

Apple loses UK tablet design appeal versus Samsung - Suraj-Sun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19989750

======
netcan
Technicalities aside, the whole Apple vs Android IP debate seems like it might
be some sort of pinnacle. A big public case study.

These are products that a lot of people are highly engaged an opinionated
about, in ways that PCs and laptop never were.^

I think we clearly see Apple leading the way (so far) with its designs &
innovations. They figured out a whole lot of things that needed to be figured
out in order to get a computer to pocket size and for tablet computing to
work. Some of these are technical details but a lot of them are not. They're
just ideas about what it should look like and how users should interact with
it. Software keyboard. slide-to-unlock, rounded corners. A bunch of decisions
that together amount to either a good or bad product. They may or may not have
been invented at Apple but Apple did put them together and prove them in the
market. They placed huge bets on these ideas and won.

I think that last part is the crucial part of innovation that IP laws are
inherently useless at protecting: Putting things together to make a product
and proving them in the market. It's also the part that Apple is good at.

On the other hand...

Apple is making a lot of money on iOS stuff so its hard to make the claim that
they haven't been compensated. It's also hard to claim that these innovations
would not have happened without the incentives guarded by IP protection. The
opposite is true. We see the Android ecosystem driving down prices and
improving the pace of innovation. We see more choice, including options at
lower price points that Apple would never have served.

^I'm not sure, but I think this in itself is part of Apple's cultural
influence. They've been encouraging people to think about products the way
architects want people to think about buildings.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I think we clearly see Apple leading the way (so far) with its designs &
> innovations.

I don't know if you're joking, but Apple hasn't "innovated" in the mobile
space for 2 or 3 years now. They've just been copying Android, with things
like multitasking, notifications, and turn-by-turn directions. As of late,
their new "features", such as Siri and Maps, have been half-baked. Basic
options, such as changing the default app for a function or adding widgets to
the home screen, still aren't available.

On the hardware side, people applaud their industrial design when they see it
in an Apple store, but in actual use, the glass backing on the iPhone 4 and 4S
broke frequently, and now the aluminum on the 5 gets chipped/scratched very
easily. As for form factor, they're now copying Amazon and Google by releasing
an iPad Mini.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Turn-by-turn directions was an Android innovation?

Because I could swear that I've got a Windows Mobile 5.0 smart phone in the
office that has Tom Tom software running on it that has been about since
before the iPhone or Android existed.

As for your criticisms as to how the iPhone works in the real world, the
iPhone's industry leading customer satisfaction ratings (and by a comfortable
margin) suggests that you might be overstating the case just a smidge.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Turn-by-turn directions was an Android innovation?

In the way it's done in Google Maps Navigation? Absolutely. I used a variety
of standalone turn-by-turn GPS navigation devices, including Tom Tom and
Garmin, before getting an original Droid in 2009, the first device with Google
Maps Navigation. There was a world of difference between the two devices, and
things have only gotten better with time.

I don't have any experience with Windows Mobile, but like the OP said, it's
all about putting things together into a cohesive package. That's exactly what
Google did with Maps Navigation.

> As for your criticisms as to how the iPhone works in the real world, the
> iPhone's industry leading customer satisfaction ratings (and by a
> comfortable margin) suggests that you might be overstating the case just a
> smidge.

I don't think that customer satisfaction ratings are reflective of a company's
level of innovation. I know several people who've broken the glass backs on
their iPhone 4s and 4Ss three or four times. The reason why they haven't
complained (too much) is because there's an Apple store 15 minutes a way that
will quickly replace the glass plate for free.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
If the state of the smartphone market is such that incremental improvements in
turn-by-turn mapping is now a mark of innovation then the market has got stale
very, very quickly. When Apple release a new version of iOS with 200
incremental improvements which operate in a cohesive package (because even the
iPhone's staunchest critics tend to accept that it does that well), it's
criticised as unambitious yet here it's touted as innovation?

I'm not saying that customer satisfaction ratings reflect innovation. I'm
saying that if the design was as flawed as suggested you'd expect people to be
unhappy with their phones which clearly they're not.

You know people who've broken the glass three or four times, I know no-one who
ever has out of dozens of people who own 4s and 4Ss. Anecdotal evidence is
pretty poor for this sort of thing (my friends may wrap their phones in cotton
wool, yours may sky dive with them) which is why I point to something which
could be seen as a more objective measure, though I accept it's measuring many
things, not just this one factor.

Not saying that there's no problem, just saying that saying "frequently" is an
overstatement. I suspect if it was a massive problem the press would have a
field day - it's not like the go easy on Apple design issues (see antenna-gate
et al).

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nicholassmith
Sensible decision there really, and hopefully it'll keep Apple from being
silly again. Although they could write something similar:

"In agreement with the court ruling Apple acknowledges Samsung hasn't copied
the design of the iPad. As the judge stated Samsung products lack the
simplicity of the iPad."

Might get them in bother mind, but if a judge is willing to say your product
is much cooler in a court of law, on the record no less, you may as well take
what you can.

~~~
mmariani
> As the judge stated Samsung products lack the simplicity of the iPad.

I think their marketing guys are going to have a feast on this. They could
start playing around the lines: Samsung tablets are not as cool or simple as
ours. Sorry for taking this too far intend of working on cool stuff for you —
our lawyers are design challenged.

~~~
nicholassmith
Given that Apple has a history of doing similar things in adverts I can see
them at least trying it, whether the Samsung legal team lets them is a
different story.

~~~
JimmaDaRustla
Kind of like how they lost to Microsoft, then had ads (10+ years later) saying
"Redmond, get your photocopiers ready." That was pretty distasteful
considering the bailout by Microsoft in 1997. Oh well, competition is
competition.

~~~
cryptoz
I would have no problem with that line if it weren't in Apple's blood to copy
copy copy, at least to the same degree if not more than Microsoft. The
hypocrisy is really what annoys me.

~~~
mmariani
It's not copy when you improve it. Whenever I use Unity or Win7 I see lots of
little details "copied" from OSX.

------
minikomi
The more this line of cases makes it in the news, the higher the general
public's recognition of Samsung tablets becomes and thus Apple's case
weakens... Interesting negative feedback loop!

~~~
5h
Streisand effect in full motion

~~~
bane
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>

------
bond
Although the damage is done, I find it refreshing this type of court decision.
Six months of "no copy" advertising isn't enough to reverse the damage but
it's a start...

------
metatronscube
As someone with little faith in the UK judicial system, this just doesn't make
any difference to my views. I can already tell when someone is guilty of
plagiarism. Samsung sinks of it. Anybody can see that. This verdict is not
going to have any effect on people, and as i have found out at work among many
colleges it more than solidifies peoples opinion that Samsung has done nothing
but rip off Apple. Where as for instance when you compare the ipad/iphone to
Microsoft's attempts its quite clear they are trying something different and
people can see that as well.

~~~
brackin
I totally agree, everyone believe that Samsung replicated much of the iPad. I
wouldn't have necessarily disagreed if the court decided that no infringement
occurred and that was it but the idea of forcing a company to release an
apology in a newspaper comes straight from the 19th century, I have little
faith in common law in this case.

~~~
yason
_I totally agree, everyone believe that Samsung replicated much of the iPad._

I don't think this is just replication. There's only a handful of ways you can
craft the _simplest design_ [1] of a tablet computer, and the possibilities
don't differ much. Apple happened to enter the market first but the tablets
wouldn't eventually be much different if someone else had. The collective
design would've converged to something like iPAD in a few years.

[1] You can certainly generate thousands of different tablet designs if you
don't care about creating the simplest one. But once you do, it pretty quickly
boils down to the fundamentals of designing roughly an A5-size device with a
dominating touchscreen. It goes pretty much as "The touchscreen takes 95% of
the front face. If you want button(s) on any side, you put them below the
screen because people hold their tablets from underneath, instead of grabbing
them from the top. You put any USB/headphone sockets on the side so that the
user can put it on a table while charging/heaphones connected." Given those
limits, you maybe get to decide if you want square or round edges or something
in between. But that's just cosmetic and certainly doesn't warrant being "a
design".

~~~
wmf
_There's only a handful of ways you can craft the simplest design of a tablet_

But apparently that idea is itself radical, since almost no tablets before
~2007 strove for _the simplest design_.

~~~
makomk
Almost no tablets before 2007 were marketed to consumers. As soon as they
were, they all converged on the exact same style as other consumer goods like
TVs, digital photo frames, ...

------
mun2mun
Also Apple have to put notice on their website and newspaper/magazines saying
that Galaxy tab does not "copy" iPad for 6 month
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18895384>. Big humiliation from Apple's
side.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
The appeal reduces it to a month, and they just have to have a link on the
homepage saying "Apple / Samsung ruling" which I'm guessing isn't going to be
that visible.

Minor inconvenience in the great scheme of things.

------
barredo
Expect full page ads:

"Samsung tablets are not as cool as Apple's" — Judge Name

------
alan_cx
I ask because I do not know:

Is the US the only country to have found in Apple's favour in these cases?

~~~
_djo_
No, Apple has won cases in Germany and Japan, while litigation is ongoing in
Spain & Australia I think.

~~~
stordoff
Haven't Apple only won the interim injunction in German? This injunction was
heavily criticized in and (AFAIK) effectively removed by the UK decision, and
Apple had applied for it to be withdrawn anyway.

> Secondly I cannot see any basis for an interim injunction. The UK court had
> already granted a final declaration. Moreover it was sitting not just as a
> UK court but as a Community Court. Interim injunctions are what you grant in
> urgent cases where there is not enough time to have a full trial on the
> merits. That was not this case. [...] Further Judge Birss was not sitting as
> a purely national court. [...] So his declaration of non-infringement was
> binding throughout the Community. It was not for a national court -
> particularly one not first seized - to interfere with this Community wide
> jurisdiction and declaration.

> Finally I regret to say that I find the Oberlandesgericht's reasoning on the
> merits sparse in the extreme

> If courts around Europe simply say they do not agree with each other and
> give inconsistent decisions, Europe will be the poorer.

<http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html>

~~~
_djo_
To clarify to both this and the other comment, Apple has won certain suits in
both Germany and Japan and lost others, just as it has lost certain motions in
the US. I did not mean to imply that Apple had never lost any legal motion in
both those countries, just that courts had found in their favour in those
countries in some cases. I think that's what the OP was asking.

------
berkes
Where can I see the ads in action?

~~~
tomelders
Doesn't this strike anyone as unusual? IANAL (or a solicitor for that matter)
but this seems like the sort of ruling you'd get in some sort of defamation
case. This was a patents case. Isn't the court over stepping the mark with
this, or is it not unusual?

~~~
vidarh
Apple was hit with this because they _were_ in effect defaming Samsung by
being extremely aggressive about making statements about how they had a slam
dunk case that Samsung were ripping them off, well beyond just saying they
were "confident" or similar vague phrase that parties often throw around.

If they'd left the talking to their lawyers in the court room, this would
indeedhave been a strange ruling. But the judge has in effect made an attempt
at providing Samsung restitution of sorts for the false claims Apple were
repeatedly making in the press.

~~~
makomk
They even sent out statements that basically pretended the original court
ruling against them didn't happen in response to media inquiries about that
ruling. That had to require huge brass balls, but I can't see it impressing
any judge.

Edit: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18773690>

'Apple declined to comment specifically on the UK case but, in a statement,
repeated its view that there was no "no coincidence" that Samsung's latest
products resembled the iPhone and iPad.

It added: "This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we've said many times
before, we need to protect Apple's intellectual properties when companies
steal our ideas."'

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conradfr
As Apple says in the "thumb" ad, it's common sense :)

