Xiaomi Threatens Legal Action Against Users Who Call Its Mimoji App a Copycat of Apple's Memoji (venturebeat.com) 68
From a report: Apple's Memoji may have become the more popular 3D avatar feature for smartphones, but Xiaomi wants people to know that its similarly-named version -- Mimoji -- came first, despite increasingly confusing overlap between the apps' names and features. Moreover, it's apparently threatening legal action against writers who call it a copycat without providing proof. In September 2017, Apple introduced Animoji as an iPhone X-exclusive component of Messages, enabling the high-end smartphone's users to see their facial expressions rendered in augmented reality as one of 12 animated emoji glyphs, including pig, fox, rabbit, panda, and poop icons. [...]
Writers and users in China found the similarities similar enough to call Xiaomi's version a clone, but after a day of "internal self-examination," the company challenged that on the Weibo social network. As Gizmochina notes, PR head Xu Jieyun posted the app's naming timeline, and said that the "functional logic difference between the two products is huge." It also promised "the next phase of action" against people who said it was copying Apple's Memoji without proof.
Writers and users in China found the similarities similar enough to call Xiaomi's version a clone, but after a day of "internal self-examination," the company challenged that on the Weibo social network. As Gizmochina notes, PR head Xu Jieyun posted the app's naming timeline, and said that the "functional logic difference between the two products is huge." It also promised "the next phase of action" against people who said it was copying Apple's Memoji without proof.
functional logic difference (Score:2)
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Re: functional logic difference (Score:2)
Explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone explain to me, ideally with a car analogy, what is functional logic in case of an emoji smartphone app?
Well, you know how the fronts of some cars can look sad, or angry?
Now imagine you could, on demand, give your car a mustache or make it look like it was shrugging or was wearing sunglasses, and at the same time kind of made the car look like you!
That is the power that people crave, to make little digital clones of themselves that are more pure than they ever can be, and also sleeker and more aerodynamic.
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Can someone explain to me, ideally with a car analogy, what is functional logic in case of an emoji smartphone app?
Well, you know how the fronts of some cars can look sad, or angry?
.
Wait..you know what the front of my Edsel looks like!
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Your mom.
sport utility vehicles (Score:2)
It's like how Toyota decided to put seats in the back of their truck to call it a car (and evade the 25% tarrifs on imported trucks) and the 4-runner was accidentally born. But when a high sprung truck, cheaper than a cherokee or land rover because of reduced passenger safety features and suspension comfort turned out to be the dream niche car for lightweight off road situations it sold like crazy Suddenly everyone wanted the same.
So now everyone made sport utility vehicles. They are the station wagon/h
Re: sport utility vehicles (Score:2)
It's like how Toyota decided to put seats in the back of their truck to call it a car (and evade the 25% tarrifs on imported trucks) and the 4-runner was accidentally born.
Aren't you thinking of the Subaru Brat??
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The BRAT and the Baja were the other way around. Subaru took existing passenger car platforms (the Leone and the Legacy Outback, respectively), chopped off the back half of the cabin, and dropped in a truck bed. Albeit, Subarus, being all-wheel drive, are usually more useful in situations that would call for a truck than an actual truck, most of which are actually just RWD.
Most SUVs, before everything turned into a crossover, started as actual truck (but usually just 2WD, which again is kind of missing the
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if they cover the entire car
are they still "bumper" stickers?
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I wonder what percentage of bumper stickers actually make it to a bumper?
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You want to send a fun message to a friend.
That's it. Sorry there's no car analogy, but the whole deal is that you would like to send a message to someone that is cute and fun. Amazingly, we can have real-time lip syncing with a little animated avatar (as someone that has worked in AAA games for over 15 years, I'm impressed with the quality).
Don't take it too seriously. Smartphones aren't just for doing important business at the business factory anymore, we use them to communicate and connect to the people
I can't even....... (Score:2)
I looked at TFA and I just can't even relate to the importance, the need, the desire....
Why the hell do these things even exist!?!?!?!?
Don't people have jobs or important things to deal with?
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It's like a television show that's moved past the story arc where it should have concluded. The writers have no real idea what to do after that
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As much as I liked Star Trek TNG I really respect the creative decision to end the show when they did. When it happened I remember statements being given in magazines of the era basically stating exactly what you said - the show it good now, we don't want to jump the shark. Sadly they passed some of the shark-jumping off to Voyager.
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That wasnâ(TM)t so much a creative decision as an industry standard. Seven years is the standard length for a television actorsâ(TM) contract; owing to some historical artifact of California law that somehow persists in Hollywood. If youâ(TM)ll recall, DS9 and VOY also ended after seven years.
After seven years, if itâ(TM)s a popular show, the cast can suddenly get very expensive. Thatâ(TM)s why relatively few shows go past seven seasons, even if theyâ(TM)re successful. Of those
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They exist because most users of modern technology are monumentally, breathtakingly stupid.
There are many things you can do with technology completely aside from programming. You can create 2D or 3D art. Music. Creative writing. You can contribute to a deserving project in a non-programming sense, writing documentation or testing. You can do something interesting with 3D printing, or with digital circuit design. The potential for human exploration is almost endless.
Instead, people want animated poop emoj
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Christ, fuck off. Your holier-than-thou BS is too obnoxious. I work hard doing a few of the things you said as a living, but why would that make Animoji a subject of derision?
People are just trying to have some fun here—remember fun? When I travel away from home, I send Animoji messages home because they're faster than typing and more interesting than a series of ordinary voice recordings. We have a laugh and enjoy how cute and silly the avatars are. I've been hearing for the last 10 years that text m
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Citation needed.
Computers are supposed to be here to make our lives better, not merely as a tool to get things done. The attitude of people is they want to use their computers for all sorts of things and it actually falls on us tech professionals to make things secure enough that it isn't the Wild West out there anymore. The only attitude problem is ours, looking down on people that don't rise to some high standard of computer literacy that we think they should have come by by osmosis or something. And let'
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Animoji is a message? I thought he was an SJW weaboo twat.
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Emoji = Communication of emotions = sex = procreation = evolution
In the old days, we had to hand-craft ASCII flowers from scratch, which is too hard for many computers users. ---{---{@
now they are copying samsung and microsoft (Score:3)
By claiming they didn't copycat Apple look and feel designs.
Anti-SLAPP - does your state have it yet? (Score:4, Informative)
You have a First Amendment right to state your opinion.
Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation are a problem everywhere, and are brought to curtail that right. Some, but not all US states, have an anti-SLAPP law. Having been sued for 3 Million dollars for giving my opinion that someone violated the GPL, I know the value of the California anti-SLAPP law. The plaintiff had to take out this $300,000 bond [perens.com] to pay for my defense. Stay tuned!
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In this case, maybe there are some shenanigans Xiaomi can pull under trademark law. Reporters generally don't acknowledge trademarks in their copy (no "TM" or Circle-R) but there might be something around brand dilution ... e.g. reporter forgets to capitalize "Xerox," gets slapped with a C&D.
Amusing, though, that Xiaomi's app even sounds like a portmanteu of "mimic" and "Memoji."
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That would be difficult. In general, reporting about a mark doesn't require acknowledgement of the mark.
In the USA, you have a constitutional right to state your opinion even if it's wrong.
Go ahead, I dare you (Score:2)
Xiaomi cloned Apple's Memoji.
Go ahead Xiaomi, make your move, bring it to "the next phase of action".
Maybe we can expand this case to other technology Chinese companies are copying/stealing.
Someone needs to get b***h slapped in Xiaomi's management.
I really don’t get Memoji (Score:2)
To me, they just look stupid. But as far as “Xiaomi copied Apple” goes, the side-by-side images at the top of that Venture Beat article look pretty damning.