

Samsung’s Report Says Galaxy Would Be Better If it Were More Like the iPhone - tjogin
http://allthingsd.com/20120807/samsungs-2010-report-on-how-its-galaxy-would-be-better-if-it-were-more-like-the-iphone/

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DeepDuh
As someone who has never owned a Samsung Android device, I was astonished by
these slides. My biggest questions are:

\- how the hell did Apple get that report. They were the ones submitting it to
court, right? Looks almost like industrial espionage to me.

\- Was this really the release software of the S1? Was it that bad? I remember
people praising that phone almost like the S2 later on. Really? Some of those
slides show truly hideously designed UI, like the 'next' button on the
keyboard?

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redcap
It's a court case - there's a process called "discovery" that lets you get a
hold of information that looks relevant from your counterparty. It's entirely
legal.

I presume it's the judge who gets to decide whether it's admitted as evidence,
but until then I presume that the only people who can look at it outside of
the cleared people at Samsung are Apple lawyer.

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DeepDuh
As a non American this is quite amazing to me. Couldn't that easily be used
against someone in order to get to their valuable IP? Who decides what is
relevant for the suing party to see and what not?

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redcap
Check out the wikipedia page for some info:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law)>

Ianal, but my understanding is that each side hires lawyers to go through the
opposing side's documents. My understanding at this level is that while these
lawyers may be working for you, they still owe a duty of care to only produce
stuff that's of value to the court case. Unless your IP somehow involves the
other side in some fashion, then that should be safe. But "confidential"
documents showing how you modified your own product after a comparison with
another product on the market is probably fair game.

What stops discovery escalating like you suppose is that there needs to be a
basis for the court case, and that the lawyers looking at your documents have
their own reputations to protect.

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Wingman4l7
Yeah, no one's going to want to hire the law firm that accidentally leaked
someone else's IP during a discovery process.

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esolyt
The article has a misleading title. Nowhere in the document does it state that
they should or they will copy iPhone. It is just comparing their usability
with Apple's. Quite the opposite, there is a page where they are stating they
should differentiate and not look like iPhone's homescreen.

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andrewfelix
_> Quite the opposite, there is a page..._

One page out of a couple of hundred stating they should be emulating the
iPhone's look and feel.

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azylman
If you read the report and not just the article headline, you'll see that
Samsung's report wasn't "hey guys, we should make our phone exactly like the
iPhone" but, rather, "hey guys, here's things the iPhone does better than us -
we should fix that, while making sure we differentiate our product"

~~~
andrewfelix
What makes you think I didn't read the report? In almost _every_ page a
direction for improvement is given to bring the S1 in line with the iPhone
experience.

This isn't a 200 page report looking to make general improvements. It's a
report looking to make improvements _comparative and in line with the iPhone_.
Why else would they have a side by side comparison espousing the superior
Apple UI/UX.

FYI for any phone fanboy's frothing at the mouth; I own neither an iPhone or a
Samusung phone. I think both companies are guilty of some pretty piss poor
business practices. The whole iPhone vs Android thing is reminiscent of the
Sega vs Nintendo nonsense of the 90's.

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calciphus
The other ten versions of this same article on the frontpage have vastly more
honest titles.

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TwoBit
While the iPhone was clearly better designed than the Samsung phone compared
to there, many of the comparisons seem to be a case of Samsung just assuming
that whatever Apple did was better, even though the Samsung version was OK.
It's like they took everything Apple did and defined it as being better than
whatever they did. Granted, that was in fact the case at least 70% of the
time.

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jkn
Could you specify some slide numbers as illustration? I only read through the
document quickly but I couldn't find a case where the iPhone wasn't indeed
better.

Edit: found one example: the "second hand" thing on slide 49.

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DominikR
What's the point of making an internal presentation of all the points where
the iPhone is worse and Samsung is better?

Samsung is trying to _improve_ their products, so they'll obviously compare
their perceived products weak points against what they feel is a better
implementation.

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jkn
Sure. The question here is whether the iPhone is indeed better on every point.
If Samsung's version is as good as the iPhone or better, and they still
recommend to copy the iPhone implementation, then you can accuse Samsung of
copying for its own sake rather than to improve the device. That is what
TwoBit suggested.

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p_sherman
It's important to note (when the article title is pure link-bait) that it's
Galaxy S1 that's mentioned.

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KaoruAoiShiho
This document basically completely exonerates Samsung. It proves that the
Galaxy was an original design, and similarities to the iPhone were gained only
after standard usability comparisons.

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joe_the_user
Guys,

First, even with our fairly mad patent system intact, there is no law against
looking at a superior product and brainstorming about how you can improve your
product using the ideas contained there-in. And that is how it ought to be -
should young painters back in the day have been prevented from studying
Rembrandt because they would steal his ideas?

Then consider, there's no law about changing product in the general direction
of a superior product _unless you violate a specific patent_.

Now further, if it is possible to patent any conceivable way to improve a
product so that it is roughly similar to your product and solves the same
problem problems as your product, then that should make us think even more
about the insanity of patents.

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Zenst
Interesting defence from Samsung. Not much else to say about this.

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andybak
Then why did you bother?

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Zenst
I'm not sure if your question is rhetorical or not. I have never seen a
company use as a defence in a court of law the argument that if we had copied
your product as you claim then our product would of been better. That I don't
interesting and I'm not aware of any case were such a argument has been
leveridged before and as such found that aspect interesting. I hope that
answears your question if it was a question. If your aware of anything
similiar in a technology companies many outing in courts approaching such a
similiar argument then I'd be interested - has this argument been used before
in a court?

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andybak
Sorry I was glib but your previous post was ambiguous and didn't add much to
the conversation.

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Zenst
Thats ok. What are your thoughts on this defence approach, is it something you
have seen used before?

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andybak
From my understanding, Apple is using this document against Samsung rather
than Samsung using it as a defence.

