Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone 5 design

http://www.bgr.com/2012/09/05/iphone-5-design-copied-patented-goophone-i5/

by velodrome • 14 years ago

195 177 14 years ago

bgr.com

tomflack4• 14 years ago

Seems like a slam-dunk leaked photos = prior art.

ukoki3• 14 years ago

...if only Chinese courts cared about such obtuse concepts as 'facts' and 'logic'.

sebastianmarr2• 14 years ago

What is your experience with Chinese courts regarding patent cases? Any sources?

tomflack4• 14 years ago

I was expecting a glib reply such as your own and I'm saddened that I'm not disappointed.

Natsu2• 14 years ago

Don't be too sure. In Apple vs. Samsung, one of the allegedly infringing phones was dropped from the case. You see, it had been made prior to Apple's patent. I believe that they were also unable to inform the jury of that for whatever reason.

ewang1• 14 years ago

LOL, the goophone website even tell consumers to avoid getting a fake goophone and to report all fakes...

Loic• 14 years ago

Maybe the best demonstration of how broken the patent system is.

notatoad• 14 years ago

Except this is the Chinese patent system, not the American one. Both systems are broken, but in entirely different (and opposite) ways.

maximveksler• 14 years ago

What do you mean? Could you please highlight the attributes of the Chinese patent system?

jamesaguilar• 14 years ago

I'm interested that you and others on here so badly want this to be about the patent system you know and hate that you completely miss that it's China's patent system. It has far more of a problem with both laxity and corruption than over-enforcement.

olalonde4• 14 years ago

Their fake iPhone (Goophone Y6) apparently retails for 250$ USD. http://shop.goophone.hk/product-28.html. I suspect the quality is pretty bad... Also, Google apps such as Maps, YouTube, etc. might not be available since they require a license from Google. I'll try to get a hand on a sample this weekend if I pass by Huaqiangbei (mostly out of curiosity).

dutchbrit2• 14 years ago

And that one obviously does break Apples design patent. Apple could easily sue them over that.

gst2• 14 years ago

Apple does have a design patent in China?

josephlord• 14 years ago

If they imported it into the US or manufactured it there. And if it did Apple might be able to get an injunction by 2014 based on the speed of the Samsung case.

It may be that Chinese law offers some protection but it won't be the same as US law.

grkovalev2• 14 years ago

i think, Goophone plans to use patent at design for legal action. And Chinese judiciary acting on behalf of Chinese companys. On this based apple may lose in China again

olalonde4• 14 years ago

I bet they have plenty of time to make a sh*t load of money before Apple goes after them. Then, they will probably move to another floor of the factory, open under a new company name (when your selling fakes, your brand name doesn't matter much) and start again. Seems like a viable business plan in China.

nitrogen• 14 years ago

Does anybody know what software it's running?

olalonde4• 14 years ago

Android with an iOS theme probably. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gau.go.lau...

tluyben23• 14 years ago

The quality will be bad; most no-name rip off phones (like http://www.aliexpress.com/item/N9-3-6-LCD-ONE-sim-dual-band-...) have a lot of design flaws and very cheap parts. The power supply electronics and the plugs will randomly break, short circuit etc. I buy them for cheap hardware prototyping, as they do have everything in there for a very low price. So when prototyping a device, it makes sense to just use that instead of doing something yourself (well to me at least). When the prototyping phase is done, I would never have the final product made in China. I can do it better locally. It'll be slightly more expensive, but not much and you are sure of the quality. In EU moulding and CNC are not very costly anymore due to the lack of work and the quality is very high.

Edit: I forgot to say; it's rather depressing if this is actually the iphone 5 design. It's boring.

tsahyt7• 14 years ago

> I would never have the final product made in China.

But you are aware, that FoxConn, who are a major company in the production of the iPhone have their HQ in Taipeh, which is, coincidently, in China? Other products made by FoxConn are the iPad, the iPod, the Kindle, the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Major customers include Motorola Mobility, Nokia and Samsung Electronics.

To put it short: The final product isn't always made IN China, but almost certainly made by a chinese company, employing chinese standards.

EDIT: To make things a bit clearer, the country Taipeh (Taipei) is in is obviously Taiwan, officially called Republic of China. Just to let you know where the "China" came from in the above written.

kokey• 14 years ago

It's fun to follow the rip off phone market from China, where all that phones look fairly decent on features, but in reality they are often so bad they are impossible to use. One iPhone knock off I bought for fun, had a radio tuner, and dual sim support. The touch screen was so bad, it required a stylus to operate and even with that it was almost impossible to use. The software was also really bad. For example, if you were composing an SMS and made a mistake, which would happen due to the bad screen, you had to hit two buttons to correct it. Both options were right next to the option to cancel the entire message, which you would inevitably hit. It also would answer the call if anything was touching the screen when a call came in, which was always unless it was on a table. Video playback was at 12fps. It shipped with two batteries, which I thought was nice, until it turns out that they die after a few charges.

mrich• 14 years ago

I would not say this for any other company, but Apple somewhat deserves it.

onetimeuse00111• 14 years ago

For re-inventing the smartphone back in 2007 and for not wanting others to clone the best features?

TeMPOraL• 14 years ago

> not wanting others to clone the best features?

Yes. It hinders progress.

Also for all this patent mess with Samsung, et al.

kitsune_• 14 years ago

Innovation and inspiration, patented by Braun [1], errr, I mean Apple.

[1] http://visual.ly/braun-or-apple

fkdjs• 14 years ago

Like notifications?

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

Oh please. Can we stop pretending Apple invented everything in 2007 and everyone else had been clueless for centuries before? I get to see this every week on HN and it gets seriously old.

And even if it were true it seems like Apple never had a problem to keep selling their devices while the evil copiers were swarming the market. Hardly a good example of useful patent protection.

peterhost• 14 years ago

Yes that exactly,

And also for Newton re-inventing the laws of diffraction back in 1672 when humans before that were just staring at rainbows like dumb elephants

And also for Thales re-inventing triangles just before the the 58th Olympiad (548–545 BC) while peasants back in the day thought they we just fancy things children used to draw with sticks in the dirt.

And also for Uguuk Buguuk (not sure about this one's name) for inventing something called the iWheel that enabled objects to be transported in batches, more easily. And he was dumbfounded when he saw how fast it leaked, the iWheel thing.

Come on, now... Serves them right (and WTF with apple anyway, Steve is dead). Nice thing the Whole world is not yet under US (patent) legislations domination.

TimGebhardt3• 14 years ago

Somewhere out there, the guy who invented the Handspring Treo is sitting in a rocking chair yelling at his TV: "Apple didn't invent anything! They stole my ideas!"

Get over it. Apple stood on the shoulders of giants and has the best marketers in the world.

ender7• 14 years ago

Look, I despise Apple for believing that they should not only be able to patent things like two-finger-pinch but that they deserve a patent on it, but there is nothing good about this for anyone. They make good products. True knockoffs like this Goophone are a plague to progress.

dexter313• 14 years ago

http://img03.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i3/101108915/T2dGR5XhBXX...

The last picture on their website...

1gor• 14 years ago

What goes around comes around.

dutchbrit2• 14 years ago

On the subject of Chinese phones, check out the Mi Two.

http://www.xiaomi.com/mi2

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 Quad core, 1500 MHz, Krait Adreno 320 2GB RAM

Pretty impressive, especially for the price.

jemeshsu• 14 years ago

Xiaomi has cult followers in China, fyi. Its like the Apple for Android phones in China. And Mi Two is running Android 4.1.

tomflack4• 14 years ago

Apple is a mass-market cult, Xiaomi is Peter-jackson-before-he-was-famous cult-movie cult.

Everyone I have ever asked in China about Xiaomi and Meizu phones brushed them off as "shānzhài iPhone..."

darklajid• 14 years ago

These guys are pretty well known for running a very polished custom ROM as well, MIUI.

Ran it on my devices until 4.x was (kind of, not really, in a crappy way) available. If you have an older android handset which won't receive any future upgrades: Might be worth checking out these guys.

tsahyt7• 14 years ago

Same here. I ran it until my device (HTC Desire Z, T-Mobile G2 in the US) was discontinued by the MIUIAndroid folks.

devsatish• 14 years ago

People defending GooPhone and making stupid comments about Apple? I agree Patent system's kinda broken. But if this is real, is real stupidity and height of IP theft.

yarrel• 14 years ago

How do you steal IP? Has someone broken into the patent office and rifled through the filing cabinets?

regularfry• 14 years ago

Technically it is possible to steal a copyright, by falsely claiming to be the owner. I presume you could do something similar with a patent.

LaRakel• 14 years ago

It's not theft, they just found it on the floor and used it.

chmike• 14 years ago

As far as I know, design can't be patented. It can only be a matter of authorship and thus copyright. Apparently there seemed to be some confusion about this in the Apple vs Samsung case. Maybe it is only the media that is making such type of confusions.

The problem with China is that its legal system is told to have a strong bias in favor of Chinese companies/people.

I expect such situations might incline countries to retaliate in the same way and on similar basis instead of fixing the patent system.

jkn• 14 years ago

There is a category of patents called "design patents".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

In Apple v. Samsung, Samsung was found to infringe some of these, see e.g. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/ban-this-apple-lists-8-...

netcan• 14 years ago

In most countries there is some bias. The legal system might be unbiased, but the legislative system is not.

dayjah• 14 years ago

I'm so tired of these stupid phone patent wars. Is there a realistic solution to this or will it just phase out and be replaced by the next rebecca black-esque tech-reporter-BS?

s3b• 14 years ago

live by the sword, die by the sword ?

kumarm• 14 years ago

So they did an apple on apple itself? :) [Yes I know its extreme but Apple is a company that sued MOTOROLA inventor of cellphones with cellphone patent]

rimantas• 14 years ago

You got your facts mixed.

Axsuul• 14 years ago

How serious does the Chinese government actually take copyrights? =p

BostX• 14 years ago

Copyrights well... it's like you make up some deals (in your western family) and then you go somewhere else (to the east) and ask people there to live by your deals. Because you see yourself as the One everybody must follow. And it works as long as you have a (military) might to protect your interests. BTW this is the principle how any legal system works, all over the scale from a family law to international law. And now imagine yourself loosing that might: two lost wars, economic crisis... well, deals made up by clowns have never been taken seriously.

Mordor• 14 years ago

Would be interesting to hear if they can ban Apple's exports from China.

tsahyt7• 14 years ago

That would in fact be pretty devastating for Apple I believe.

gurkendoktor3• 14 years ago

Depends on how fast Foxconn builds new facilities in Vietnam.

Tyrannosaurs2• 14 years ago

That would do massive damage to Foxconn and given that they're the single largest private employer in China, I suspect that the Chinese government would be pretty keen to make sure that that didn't happen.

stretchwithme• 14 years ago

As if Apple didn't already file the same patents. As if the leaked photos aren't already prior art.

progrock• 14 years ago

You better watch out for the skin deep.

The best rebuttal Apple can make to any of this, is to polish their OS and their core apps as much as possible. It's ropey software that takes the polish away from supposedly glamorous devices.

jrmg3• 14 years ago

Sad to see this is the top HN story. The fact that this seems to be being taken seriously here is crazy. Obviously, a patent of someone else's design, no matter how it was come by, is not a valid one.

[Decline of HN, jumping the shark, get off my lawn etc.]

marme• 14 years ago

unfortunately in china patenting someone elses design is valid and will result in apple having to settle with them. The rules and laws in china are very lax and poorly enforced especially when foreign companies go to court with local companies. Just look at what happend with proview and apple a few month ago over the ipad trademark

jrmg3• 14 years ago

Can you provide evidence that "patenting someone elses design is valid" in China? Lacking it, I find it very hard to believe that there's a patent system anywhere that doesn't require you to attest that the thing your applying to patent was invented by you.

The Proview case is a tangent - Proview (claimed to?) have had the iPad trademark (not patent, but ignoring that...) since 2000, well before Apple. From what I've read, the lawsuit was about whether Proview had in the past sold the Chinese rights to it Apple or not.

josteink2• 14 years ago

I see it as the the cult of Apple's totalitarian grip on HN-discussion finally letting go.

It's already a few years past due.

Uchikoma3• 14 years ago

When was that? Could you quote some threads from the past that display "Apple's totalitarian grip on HN-discussion"?

danielweber• 14 years ago

But did it have to swing so hard in the other direction?

deepGem• 14 years ago

I'll be surprised if Apple has not patented iPhone 5 in China by now, their second or third biggest market.

Mitt2• 14 years ago

This whole thing is a difficult issue. Who is to decide what devices look similar enough, to deserve calling it a “copy”? In principle what we do here is: we implement a neural network for object recognition, and train it to recognize a certain device. Now we run this classifier on other devices and need to settle for a confidence value which says if a device is a copy or not. But who should decide what exactly this confidence value should be?

For example, what if we decide to say that a 0.921 value means a device is a copy, and we find out that Samsungs older devices get a 0.884 confidence?

All those values are very artificial.

praptak• 14 years ago

The law will always have to deal with continuous and imprecisely defined concepts. Speed limits, drinking age, gross vs non-gross misconduct, etc. Continuity alone is a weak argument against anything, sometimes it's so weak that it has its own fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

So, while I believe the intellectual "property" should be eliminated, it's not because of the continuity involved in enforcing it.

batista2• 14 years ago

>This whole thing is a difficult issue. Who is to decide what devices look similar enough, to deserve calling it a “copy”?

Here's a guideline: if there is a document in your company saying ("let's copy this thing") --as in Samsung's case--, it's a copy.

Or if you created your design from leaked photos of prototypes ("as in this case") --it's a copy.

For the rest, how about a "jury" (i.e impartial to both parties common people)?

Mitt2• 14 years ago

Even when we directly say “We’ll copy it!”, it could still come out as having the classifier outputting a small confidence value. So, in my opinion this should not count. There should be a confidence value of a neural network involved.

In the case of a real copy, the classifier should have a confidence of 1.0, or be enormously close to it.

wr1472• 14 years ago

In order to train your Neural Net you will need sample data; which will consist of examples of what are and are not "similar" devices. Someone will have to decide what looks similar enough to the object device, therefore your Neural Net will be as objective as the sample data.

Don't think of Neural nets as a higher order intelligence - it's only as clever as the sample data used, but rather something that can make consistent decisions.

Monotoko• 14 years ago

Can anyone translate this? http://www.goophone.hk/ - I've noticed they mention iPhone 5 on the actual site! Also, it looks like it's Hong Kong, not China (different rules to play by)

luke_s• 14 years ago

I just got my wife (Taiwanese) to read it, and she translated the red block of text. She wasn't very clear, but it says something along the lines of:

"Beware of imitation products. The genuine goophone has a 'small bee' logo. If you see any phones with a similar design to the goophone but without the 'small bee' it is an imitation. Report counterfeit products by calling 0755-88877119"

I've been laughing for the past 5 minutes ...

felipemnoa• 14 years ago

And thousands of people will call to report a counterfit product with apple in it instead of the 'small bee'.

PeterLiddiard• 14 years ago

"... the company has actually patented the knockoff design in China and is poised to sue Apple if it launches the next-generation iPhone in China later this year."

Take that, Apple!

krigath• 14 years ago

"... the company has actually patented the knockoff design in China and is poised to sue Apple if it launches the next-generation iPhone in China later this year."

Seems like the Apple vs the rest of the World patent war is taking on new heights...

Cushman• 14 years ago

Hilarious as this is, it's a bit baffling that so many people seem to think it "serves them right" when in fact it makes the perfect case for why design patents exist.

If you're the sort of person who thinks a rounded rectangle shouldn't be patentable, this should annoy you.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

'First to file' FTW. /snark+depression

Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone 5 design

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