Apple Loses Bid To Exclude Evidence In Samsung Patent Trial 227
New submitter Shavano writes with news that Apple's attempt to block Samsung from introducing evidence of a tablet prototype developed in 1994 has been denied by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. Part of the reason Apple got a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 earlier this year was that an Appeals Court said Apple's tablet design was significantly different from earlier designs. Now, Judge Koh has decided that the issue needs to be decided by a jury.
"Samsung has argued the design was an obvious variation of tablets existing as early as 1994, including one made by Hewlett-Packard Co. The Korean company supported that argument at the trial with videotaped testimony by Roger Fidler, who heads the digital publishing program at the University of Missouri. Fidler said he started working on a tablet design in 1981. Apple sought to exclude the testimony based on the appeals court ruling. In a written declaration, Fidler said 'Apple personnel were exposed to my tablet ideas and prototypes' in the mid- 1990s when the company collaborated with Knight-Ridder Inc.’s information design laboratory in Colorado."
Can we just agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we just agree that neither company were all that original and that the progression to today's design was a natural and obvious path given the technology that became possible?
Or are we going to start calling in the Science fiction writers next? Because what ever Samsung or Apple might of designed an SF writer likely wrote about it first.
Re:Can we just agree (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>Or are we going to start calling in the Science fiction writers next?
We could just show a still image from TNG with Wesley holding his school PAD. Not only does it have a similar anme to iPad, but it's also rectangle with rounded corners : http://www.newfangled.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/2/516f36353ced7a44696bdaaffbc0f7f0/misc/star_trek_padd_3.jpg [newfangled.com]
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>>>Or are we going to start calling in the Science fiction writers next?
We could just show a still image from TNG with Wesley holding his school PAD. Not only does it have a similar anme to iPad, but it's also rectangle with rounded corners : http://www.newfangled.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/2/516f36353ced7a44696bdaaffbc0f7f0/misc/star_trek_padd_3.jpg [newfangled.com]
Would you confuse Wesley's PAD with an iPad? Like, if they were sitting on two tables in a room, you wouldn't know which one is which and would have to do a detailed examination?
Re:Can we just agree (Score:5, Insightful)
It's evidence that the notion of a flat tablet-like device with a screen flush fit with the bezel, rounded corners, and a touchscreen, is self-evident due to form following function.
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Galaxy Tab doesn't look "just like an iPad", either. But Apple claims that it looks similar enough - and having seen it, I would be inclined to agree. This prototype, similarly, does not of course look "just like an iPad", but it seems to have all design elements in it on which Apple has previously claimed design patents.
We'll see how this goes in court now. Given that Apple resisted introducing this evidence to court as hard as they could, it seems they're worried. Time to fetch the popcorn.
nah, the ipad mini, due in 4 weeks time (Score:2)
It looks like the iPad mini about to be released.
If every coder/geek watched startrek 5000 times, the concept of tablets + flat screen + touch screen is there in their heads.
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Color is irrelevant , you cant patent black or white.
All corners are round, at the atom level.
Besides walk into a tv retailer, 99% of tvs look identical, 100% black, 100% same shape.
Just border sizes are diff.
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What Apple did was merely to see a business opportunity. They did not invent any enabling technology. They just figured: hey, if people can use a small form-factor computer without a keyboard, that would be useful. Then they hyped that idea.
I do not think patents should be rewarded for these business opportunities. It obstructs the free market. Patents should, at most, be rewarded for the underlying hard science.
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Patents weren't awarded for that. They were awarded for things that like over-scroll bounce or swipe to unlock. Those are the things this suit is about.
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MeeGo proved nothing, blackberry OS is a better argument due to the nature of North American adoption driving world markets over the last 50 years. I would even argue the sidekick OS "Danger" was viable but the iOS took it to an already primed pump and took the revolutionary step. Android democratiized it. Going back more than about 5-8 years muddies the vision of where we were clearly going. It's like referring back to the earliest mobile computer as a laptop, it's mobile but nobody could use it in the
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The problem with BlackberryOS is that it lost to iPhone so a case can be made it was more primitive and the evolution from BBOS to iOS was inevitable. I don't agree, I think it had a lot more to do with BlackBerry's failure to help create value adds for their corporate customer base; but that is a reasonable case to be made.
As for where we were going. Remember the first 6 years just take us back to 2006 when the iPhone was being designed. Were their other paths before iPhone 1 is the argument.
As far as Me
you should have ..... (Score:2)
Nice tho, but, if you used computers pre 1995, pre 1991, and knew the 'hacker' and 'pirate' scene, you would have seen many games and indeed consoles had cuter better interfaces, ie ps2/xbox1, and xbmc.
Why didnt you guys get the sony ps2 game designers/graphics artists to design a futuristic GUI.
This is why hardcore geek engineers need to branch out and at least play games often to get the feel of alternative interfaces.
Though I can imagine the management being old farts in suits saying they want boring te
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Right but the Ericsson was not a huge success it didn't change the direction of phones. It certainly sounds like an interesting predecessor. But the point was that at 2006 the ideas that most companies had were not not, "lets continue to advance on the P800's design". If it had been then a web based system would have been inevitable.
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"Right but the Ericsson was not a huge success it didn't change the direction of phones."
Irrelevant!! The Ericsson is just proof Apple wasn't first with anything for the iphone and its support structure.
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He's arguing natural and obvious not first. That's a different argument.
First he had already conceded with things like slide to unlock.
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Certainly. But as resolution increased so did CPU.. Things like voice dictation which are just emerging now could have been the focus. Things like Evernote but more advanced instead of being side features could have been principle systems. Its not clear to me that it was obvious that people wanted to use the browser on their phone rather than organize their life. Think about the information / channel apps on iPhone imagine if this break out a year or two before the browser rather than a year or two aft
When a judge is forced to... (Score:3, Insightful)
When a judge, who has shown their bias already, feels compelled to go against their own bias, then Samsung must have a pretty strong case.
Koh is pissed (Score:5, Funny)
Did I miss something? (Score:3)
I read the article linked to in the summary, but did not notice any place where it mentioned the grounds that Apple attempted to use to get the evidence excluded.
I mean, aren't you required to give a judge a reason to not admit potentially relevant evidence?
And really, I'm compelled to wonder what possible reason they could have given that they seriously would think had even the slightest chance of flying...
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Reminds me of that line from Liar Liar:
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in some courtrooms this shit is actually allowed! Totally against the rules of evidence, mind you, but they tend to ignore the Law when it suits them - by they I mean lawyers, judges, clerks...
Let me be the grumpy person for a day (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that I'm not interested in the subject: I believe its outcome will have profound implications on the smartphone/tablet landscape (hopefully for the best).
However, I am totally uninterested in every trivial aspect and "twist" of the trial, especially when I'm sure that slashdot editors/firehose cherry pick these stories, and fail to give us the greater picture of the process. Can't we just wait for the court ruling, and have a GOOD summary of it, for once ?
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"it's new" implies "it's news"
and the tag line DOES say "news for nerds...."
don't wanna be a hipster (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ridiculous (Score:2)
This whole trial is ridiculous. Apple should have never have got the design patent in the first place. It has no innovation at all if you think about it logically, and most designers aren't even that logical.
Q. Hmm what screen shall we use?
A Oh, the cheapest ones are 16:9, next probably 19:10 then there's the good old 4:3. Whatever we use is going to make a rectangle shape.
Q OK, how do we make the device feel nice and be safe for children to use.
A - ROUNDED CORNERS!
What exactly are Samsung / other
We are blessed (Score:5, Insightful)
We are blessed that back in the 1970's, 1980's and in early 1990's there were many inventors decided to share their incredible inventions with the world, and they also decided against patenting their inventions
That is why we got what we got today - from hypertext to web2, web3
If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple - We are sure going to miss out on the many things that we are enjoying today
Hooray to the generous inventors !!
Pox to those greedy patent trolls !!!
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Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Interesting)
I used touchscreens in both decades, and they were held back because they sucked. You had to press hard to get your input to register. (Also people weren't sure what input would be best... touchscreen, mouse, touchpad, or lightpen.) Just as none of the home computers of the day could play DVD-quality video prior to 1995, neither could they do multitouch. The technology simply wasn't there.
Re:We are blessed (Score:4, Interesting)
Touchscreens still suck. There is no tactile feedback, and my fingers are too big for the virtual keyboards on smartphones.
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Touchscreens are great for ereaders, ok for angry birdish stuff but make pretty much everything else a PITA. On the other hand, after a generation of users forced into the captivity of "mouse only" interface, I believe there will be a CLI revival for the next generation...
Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Insightful)
> Touchscreens are great for ereaders, ok for angry birdish stuff but make pretty much everything else a PITA.
Not great for ereaders. You get fingerprints on what you are trying to read. Lots of people prefer physical buttons.
What is so difficult about physical buttons?
Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Informative)
>>>If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple -
Ahahahahahahahaaaha. Let's see. Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission. Apple sued Microsoft in the mid-80s for making an OS too similar to their own (which led MS plus other makers like Atari and Commodore to deliberately change their OSes appearance). Activision was sued by Atari in 1980 for making cartridges without permission. Nintendo was sued in the late 80s for not sharing their cartridge patents with Atari & other 3rd-party vendors. NCSA Mosaic sued Netscape for copying their browser concepts in the early 90s.
Yeah. Sure. "Open and willing to share". Not.
We Are Cursed (Score:3, Insightful)
Either humans suck or the patent system sucks or both.
Re:We Are Cursed (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans invented the patent system.
Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Informative)
Ahahahahahahahaaaha. Let's see. Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission.
I have no recollection of the "ideas" part of your statement. Care to cite your references?
Apple sued Microsoft in the mid-80s for making an OS too similar to their own (which led MS plus other makers like Atari and Commodore to deliberately change their OSes appearance).
No. Apple sued Microsoft for developing an operating system based on information they received under NDA. Microsoft did, in fact, stab Apple in the back on that occasion. The only reason Apple lost is because the key innovation wasn't theirs to begin with (i.e. - taken from Xerox).
Yeah. Sure. "Open and willing to share". Not.
Okay, I'll grant you this. GP's statement was going too far. Still, things that back then were considered fair game are today causes for multi-billion dollars suites. IBM did not sue Compaq when they created a clean room re-implementation of their BIOS, despite the huge economical impact it had on IBM's market. Amiga, and later Commodor, never had to ask anyone for permission before creating an OS with windows, icons and menus, and suffered no consequences for it.
Heck, the Amiga even had an "emulator" for the Mac. It would do some Amigaish tricks with the hardware to cause it to be a Mac, and then had a special hardware [wikipedia.org] solely so there'd be a place to put your (presumably legally obtained) Mac BIOS ROMs. In fact, the hacked version did not require that hardware at all, as people who don't care about A-Max's copyrights don't care about Apple's either. The result was a 7.2Mhz Amiga emulating an 8Mhz Mac at 120% speed. Nobody sued anyone, as far as I know.
Contrast the story above with Apple's treatment of Pystar and see whether things have changed or not.
Shachar
Bill Gates' complaint (Score:4, Informative)
You're kidding, right? I thought this was one of the most famous statements ever made by Gates. However, it was 1976 (close enough to 1980, I suppose) and it wasn't a newsletter, it was an actual letter to the Homebrew Computer Club [digibarn.com].
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That letter is about copying software. Care to show where "Bill Gates complained in a newsletter circa 1980 about people copying software and ideas without permission"?
Shachar
Also the Borland vs Lotus lawsuit (Score:2)
I think Lotus sued Borland over the look of the menus, or something equally silly.
Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Insightful)
If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple...
Please pick up the white courtesy phone. Thomas Edison and some guy named... Westinghouse? and a couple of folks from RCA and GE would like a word.
I said, pick up the white phone...
Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Funny)
If the inventors of yesteryears were as greedy as Apple...
Please pick up the white courtesy phone. Thomas Edison and some guy named... Westinghouse? and a couple of folks from RCA and GE would like a word.
I said, pick up the white phone...
We got someone called Tesla on the other line...
Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that Tesla worship is all the rage, but does he need mentioned every time someone brings up Edison? Hell, bringing him up here only implies that he was a "greedy entrepreneur" -- probably not the message you wanted to send!
I agree that Tesla isn't given the historical credit he deserves. Still, we can't go on about Tesla as if he was the genius of geniuses who did nothing but amazing work.
The truth is that most of Tesla's inventions were squarely in crack-pot territory. From his earthquake machine to his camera for photographing thoughts, Tesla was the 19th century equivalent of the peswiki.com community all wrapped up in one crazy package.
Let's find a little balance here.
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I do think Tesla is given the historical credit he deserves. Moreso, about everyone in the U.S. you ask will probably say that Nicola Tesla is not given the historical credit he deserves. How can there be more credit as when everyone believes that Nicola Tesla doesn't get enough of it? ;)
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New to this reading thing, yeah?
I agree that Tesla isn't given the historical credit he deserves.
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To be completely fair Westinghouse, Edison, GE, RCA, and others from that era sued the hell out of their copiers. But that's because they built identically functioning devices. This fight is about appearance & confusion since both use off-the-shelf components. The difference is in the OS and they know it. Instead apple is hell bent on keeping the premium market to themselves for at least another few years.
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Re:We are blessed (Score:5, Informative)
Citation: Patent 4,873,662, Informaton for display at a terminal apparatus of a computer is stored in blocks the first part of which contains the information which is actually displayed at the terminal and the second part of which contains information relating to the display and which may be used to influence the display at the time or in response to a keyboard entry signal. For example, the second part of the block could include information for providing the complete address of an another block which would be selected by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard. The second part of the block could alternatively influence the format and/or color of the display at the terminal. When a block is read from the store of the computer the second part is retained in another store which may be located in the terminal or in the computer itself or perhaps both. The invention is particularly useful in reducing the complexity of the operating protocol of the computer.
This was the basis for their 2000 claim on the patent (filed 1976, granted at the USPTO 1989) which they subsequently lost. IBM and Lockheed-Martin also tried to lay claim on hyperlinks, which they both also lost.
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The big difference is that those patents where not granted then, but would be just rubber stamped today.
Today you can patent even the most trivial software "invention", and use it as a weapon to destroy any form of progress unless you are payed ridiculous amounts of money. I effect you take progress as hostage and demand ransom money.
The big difference is a few years ago it was about inventions and development (in short - competition on quality), but today the only thing that counts is greed and lawsuits...
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There mostly were. The great things we have now are here because either the patents expired or a odd inventor decided against patenting it, and overtook the entire market (composed of hundreds of inventors and dozens of corporations) because of that.
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How is that any different than Apple in this case (except that Apple did patent where nothing was to patent)?
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Funny)
I also notice that Steve Jobs ripped off his trademark look from this guy in addition to the iPad design.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of Apple's making it work, we're talking about trademark looks and conceptual functionality. As a designer, if this man did come up with what a tablet should look like and should do, and then if someone else took his work and made it work, that would mean that the someone else has a derivative work.
Hell, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they had these tablet computers that they walked around with and used for data access and retrieval. They were even called PADD. They had rounded corners. Yes, they were not real. But, as we've seen, a lot of people want to make real things that work like the fake things they see in science fiction. There's no shame in that, but their works are all derivative works at best. They didn't come up with the idea. They just made it work.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
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boss walks in... "Our biggest competitor just released an update that does xyz. Please have these features added to product abc by the end of the week."
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I usually reply back with... "Out biggest competitor pays their developers $x per month.. Please adjust my salary by the end of the week..."
And if he would give you a raise (I'm assuming you wouldn't ask your salary adjusted downwards), could you finish the features he wants in time?
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Quick, someone pay Gene Rodenberry's estate off, and launch a StarPADD
I'm typing this on an IPad (oh, the irony!)
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It's impossible to "Vaguely Imitate" a center mounted screen, or a screen made of glass (which is shiny, and transmits light from one side to the other). It is impossible to imitate the color black. It impossible to imitate a rectangle (it simply is or is not a rectangle). It is impossible to imitate quite a few things Apple has design patented, and many of them are obvious. Design patents are an abomination to human culture, and are the lowest form of filth. How is one to make a functioning smartphone
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" a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black
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It doesnt matter if Samsung was influenced by iPad or Fidler's tablet. What matters is Apple's design patent is no longer valid, and Samsung has all the right to copy the iPad and Fidler's tablet.
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Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is perfectly reasonable to expect both to be rewarded. What is not reasonable is to reward the creator of the second, working, tablet by blocking any competition that also produces a working tablet with a similar design to the first non-working tablet.
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No it isn't perfectly acceptable for both to be rewarded. In his video, Fielder talks about emergent technologies. Some things naturally come out of the combination of new technology. Why should anyone be able to patent the obvious? It's garbage - and society is hurt by this mindset and attitude.
Now, real inventions, like compression algorithms, noise reduction algorithms, etc. deserve a patent (albeit a very limited life so that society is not hurt), but not garbage like "rounded corners". Anyone that
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You don't understand patent law very well. Being successful at bringing someone else's design concept to market does not allow you to block competitors from creating a knock-off. That's what you need a patent for. But for that, you need to show both novelty and nonobviousness, and it's not enough to be the first one to make it "actually work." If someone had the idea for the design 20 years ago, but not the technology, go ahead and patent the novel technology. But if you are using widely available tech
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
The creator of which one should be rewarded? (think carefully before you answer)
After thinking about it a bit, this would be my answer:
For the one that came after (and actually works), I see no reason why they shouldn't be rewarded for the effort on the parts that actually made it work. Patents on novel engineering regarding the guts of the device that made it a functioning tablet? No problem.
For the one that came first (and doesn't work), the non-functional mock-up offers only style; the external look and design. Those are the only elements he should get credit for -- but it just so happens that elements of style are among the patents at question in this trial.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Informative)
For the one that came after (and actually works), I see no reason why they shouldn't be rewarded for the effort on the parts that actually made it work. Patents on novel engineering regarding the guts of the device that made it a functioning tablet? No problem.
Of course, Apple didn't actually do most of the novel hardware engineering that made the iPad possible as a functioning tablet - in that regard Samsung actually did more to make the iPad possible than Apple did. The touchscreen display and CPU chip in the iPad are both engineered and built by Samsung.
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Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Informative)
The A4 (like some samsung's processors) is comprised mostly of "IP-Cores" from various companies.
IP Cores are electronic designs sold like the ARM processor (which is present in all the iPhone/iPad/... processors), the grephic accelerator (PowerVR, nVidia,...), the RAM block, the FLASH rom, the USB interface, the wifi system (Broadcom and other), ...
So, no, Apple did not design the A4... they designed a VERY SMALL part of it. Some people did "decap" (cur the plastic box around the processor) both an A4 and a Samsung processor and, using microscopes, were able to identify these common parts which covered more than 90% of the chip (well, Samsung chip had some extra IPcores which were useless for a phone and are not present in the A4)
When Apple boast about their "brand new magic A(n+1) processor", it makes me laugh... because there is nothing magic, nothing new... they just updated the CPU cores to a newer version from Acorn (which designs ARM) and the graphic cores... Some glue electronics to bind all these parts and it's done...
And ARM cores were used in later Palm devices (first were using a 68000 variant), on iPaq (from CompaQ) and other windows mobiles PDA as well as in Embedded systems.
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Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>Put them in front of a 1984 Macintosh, and almost everything works like we have now.
Except it doesn't have subfolders like we have now.
Or the ability to multitask more than 1 program.
And no right button menus (like Commodore Amiga and Atari ST).
Users would be frustrated.
BTW it's not the first time a patent was invalidated in court by showing the existence of prior work. In 2007 Novell and Red Hat Linux jointly fended off a patent infringement suit for virtual desktops - and several people helped in finding cases of prior art. The most interesting one of all? A carefully restored and working 1985 Commodore Amiga demonstrated to the judge and jury..... Basically they demonstrated how the Amiga could have multiple desktops and screens.
POINT: A patent is invalidated when a piece of working hardware predates the issuance date. Apple can not claim a patent on the rounded-corners of the iPad if a piece of hardware already existed with that concept.
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The most interesting one of all? A carefully restored and working 1985 Commodore Amiga demonstrated to the judge and jury.....
Carefully restored? My 198x Atari ST machines (including an MFM RLL harddrive) were just unpacked from storage a few weeks ago and still work just fine.
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Oh, and the plastic will have gone that horrible yellow shade :(
Hydrogen peroxide and leave it in the sun for a few days.
Don't use a high concentration and be careful it will burn. Gloves and goggles are a good idea.
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windows had them from the start, so did UNIX, apple didn't get them until OS 8 and they sucked
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of contention for which this was presented is the design patent; the inner workings are irrelevant (cf. here [wikipedia.org]).
Apple is seeking to prevent Samsung (and, by extension, most other tablet manufacturers, if the case succeeds) from selling anything that resembles their design (namely, the rounded corners, form factor, etc.) based on the idea that they came up with an original, non-obvious design for the iPad and should be awarded exclusive rights to it. Samsung's evidence points to the idea that Apple were beaten to the design by almost 20 years, and were exposed to it then, and therefore their idea is neither original nor non-obvious, thus invalidating their patent.
Again, none of this requires "working" hardware. Patents don't require it, except for perpetual motion machines; for those, a working prototype is mandatory [wikipedia.org].
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Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
The creator of which one should be rewarded? (think carefully before you answer)
Since it's a matter of trade dress (read: design) I'd say whoever designed it first. That would be the piece of plastic with newspaper stuck to it. Nice attempt at redirection, though.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
The creator of which one should be rewarded? (think carefully before you answer)
The creator of the idea should be rewarded for the idea.
The creator of the design should be rewarded for the design.
The creator of the functionality should be rewarded for the functionality.
The creator of the implementation should be rewarded for the implementation.
The creator of X should be rewarded for X.
Any more difficult questions?
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then they can be sold off to company Y, which will do nothing to actually promote, or make devices or technology, but just sue the piss out of unrelated creator Z which never heard of creator X because the product never really went anywhere, simply because he made the same discoveries as someone else did 5 years later.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I notice one of them actually works, the other is a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it.
Tablet Newspaper (1994) [youtube.com]. Note that the depicted design includes tablet with full-color reactive touchscreen (CRT, not LCD), it is not just "a piece of plastic with a print of a newspaper stuck to it". Also note that this case is about design patents, [wikipedia.org] not functionality, and therefore the fact that Fidler didn't have a fully functional iPad in 1994 is irrelevant.
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Did Apple develop the technologies to turn Fidler's design into a working product? Or did they just use technologies that were developed by others, then package them into a form also designed by another persons? Yes, they should be rewarded for the work they did - the packaging itself is still a valuable service. But they should not be able to prevent OTHERS from doing the same thing.
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Are you intentionally being obtuse? If the patents are overturned, there is no case. It doesnt have to go to the jury, the judge will herself throw the case out.
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I have a feeling you'll see something similar to Oracle vs. Google.
The jury will be asked to determine whether Samsung copied Apple, assuming that the patent is valid. If the jury comes back and says, "Nope. They didn't," then the whole thing is over. We're done. If the jury comes back and says, "Yup, they did," (and, personally, I agree that they will) then the judge decides whether or not those patents are actually valid. If the judge decides that the patents aren't valid, then the whole thing is ove
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did that happen in 1994 when Fidler's demo was shown to people? Of course not. It wasn't a real product. It was stardust and dreams.
This matters not for the purposes of establishing prior art / originality, though. You don't get to claim "well, I started selling it first" and ignore the works that preceded you on those grounds.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time Steve showed a feature in the iPhone in 2007, I didn't gasp, I thought "My phone does that, though poorly". The iPhone was a good product, but what it did wasn't new. It was just that they made it work. That's commendable, but doesn't make the ideas themselves original.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Insightful)
When Steve showed the iPhone in 2007 I felt the same.
I then wondered where the fuck all the basic fundamental features every other phone I'd had for at least 6 years prior were, such as MMS support.
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on my motorola razr v3.
As I have been doing for years before the iphone.
Re:It's like Palo Alto all over again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Samsung's Lawyers are not playing to the judge but to the Jury. That is their audiecne and if they can convince them that Apple's Design Patents shouldn't have been issued to begin with, they solve the problem not only for themselves but for every other company that Apple has sued using those design patents. Simply put, Samsung's lawyers aim to kill Apple's entire legal strategy in all of the U.S. Courts being pursued by Apple.
By invalidating these patents entirely, they kill Apple's biggest legal threat against Samsung with the added benefit of doing the same for most of the other defendents in the States. Hell it may even benefit them in Germany, France other EU countries and such if the patents are invalidated in the States. Thus those lawyers will have definately earned their money for the case.
Re: (Score:2)
The early part of SCO vs Novell and SCO vs IBM was all in SCO favour too as they were allowed to get away with a great deal. As the cases progressed the Judge(s) reined them in harder and harder. The case vs Novell (Novell won), a retrial was ordered and they won again. The IBM case may never get to trial as TSG (formerly SCO) is trying to get into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy (liquidation) while still being allowed too continue the trial, which was gutted of most of their claims by the loss to Novell.
My point
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you perhaps referring to the Apple PDA (August '93) that they shamelessly copied from the Casio/Tandy Zoomer (June '92)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you perhaps referring to the Apple PDA (August '93) that they shamelessly copied from the Casio/Tandy Zoomer (June '92)
Which is basically a shrunken version of the GRiDPad 1910 (1989) running PC-GEOS (1990).
Re: (Score:2)
microwave ovens (TOS)
protein-based food analogs (Pot Noodle? Precursor to food replicators, mayhap?) (TOS "The Trouble With Tribbles": KIRK: "This... is my chicken sandwich and coffee.")
cellphones/PMRs (TOS)
tricorders (TOS)
head-mounted direct-to-retina projection displays (TNG "The Game")
just off the top of my head.
Re: (Score:2)