking FOR them and make sure they don't have to be bothered actually making an informed decision."
It's utterly ridiculous. If people weren't so God-damned braindead and/or lazy as shit this wouldn't be an issue- even if you legitimately can't physically tell them apart, actually doing some research and actually using them would differentiate them for you quickly if you had half a brain in your head. I am *SO* sick of living in a society of stupid people because this is the kind of bullshit legal wrangling that results. It's inevitable and almost HAS to occur because we're not equipped as a species anymore to have it otherwise.
It's fucking sad is what it is. Think about the basic situation we find ourselves in here: we have one company that probably did flat-out copy another getting sued by another company who is insecure and afraid to compete on the merits of their products because God forbid the exorbitant profits drop even A LITTLE...
AND THE LEGAL SYSTEM SAYS THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE GIVEN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES!
And it's all because people are too stupid and/or lazy to give us a choice of being otherwise.
Our best bet at this point is that the Mayans are right and Nibiru or some shit really does collide with the Earth in December... maybe in a few million years we'll crawl out of the primordial ooze again and maybe the next time we'll get it right because we sure as shit aren't getting it right this go-round.
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Oh come on now... You don't have to mince words. Tell us how you really feel. ;)
I'd be interested in an exact quote of the warning (Score:2)
Perhaps it was something along the lines of "That product is too similar because they are litigious assholes; they will go after anyone who manufactures anything that is vaguely parallelepiped shaped whose corners won't poke your eye out".
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Not close at all. Both HP and Dell have such a large variety of different designs across their lineup, that you'd be hard pressed to look at two products from the *same* manufacturer and be able to tell that they are.
Hey guys, guess what? (Score:2)
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I've owned several Wacom products and no, they did not create something equivalent to the iPad.
In terms of OS and such? No.
In terms of "a rectangle shaped tablet with rounded corners"? Hell yeah they did. That's every single one of their products.
too funny (Score:2)
Re:and everyone copied microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
Those bastards! Next thing you know, someone going to start building phones based on Linux!
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foul
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Before that Apple Records (the company that Beatles founded) sues Apple for name and logo similarity and everyone thought it was ridiculous.
I think that tolerance of hypocrisy must be central to the modern organizational man's mindset.
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Because people look at things. People decide a lot of things based on aesthetics. And because this isn't just about a rectangle with rounded corners as the headlines here would have you believe, there is value in an aesthetic design that guides you using familiar cues and particular design elements.
Designing something that is both functional and aesthetic is not trivial. We see examples of bad design all the time. I can give you an incredibly powerful computer, but it's trivial for me to make the interface