Apple Files Patent Suit Against Samsung Over Galaxy Line of Phones and Tablets

http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110418/apple-files-patent-suit-against-samsung-over-galaxy-line-of-phones-and-tablets/

by pathik • 15 years ago

56 106 15 years ago

mobilized.allthingsd.com

Kylekramer2• 15 years ago

Any clue why Apple is beating around the bush and not going after the main source (especially since this is just finishing off the trifecta of suing the main Android OEMs). While Samsung has been pretty blatant in their ripoffs of the iPhone design, I'd have to imagine they are better suited to fend off Apple than Google in this field and the suit is somewhat biting the hand that feeds Apple supplies. Are they just trying to make it known that "You go Android and we sue"?

pathik• 15 years ago

I guess Google needs those Nortel patents more than ever now, if only to fight off such patent lawsuits against its partners.

roc• 15 years ago

The article specifies three design patents. So it doesn't appear to be about Android, but rather just physically-similar devices.

Kylekramer2• 15 years ago

That is what the article focuses on, but the actual suit includes the Android operating system itself. Passing reference in the article to Android as "core technology".

Edit: Case in point, the Nexus S is named in the suit despite being pure Android and having a fairly unique design.

tomkarlo• 15 years ago

"In particular, Apple cites patents issued in 2009 and 2010 that cover the physical design of the iPhone along with various trademarks for its app icons."

If the main thrust of the suit is around the physical design, they probably have to go after the OEMs, not Google. Seems like Google could probably duck that.

mikeryan2• 15 years ago

From the article "In particular, Apple cites patents issued in 2009 and 2010 that cover the physical design of the iPhone along with various trademarks for its app icons."

It looks like this is more around form factor which is on Samsung, and only slightly related to screen UI.

HelloBeautiful3• 15 years ago

Maybe because of Google Maps on iDevices. Very hard to replace, as there are only 3 companies, including Google, who own somewhat global routing maps.

alanh2• 15 years ago

Keep in mind that the map software itself was created by Apple. Also keep in mind that there is almost certainly some sort of SLA/contract ensuring continued access to Google Maps data for some time period, and that it would not be particularly impossible to switch to, say, Bing-powered map graphics.

Samuel_Michon16• 15 years ago

"Any clue why Apple is beating around the bush and not going after the main source"

It might be because Google is too powerful. It might be because Google isn't the one putting the OS on phones and selling them, companies like HTC and Samsung are -- maybe that makes it difficult to successfully sue Google directly. In any case, it's clear that Apple and Microsoft are willing to do anything to keep Android from becoming a dominant mobile OS. As John Gruber wrote [1]:

"The patent suit against HTC [...] is all about Google - about creating a situation where Android is no longer a free operating system for handset makers in the U.S., because the cost of using it is an expensive legal defense against Apple."

Perhaps also of interest: a John Gruber piece [2] arguing against software patents, using quotes from Paul Graham, Tim Bray, and Will Shipley.

[1] http://daringfireball.net/2010/03/napalm_in_the_morning

[2] http://daringfireball.net/2010/03/this_apple_htc_patent_thin...

nickconfer2• 15 years ago

Much more effective to go after individual phone makers.

If you go after Google you go after a company that obviously has a big stake in mobile share and will want to fight for it.

If you go after individual phone makers, they have to decide if it is worth continuing going down this path. Even more likely, a new phone maker might get scared off at producing a clone that doesn't have the financial resources to fight Apple.

azakai• 15 years ago

> Any clue why Apple is beating around the bush and not going after the main source

Because Google is not actually doing anything infringing.

Google is writing code, but software patents in the US do not apply to abstract code. They apply to specific devices. So if a patent is being infringed, it is done by the phone manufacturers and shippers, and not Google.

If that sounds odd, then it is, but that is how the patent system currently works.

warfangle2• 15 years ago

Also, the button layout that they complain about isn't necessarily stock android. It's a UI modification Samsung put on top of things. This is stick android 2.3, for example: http://www.itsagadget.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/...

arron613• 15 years ago

Apple is lame. They claim Nokia is suing them with dumb patents and then proceed to sue others with their dumb patents...

Tycho• 15 years ago

Did you see the pics at the bottom? I thought I was looking at an iPhone photo until I looked a bit closer.

sukuriant2• 15 years ago

Indeed. With the exception of the notification bar's organization, it was quite difficult to distinguish the two.

I'm against overuse of patents and trademarks, but even to me these are very clearly too similar.

jameskilton2• 15 years ago

Frankly, those images are rather damning. The devices and the interface are too similar for Apple to just let this slide. If anything I would say Apple has to do this to avoid setting a very dangerous precedent.

cookiecaper3• 15 years ago

Those images are not that damning imo. Both phones are rectangular and thin. Does Apple have a monopoly on rectangular, thin phones? My G1 would look the same if it were thinner.

Does Apple have a monopoly on icons arranged in a grid? If so, the Windows desktop and many other interfaces are at risk.

ugh• 15 years ago

It's a grid of icons. Nokia's menu screen has looked like that for a long, long time.

There may well be good legal or strategic reasons for suing but all those lawsuits sure suck for the consumer. I, the consumer, want everyone to copy everything. I don't want some cool feature to not be availible to me merely because of legal reasons.

I want Apple to blatantly copy WebOS multitasking or notifications.

arron613• 15 years ago

I wonder if these images are damning.

Apple copying Dieder Ram

http://theplanninglab.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/...

cookiecaper3• 15 years ago

They're all suing each other. I'm sure someone will post that chart that shows all the mobile players and their largely reciprocal lawsuits amongst each other.

This is standard procedure among the big companies and it's how the business works. They do this to try and get corps to pay licensing fees to each other, and the lawyers encourage it because lawyers like money. I doubt many of these are really adversarial, it's just big business in its normal course trying to get as much money out of everyone as possible, and establish a precedent that if you don't comply with demands, it will cost you even more money. This, of course, is not really relevant to these big companies anyway unless one of these cases establishes a harmful or undesirable precedent.

izendejas• 15 years ago

These are the same guys that have copied Dieder Ram's designs over the last decade. So I guess it's okay to "take inspiration" from other products, but not copy directly? Either that, or this is a non-issue and Apple just wants to keep their lawyers busy. (I just wasted 5 mins as I believe it's the latter.)

arron613• 15 years ago

Yes thank you. If we need a picture..

http://theplanninglab.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/...

nickconfer2• 15 years ago

I honestly have to disagree. I remember the day the iPhone was announced. There was nothing like it. Touch screen phones, yes. Apps on phones yes.. but nothing quite like the iPhone. They truly innovated there, and there are some companies ripping them off.

Note that not all Android OS devices are so clearly trying to be a knock off iPhone. A lot of the most popular Android devices (like the HTC) have gone in unique directions. Some are being iPhone knock-offs though, and Apple has a right to protect their ideas as well as their brand.

erikstarck• 15 years ago

Wow. That's almost as if someone would take the original Xerox Parc computer designs and, you know, build a copied computer of and sell in their own name.

Anechoic• 15 years ago

IIRC, Apple licensed GUI elements from PARC.

cooldeal3• 15 years ago

Not really. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xero...

jonknee2• 15 years ago

Considering they filed a suit against Apple for infringement, I don't think that was the case.

ellyagg• 15 years ago

Wait, so Xeroc Parc had a massively successful GUI computing product that they proved the commercial viability of through their own risk, capital, and initiative?

jonknee2• 15 years ago

What's it matter if something is popular before copying it? If anything it's more of a dick move to copy something relatively unknown.

YooLi• 15 years ago

Would all the knee-jerk comment posters actually click through and see that it's not an 'Android' lawsuit.

shagrath• 15 years ago

except the Samsung Wave, running on Bada and similary looking to the iPhone is not cited in the lawsuit...

cube134• 15 years ago

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Samsung-Wave/

That doesn't look all that much like the iPhone, to be honest.

r00fus2• 15 years ago

The Wave2 looks very unlike an iPhone. I would never mistake the two.

However, the Samsung i9000S (Galaxy S) looks very much like the iPhone (3GS) and on casual observation may be mistaken for one another.

It takes a lot to get trade-dress lawsuits won, so I expect this will only put pressure on Samsung to do what Apple wants, and is not intended to actually win.

(which, btw, shows how broken the legal system is, since cases are more used to bully smaller players than to win on merits)

Groxx4• 15 years ago

>http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/files/2011/04/apple-v.-samsu...

I think they have an actual case here. That's about as blatantly-copying as you can get without making a complete knock-off that's designed to fool people.

abstractbill• 15 years ago

There's only so much variation you can have once you've decided that most of the surface area of a phone is going to be taken up by a touch-sensitive screen.

Groxx4• 15 years ago

I'm sure people claimed that prior to iOS's success as well.

Bud2• 15 years ago

Yeah, exactly: Samsung was FORCED into using the exact same number of icons, arranged in the same 5 rows of 4 icons, in the exact same shape. Also forced into a 4-icon shaded bar at the bottom with the 4 key icons in said bar, and forced into using a near-identical "phone" icon in the exact same place, because after all, a light-green phone icon with a diagonally-slanted depiction of a phone handset was the only possible way to go. Samsung was also clearly forced into using the exact same means of depicting multiple screens of icons.

Come on. Samsung clearly didn't even TRY to distinguish their product, here. This is about as obvious as it gets.

Perceval• 15 years ago

Windows Phone 7 looks pretty substantially different from iOS. Unlike most of the rapid followers of the iPhone, it looks like Microsoft really tried to rethink a mobile interface. It looks different and fresh, even if it's not the best mobile operating system out there.

Samsung's design isn't just derivative, it's more or less a straight copy. Microsoft illustrates that there's no necessity built into the medium that requires an iOS-like interface.

Apple may forever be chasing "look and feel" violations in vain, but I think they have a point when they say that Samsung's interface is basically just a rip off.

MichaelGG• 15 years ago

Where does the coloured background for the Android icons come from? On my Nexus One, all the icons are transparent, but on my Samsung devices the icons have colored backgrounds. It seems as if this is another thing Samsung did to make it more like the iPhone. Can anyone confirm this?

(Messaging, browser, and the keyboard shading also seem to reflect much more iPhone than stock Android.)

willifred• 15 years ago

Jason Fried has a great piece on this idea: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/575-but-theres-only-so-many-w...

blhack• 15 years ago

As much as I usually hate Apple, I'm with you on this one. One of my coworkers had the phone in that picture, and I almost asked her when she got an iPhone before I recognized that some of the icons were a bit off.

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

Apple invented the phone, the idea of representing applications as icons in a grid, and the idea of having quick access to specific applications.

Those features have existed in countless other operating systems, and DEs? Blasphemy.

ephcon• 15 years ago

Trade dress concerns trademarks, not patents.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

This is actually a pretty good example of patenting "product" and not "process". No comment on if this is good or bad, but we should probably decide explicitly if we're going to grant monopolies on entire kinds of products. It seems more like a trademark issue than a patent issue.

cube134• 15 years ago

>No comment on if this is good or bad, but we should probably decide explicitly if we're going to grant monopolies on entire kinds of products.

That's exactly what the patent system was intended for, though. If you invented a new product, you were granted an effective monopoly on that specific invention for a certain amount of time(now 25 years in the US).

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

I was under the impression that it was something more like "method and process for making a better mouse trap" and not "any old thing that catches mice". We're to the point now that mouse trap makers are suing the breeders of cats.

EGreg• 15 years ago

"“Samsung’s Galaxy Tab computer tablet also slavishly copies a combination of several elements of the Apple Product Configuration Trade Dress,” Apple says in its suit, noting that Samsung’s tablet, like Apple’s, uses a similar rectangular design with rounded corners, similar black border and array of icons."

Ah yes, rectangles with rounded corners, the presence of black borders, and the ability to have icons.

But joking aside, the samsung one sold in Korea does look very similar.

ChuckMcM2• 15 years ago

Patent-a-geddon continues. I wonder if this is an artifact of the great expiring due to start in 2015 of various silly patents.

alanh2• 15 years ago

Source? Considering software patents are continuously filed and granted, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

ChuckMcM2• 15 years ago

The great surge of technology patents started around 1990 and had really picked up steam by 1995 [1]. Patents, unlike Copyrights, are not 'renewable' in the sense that once their 20 year term expires they revert to the public domain by law. Further, now that folks have successfully litigated bogus Patent Marking [2] you can't use an old Patent number on your design to intimidate folks into not copying it.

So while filing rates continue to be high (although as you see from the linked graph issue rates have been falling) the patent office has become better educated about what should be and what shouldn't be patentable (not perfect yet but its getting noticeably better, if only because patent examiners are entering the market who grew up in a digital age).

So a side effect is that when the patent claims for issued patents expire, that's it, no more revenue. You can perfectly legally implement the RSA key exchange algorithm now (as an example) without infringing on any patents. This was speculated to be the primary reason that RSA Data Security Inc was trying to get people signed up to use their Copyrighted implementation of same, since if you licensed the copyrighted code, and then decided to stop paying them license fees and implement it yourself they couldn't sue you for patent infringement but they would want to go through your code to see that you hadn't used large parts of their software in your new design. That approach was unavailable if you hadn't been given access to their source code.

So starting in 2010, and accelerating until 2020 all of those patents that were issued between 1990 and 2000 will revert to being public domain. It is one of the reasons I predict a tech boom in 2015 - 2025 :-).

I did not anticipate however that prior to their death that these companies would go all out in try to extract some, possibly any, value from them by suing the pants off everyone. I don't know, but I suspect that this is at least partly responsible for the current fracas.

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=patents+us

[2] http://blogs.forbes.com/docket/2010/09/02/patent-marking-law...

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

Here's some pictures from the Palm OS a few years before iOS:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6542

I guess if the issue is that the grid has to be 4x4 w/ a black background. But otherwise, this looks like the standard paradigm for app launching on mobile phones.

Samuel_Michon16• 15 years ago

And here's a screenshot of Apple's Newton OS, which came out three years before Palm released its Pilot in 1996.

http://pdadb.net/img/os/newton/newton_os_2.0_all_icons.png

The lawsuit isn't just about Samsung using a desktop metaphor. They copied all sorts of hardware and software characteristics from the iPhone.

kenjackson6• 15 years ago

Are they suing using the Newton UI patent? I don't think so. Shipping and patenting 10 years later doesn't help. In fact this Apple could be prior art against itself.

This just weakens Apple's position.

r00fus2• 15 years ago

Anyone here notice that this suit basically comes right around the time that a credible iPod Touch competitor arrives?

Maybe there's another "line in the sand" that Apple had set for the Google/Android that just got stepped over?

Samuel_Michon16• 15 years ago

As far as I know, the Galaxy Player isn't even on the market yet [1]. However, it does very much look like an older generation iPod touch. It even has the same color scheme and metal rim.

iPod touch: http://media.obsessable.com/media/2008/09/12/575/apple-ipod-...

Galaxy Player: http://www.samsunghub.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/galaxy-...

But no, I don't think the release of the Galaxy Player has much to with it. I'm willing to bet Apple would've sued Samsung anyway, as Apple has been hunting Android handset makers since early last year.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/16/samsung-galaxy-player-4-a...

smogzer• 15 years ago

Singularity should not ben pattentable. Like 15 years ago i described how myspace future phone would be like: no physical buttons taking space, a gps, runs linux, and a thinnier form than my current ipaq. So, after a decade after the first ipaqs the samsung galaxy from where i am typing finally arrives.

Apple Files Patent Suit Against Samsung Over Galaxy Line of Phones and Tablets

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