

Apple’s war on Android gets major blow in the form of 1994 “future tablet” video - bond
http://www.androidauthority.com/apple-samsung-patent-war-69575/

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bstar77
I'm surprised that it took this long for that video to show up as evidence.
The only thing it does not demonstrate is the use of gestures which is
integral to the usefulness of this generation's tablets.

I've always felt that the basic form factor patents Apple has would not
ultimately hold up, and it would be insane for them to try and enforce them.
But it still does not excuse the fact that Samsung tries to confuse the public
that their product is pretty much an iPad/iPhone. They do this through
marketing, packaging, peripherals, software and UI design.

I don't like the patent system the way it exists, and I think most of Apple's
'key' mobile patents are ridiculous, but I equally can't stand a company like
Samsung that comes in and says we're just going to commoditize a great product
by cloning it and selling it for cheap. I think this is where Apple's emotion
comes in and the 'sue everyone' mentality takes over.

~~~
ajross
Samsung really tries to confuse the public? Really? Where can you go,
intending to buy an iPad and get a Galaxy Tab instead?

I mean, that's just silly. Being a flat panel with rounded corners, it indeed
looks very similar to an iPad (I'll skip the argument as to whether rounded
corners and black and white color choices constitute a protectable "design
language" or not -- that's been done to death). But trying to argue that
they're deliberately trying to steal sales from Apple via _fraud_ seems
ridiculous on its face.

 _edit: two replies now have argued with this, apparently equating mere
"copying", which is legal and pervasive, with deliberate confusion of the
buyer, which is FRAUD, and a crime. If you want to condemn Samsung for the
former, go right ahead. Personally I find that boring and silly, but whatever.
It's a personal aeshetic or moral call, and yours to make. But accusing them
of fraud is not remotely the same thing, so stop it._

~~~
siglesias
Ever heard of the Samsung BlackJack [1]? Came out around the time BlackBerrys
were just getting hot.

This isn't about deliberately trying to confuse customers per se, but it's a
close pursuit strategy that relies heavily on the association between their
products and what is popularized by other companies. I remember my family
taking a couple because they were offered free with a contract. Certainly this
choice was partially informed by the popularity and name recognition RIM
created.

1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGH-i607>

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tomelders
I'm having some serious Déjà vu on HN recently. This came up a while back I'm
sure.

<http://mashable.com/2009/08/22/knight-ridder-tablet/>

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knigh...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knight-
Ridder-tablet-looks-just-like-iPad-17-YEARS-OLD.html)

I can't find an article, but I'm sure this had already been in court. Or maybe
I'm going senile at 32.

Also, I have a niggling feeling that Apple had a part in this video. But I
could just be making that up.

~~~
Anechoic
_This came up a while back I'm sure._

Yep:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tablet+vide...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tablet+video+1994)

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=knight+ridd...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=knight+ridder&start=0)

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postfuturist
Nothing radical here, even for 1994. Not long ago I was watching an old
episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (around the same year) in which the
commander's son is doing homework on a slightly smaller tablet with a color
display. IIRC, he was using a stylus.

------
Fando
It's unfortunate that Apple, while being so innovative and prominent of a tech
company, never the less so feverishly attempts to hold on to the outdated,
dying principles of old, "traditional" business models. Of course I realize
the good intentions that patents claim to stem from, but looking at the real
world, the principles of this loosely defined and ambigious copyright model
are much easier to exploit than use for good. What social value is there?
Anyway, the point of course is that seeing a company cling to patenting
general ideas and then inforcing those patents is a cowardly and unintegrous.
It's an cheap way out made available by a loophole-clad system and should
impact negatively on Apple's, or any company's image more so than it does now.
However, I think fortunatelly, although slowly, these old school "business"
mentalities are being bred out as new, more superior organizational
structures, ideologies and principles, are ushered in by much more creative
and insightful intelects than those currently in power. Those who bring about
change are resisted because they threaten to overtake those in power. Instead
of welcoming and aiding that forward movement, the mentality is to oppose it
with great force and incredible tunnel vision. Someday the world will make
sense but until then companies like Apple will continue to restrict change.
It's at times like these that I find not being able to wish things into being
most inconvenient lol.

------
jlian
I think the point Apple is trying to make is a little different than how this
article described it.

I don't think anybody would disagree that the tablet form shown in the 1994
video is the _natural_ form a functional tablet would take on: thin, large
screen, rectangular, etc. Including Apple.

However, Apple is not happy because, to Apple, it is the _first_ to figure out
how to deliver this "natural" form factor in a tablet, and Samsung (and
subsequent Android manufacturers), ripped Apple off in the delivery process. I
imagine Apple's logic is that no other companies were able to engineer the
"optimal" tablet until the iPad came out and they disassembled it and, through
imitation, engineered their own. The Android tablets exist because of the
iPad.

Which is not unreasonable, honestly. If the thin, rectangular, and large
screen form factor is the final product of natural evolution of tablets, how
come nothing even came close to it until the iPad came out? How would one
explain the the sudden shift in tablet design if the iPad never existed?

If I came up with a way of actually making a hover car (envisioned through
countless medias) that works and everyone copied the way I did it, I'd be
pretty pissed too.

I'm not good with words as English is not my first language. I hope I got my
point across.

EDIT: spelling.

------
ryanhuff
The writer positions the video as a sort of smoking gun, but then hedges with
"as today’s legal system is more complicated than some of us can understand,
the legal heads at Apple really had a shot at proving they had invented the
whole ... concept".

I feel a bit pandered to. How about some more legal substance, even for us
dumb tech readers?

~~~
DougBTX
I think he's talking about himself, not dumb readers.

------
FiddlerClamp
Also see this edited version of the Starfire video from Sun in 1993, which
shows touch interactions.

I've only seen the full-length version, so I'm not sure if it's in this
truncated clip, but there's an amusing bit where she leaves her sandwich on
the 'desk' part of the monitor and the computer scans it. When she picks the
sandwich up and notices there's an image of it on the screen, she 'sweeps
away' the image with her hand - another gesture.

------
valgaze
Wow Knight Ridder was on the ball in the 1990s, it's a shame they didn't own
the space. I wonder what happened.

These days they are still an excellent "hard news"

~~~
wmf
IIRC it's wasn't Knight Ridder per se; it was a one-person skunkworks inside
Knight Ridder that the execs didn't listen to.

------
vyrotek
When watching those old videos does anyone else wonder which futuristic
demonstrations today are going to be used in court in 30 years?

~~~
Retric
<devils advocate > A faked teck demo's basically count as fiction which does
not count as prior art for a normal patent case, but it does for a design
patent. Unfortunately for Samsung while elements of the iPad design shows up
the Galaxy pad is a lot closer to the iPad than any of the other designs. For
design patents to be meaningful they must prevent such overt imitation and
force competitors to do more than copy good design.</devils advocate>

Realistically, I suspect Apple would drop the case if they did not think the
minimal costs of perusing it was not worth it and their return is not limited
to this case. What I think most people miss is by taking it to this level the
force other companies to consider how much close they can get before Apple
makes an example of them.

~~~
rbarooah
Agreed - if Samsung cloned this grey, bulbous plastic tablet along with its
screen printed label, I don't think Apple would care at all. It's the fact
that they're copying the exact combination of flat glass front, curved metal
back, black plastic buttons, visible camera, etc. etc. that they think is a
problem.

There's no prior art for an industrial design like the iPhone 4 or the iPad,
and other manufacturers than Samsung, e.g. Motorola, HTC & Nokia, seem to have
no problem creating alternative designs.

It's easy to mistake Samsung phones and tablets in public for their Apple
equivalents, and that's what Apple thinks is wrong.

Whether we think outright cloning of designs should be wrong or right is a
separate question from judging whether or not that's what Samsung are doing.

~~~
bstar77
I think you need to take into context the difference in 20 years here. Back
then there was no concept of digital photography or gps or bluetooth, etc.

As technology evolves, then many of those improvements naturally contribute to
enhancements in other products. I believe that if a small, commercially viable
camera existed at the time that video was made, it would have been featured.

You can't say that the features/technology that we have taken for granted for
the past 10 years are not natural upgrades all existing products in this
category.

In other words, I think the details you mentioned are trivial. The overall
concept is pretty much the same, with some varying details.

~~~
rbarooah
If I hadn't mentioned a camera it wouldn't have changed my point at all.

What this tablet (and the non-clone tablets) actually show is that there is no
need for Samsung to have copied Apple's trade dress of not using a bezel,
having an all glass front, an aluminum back, black buttons etc.

If, as you concede the details are trivial, then Samsung should be able to
easily vary them and produce a tablet that doesn't look like a cloned iPad.

~~~
dpark
> _not using a bezel_

The black (or white) border around the iPad screen is effectively a bezel.

> _having an all glass front_

The all-glass front is neither unique to Apple nor truly optional. Edge-to-
edge touch capability requires that the glass extend far enough past the edge
of the screen to allow touch gestures to work across the full screen. A "bump"
going from the screen to the bezel makes it nearly impossible to effectively
touch at the edges.

If you extend the glass past the screen but then also introduce a "bump" to
transition to plastic or some other material, you either make the device
bulkier, make it uncomfortable to hold, or both.

> _an aluminum back_

Meh. This a functional element, because it dissipates heat better. But it is
optional. However, it hardly constitutes a clone by itself.

> _black buttons_

The buttons on the tab are completely different, in that there are multiple
and also in that they are just capacitive buttons. The color of the buttons in
both Apple's and Samsung's designs are chosen to match the bezel. Note that
Apple does not put a black button on the white iPad, because it would look
stupid. Even the original Kindle had color-matched buttons (ugly as it was).

~~~
rbarooah
Do you believe that design patents in general should never hold?

~~~
dpark
I think in general design patents are somewhat redundant with copyright and
trademark law. They might be reasonable in some cases, but not this one.

I don't think that a design patent (or copyright or trademark) covering
essential functionality is acceptable. Have you ever looked at the actual
design patent that Apple filed?

[http://www.google.com/patents?id=6BsWAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=6BsWAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false)

It looks about as much like an iPad as it does the Knight Ridder concept, or
the tablet from _2001: A Space Odyssey_ , because Apple's patent is generic.
The patent covers the very concept of a tablet (for which there is plenty of
prior art), and none of the "trade dress" you mentioned except the edge-to-
edge glass, which was not an idea unique to Apple.

The patent that Apple has been citing in support of its claims does not even
cover the features they claim to have patented, and I frankly don't understand
why the courts haven't recognized that and told them that they have, at best,
a copyright claim and not a patent claim.

~~~
rbarooah
If that is indeed all they are trying to apply, then I agree with you.

I was under the impression that they were also going after details of the
trade dress which I think it is obvious that Samsung is copying in various
products.

~~~
dpark
It's my understanding that the patent is what Apple's been arguing. I've been
getting most of my info about these suits via various news outlets, though, so
I might be misinformed.

------
neovive
Some very interesting perspectives in the video -- particularly the references
to touch interaction. If you watch at 11:58, he also makes references to how
the newspaper industry can avoid obsolescence by leveraging these new mobile
technologies.

------
snowwrestler
This might not be as big a blow as folks might assume, because design patents
are very specific. For instance the tablet in this video has a raised,
seemingly plastic bezel framing the screen, while the iPad design patent
specifies that the screen is covered with an edge-to-edge glass surface.

It is that edge-to-edge glass that is a big part of Apple's suit. I won't
claim I've done an exhaustive review, but I've glanced back at some older
tablet concepts like the Apple "navigator" video, the Star Trek TNG PADD, and
even the Newton and Palm and Windows Tablet designs, and every single one I've
seen had a raised bezel framing the screen.

The Samsung Galaxy tab has an edge-to-edge glass surface, not a raised bezel.
Stupidly pedantic? Yes. That's pretty a good description of design "patents"
in general IMO.

