20 ms·

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably pol

To everyone saying "these are basic phone designs," try and remember reactions to the original iPhone release keynote. The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

asdfologist 8y ago
It doesn't matter if they're original. No company should have exclusive rights to rounded corners.
- ShabbosGoy 8y ago
  I mean sure, you could have a world where everything was free and unpatentable.
  - asdfologist 8y ago
    Textbook strawman.
    - ShabbosGoy 8y ago
      In what way? Do you accept the premise that certain precise design elements, organized in a precise manner, are patentable?
      - Covzire 8y ago
        Based on this precedent, we should have seen a lot of half-billion dollar lawsuits over the design of automobiles in the last 30 years.
- rayiner 8y ago
  It's not just "rounded corners." The patent addresses a very specific design, with rounded corners, a border, etc. It is basically only infringed if you try to make your product look like an iPhone, in order to free-ride on the iPhone brand, which is exactly what Samsung did.
  - trimbo 8y ago
    I forget, did Braun ever sue Apple for all of those stolen designs? Anyway, shouldn't this be copyright law and not patent law?
    - denzil_correa 8y ago
      > I forget, did Braun ever sue Apple for all of those stolen designs? Did reasonable amount of people confuse a Braun Pocket radio with the Apple iPod?
      - stickfigure 8y ago
        Has anyone ever accidentally bought a Samsung phone when they thought they were buying iPhone?
        madeofpalk 8y ago
        Well, the courts believed so.
        dba7dba 8y ago
        No not courts. Apple did not win in other non American courts. Not in Germany. Not in Japan. Not in Australia. Only in a courtroom in Silicon Valley. And with a jury headed by a jury foreman with very questionable opinions and patents himself. He had to be told to shut up after the verdict because he was going around interviewing saying things that tainted the verdict not so greatly.
        tooltalk 8y ago
        and let's not forget Obama who reversed Samsung's win in ITC.
        tptacek 8y ago
        Yes. To fit the standard at issue here, that happened every time somebody bought a Samsung phone instead of an Apple phone because they thought both phones basically did the same thing. Most people who buy phones are not as engaged with the market as HN commenters are. The argument at play here seems to be: you can make something that looks like a Braun device if Braun doesn't already have a design-patented device that does the same thing. And you can make a device that does exactly the same thing as a Braun device as long as you don't try to make your device look confusingly similar to Braun's device. What you can't do is make a direct substitute for a design-patented Braun device, and then go out of your way to clone the design so that people have a hard time telling the difference between the two. Another simple way to look at this (it's incomplete, but might settle the issue for you) is that a lot of people pick their phone based on how it looks.
- loa-in-backup 8y ago
  It's the rounded corners with a rounded rectangle button in the middle under rectangle screen layout.
wvenable 8y ago
I had an early smartphone, the Sony Ericsson P800, and it was a full screen and the home page was a grid of app icons. The iPhone design was extremely well done in comparison but hardly some radical unknown thing. The real design innovation was the capacitive touch screen
- prepend 8y ago
  I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how you think the p800 looked anything like the iPhone, https://goo.gl/images/t3XvMA https://goo.gl/images/t3XvMA Yes, they are both rectangles. But there were massive differences aside from the capacitive touch.
  - JohnTHaller 8y ago
    Parent is referring to the fact that the phone was a full screen and had a grid of icons (reminiscent of Palm) on it like the iPhone did: https://i.imgur.com/Fdk0566.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Fdk0566.jpg Parent post didn't say the phones looked the same. The iPhone refined a lot of existing functionality.
    - stouset 8y ago
      People making this argument seem to be under the incorrect belief that Apple patented a grid of icons. They did not. They patented a specific aesthetic and functional design that incorporates a grid of icons, but is much more specific than only that.
  - stouset 8y ago
    There’s an image out there of what phones used to look like imminently before the iPhone’s release and what phones looked like immediately afterward. It tends to bring this pointless debate to a quick end. Edit: found them. Before: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsung-iphone-1.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsu... After: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsung-iphone-3-640x405.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsu...
denzil_correa 8y ago
There's a book which explains this phenomena : "Everything is Obvious ... Once you know the answer" http://everythingisobvious.com/the-book/ http://everythingisobvious.com/the-book/
- GeekyBear 8y ago
  One of the Android engineers (back when Android was going to be a Blackberry knockoff) made a similar comment about his reaction to the iPhone unveiling. >“As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’” What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it." https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    That's because Apple had a touchscreen, and Google had a keyboard at the time.
    - xeromal 8y ago
      ala a blackberry knockoff
      - Crontab 8y ago
        Well, no one is accusing Google of originality.
    - simonh 8y ago
      Lots of phones had touchscreens before. It was a combination of the physical design, engineering, UI and feature set that was so ground breaking. The thing is each of these things is intimately connected and depend on each other. You can’t just do one without the other three and have anything worthwhile. That’s why this was so hard. It’s why analysts that just focuses on one obvious feature - a touch screen - misses the point so badly. If a touch screen was all that mattered, why didn’t the Android team copy one of the previous touch screen phones instead?
c3534l 8y ago
A choice isn't a technology. You didn't invent anything, you made the right choice. Patents used in this way aren't rewarding invention or creative work which is being plagurized, they're rent-seeking. They're using the government's power to stop competition from improving on their products by registering things that already exist. The mere fact that they made a good choice is not grounds to prevent other people from making that choice. It's anti-capitalist corporatism at it's finest.
- rayiner 8y ago
  There are two kinds of patents: design patents, which protect the arbitrary look of a product, and utility patents, which protect a technology. The relevant patents here are design patents that address the recognizable "look" of the iPhone (rounded corners, colored border, etc.). These are arbitrary choices, and that's precisely why it isn't rent-seeking to protect them. There is an infinite number of arbitrary designs that would achieve the same function; the only reason to use the ones Apple chose is to try and trade on the consumer goodwill Apple has created with its products, or confuse people into associating your product with Apple's. Those aren't legitimate bases for competition; they are free-riding (a concept at least as important as "rent seeking").
kumarm 8y ago
As someone who developed for Mobile Phones pre iPhone era, I can say they are people who never worked on software for Mobile before iPhone :). There were number of Phone that existed with several of those styles. How many people know Verizon Had a decent app store (Apps developed with Brew) in US before iPhone? This included similar testing that you see for AppStore TODAY.
- lyzan 8y ago
  I've probably used more brew apps than play/appStore/etc combined since. Was a wonderfully useful store with generally high quality, useful, apps that we easy to find.
- threeseed 8y ago
  I commercially developed both Windows Mobile and Palm apps. None had exactly the same design nor look & feel as the iPhone. Which phone are you referring to ?
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    I think maybe he is talking about the general IDEA, not necessarily the look and feel. You're right in asserting that there really was nothing like iPhone before iPhone, but the IDEA was there from way back with HP Jornadas and the older BREW phones. (I do concede that the UI of all of those devices was, in PRACTICE, much different than the iPhone UI. That much is undeniable when you look at old pictures of them. Back then, basically they all tried to copy MS Windows in a small screen.)
    - c22 8y ago
      You could look further back, all the way to 1992. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Even Nokia had touch phones before iPhone was a thing. https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php
nitwit005 8y ago
As others pointed out, other phones had similar layouts. Remember that some of the graphics just weren't possible with older phone hardware. The iphone came out at a time when nicer graphics were doable, but it was still fairly expensive. They sold them for $500-$600 with a 2 year contract.
outside2344 8y ago
It was not the patents that were amazing, it was the execution and that it worked, every time, with amazing polish.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
>The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple. The LG Prada was shown off before the introduction of the iPhone. To imply that the iPhone was polarizing/radical and that the LG Prada was not is ridiculous IMO. https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/apple-iphone-vs-lg-prada-separated-at-birth-part-2/ https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/apple-iphone-vs-lg-prada...
- berti 8y ago
  Until you look at the home screen.. and the hardware buttons... Samsung's problem is that they cloned the iPhone look and feel (aka design).
- mattkevan 8y ago
  The only reason anyone remembers the LG Prada is to bring it up in this kind of discussion. If it was so radical and ground-breaking, how come LG are an also-ran Android OEM and not the most valuable company ever? It's an asinine argument as it takes the most superficial elements, such as a full touchscreen, conveniently ignoring the actual things that made the iPhone so innovative, such as multitouch UX, proper web browser, full featured operating system, exclusive carrier partnerships and more. Here's what the LG was actually like: * No multitouch * Flash-based UI * T9 keyboard – even though it was a touchscreen it still used predictive text * Basic browser, no pinch to zoom
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    > The only reason anyone remembers the LG Prada is to bring it up in this kind of discussion. > If it was so radical and ground-breaking, how come LG are an also-ran Android OEM and not the most valuable company ever? The LG Prada example only destroys the "Apple invented rounded corners" argument. iPhone was groundbreaking. Rhe lawsuits afterwards were ridiculous IMO.
    - mattkevan 8y ago
      'Apple invented rounded corners' is also a wilfully incorrect simplification of the issues. It doesn't matter who invented what first, Samsung deliberately infringed Apple's design patents and were found to do so by the court. As I understand it, design patents are different to normal patents in that prior art is not a consideration. Samsung could have gone in so many different directions with the design. Instead they came up with something that even their own lawyers had trouble distinguishing from an iPhone.
WalterBright 8y ago
Check out the Minisec from 1976: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 "Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode."
piyush_soni 8y ago
But "rounded corners"? Seriously?
wlll 8y ago
Perhaps someone could link an article about why these (IMO relatively trivial) design ideas are even patentable? Well before the iPhone 1 existed I had a phone with apps (or what passed for them back in the day) in a grid on the home screen, I've seen rounded corners (though not quite as rounded as the iPhone), and a rim around the screen. I'm no Samsung fanboy, I use Apple products, we're a 4 iPhone house, but this all just seems like petty stuff.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  I think the key to answering that question is derived in a supreme court case that is almost entirely unrelated to this. >There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. Regardless of the merit of this claim in regards to what exists in text, tradition, or practice, it, in my opinion, shows that the legal system is effectively a huge game where the rules matter more than the concepts of which the game's existence is justified (such concepts are right and wrong, harm, guilt and innocence). If you are about to be executed for a crime you were convicted of, but have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of your innocence, that alone is not worth demanding judicial consideration. If the rules by which we murder people in cold blood are less nonsensical than the most recent version of D&D, then what hopes does far more mundane and boring issues like patents have?
  - bb611 8y ago
    Contradicted more recently by > The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing. Courts and laws change slowly, and changing them requires sustained, steady pressure. But they do change and adapt as their shortcomings are identified.
tim333 8y ago
Who in turn copied Sony it seems https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone-design-inspiration-iphone-4-looked-old https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...

asdfologist 8y ago

It doesn't matter if they're original. No company should have exclusive rights to rounded corners.

ShabbosGoy 8y ago
I mean sure, you could have a world where everything was free and unpatentable.
- asdfologist 8y ago
  Textbook strawman.
  - ShabbosGoy 8y ago
    In what way? Do you accept the premise that certain precise design elements, organized in a precise manner, are patentable?
    - Covzire 8y ago
      Based on this precedent, we should have seen a lot of half-billion dollar lawsuits over the design of automobiles in the last 30 years.
rayiner 8y ago
It's not just "rounded corners." The patent addresses a very specific design, with rounded corners, a border, etc. It is basically only infringed if you try to make your product look like an iPhone, in order to free-ride on the iPhone brand, which is exactly what Samsung did.
- trimbo 8y ago
  I forget, did Braun ever sue Apple for all of those stolen designs? Anyway, shouldn't this be copyright law and not patent law?
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    > I forget, did Braun ever sue Apple for all of those stolen designs? Did reasonable amount of people confuse a Braun Pocket radio with the Apple iPod?
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      Has anyone ever accidentally bought a Samsung phone when they thought they were buying iPhone?
      - madeofpalk 8y ago
        Well, the courts believed so.
        dba7dba 8y ago
        No not courts. Apple did not win in other non American courts. Not in Germany. Not in Japan. Not in Australia. Only in a courtroom in Silicon Valley. And with a jury headed by a jury foreman with very questionable opinions and patents himself. He had to be told to shut up after the verdict because he was going around interviewing saying things that tainted the verdict not so greatly.
        tooltalk 8y ago
        and let's not forget Obama who reversed Samsung's win in ITC.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Yes. To fit the standard at issue here, that happened every time somebody bought a Samsung phone instead of an Apple phone because they thought both phones basically did the same thing. Most people who buy phones are not as engaged with the market as HN commenters are. The argument at play here seems to be: you can make something that looks like a Braun device if Braun doesn't already have a design-patented device that does the same thing. And you can make a device that does exactly the same thing as a Braun device as long as you don't try to make your device look confusingly similar to Braun's device. What you can't do is make a direct substitute for a design-patented Braun device, and then go out of your way to clone the design so that people have a hard time telling the difference between the two. Another simple way to look at this (it's incomplete, but might settle the issue for you) is that a lot of people pick their phone based on how it looks.
loa-in-backup 8y ago
It's the rounded corners with a rounded rectangle button in the middle under rectangle screen layout.

wvenable 8y ago

I had an early smartphone, the Sony Ericsson P800, and it was a full screen and the home page was a grid of app icons. The iPhone design was extremely well done in comparison but hardly some radical unknown thing. The real design innovation was the capacitive touch screen

prepend 8y ago
I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how you think the p800 looked anything like the iPhone, https://goo.gl/images/t3XvMA https://goo.gl/images/t3XvMA Yes, they are both rectangles. But there were massive differences aside from the capacitive touch.
- JohnTHaller 8y ago
  Parent is referring to the fact that the phone was a full screen and had a grid of icons (reminiscent of Palm) on it like the iPhone did: https://i.imgur.com/Fdk0566.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Fdk0566.jpg Parent post didn't say the phones looked the same. The iPhone refined a lot of existing functionality.
  - stouset 8y ago
    People making this argument seem to be under the incorrect belief that Apple patented a grid of icons. They did not. They patented a specific aesthetic and functional design that incorporates a grid of icons, but is much more specific than only that.
- stouset 8y ago
  There’s an image out there of what phones used to look like imminently before the iPhone’s release and what phones looked like immediately afterward. It tends to bring this pointless debate to a quick end. Edit: found them. Before: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsung-iphone-1.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsu... After: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsung-iphone-3-640x405.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/samsu...

denzil_correa 8y ago

There's a book which explains this phenomena : "Everything is Obvious ... Once you know the answer" http://everythingisobvious.com/the-book/ http://everythingisobvious.com/the-book/

GeekyBear 8y ago
One of the Android engineers (back when Android was going to be a Blackberry knockoff) made a similar comment about his reaction to the iPhone unveiling. >“As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’” What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it." https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  That's because Apple had a touchscreen, and Google had a keyboard at the time.
  - xeromal 8y ago
    ala a blackberry knockoff
    - Crontab 8y ago
      Well, no one is accusing Google of originality.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Lots of phones had touchscreens before. It was a combination of the physical design, engineering, UI and feature set that was so ground breaking. The thing is each of these things is intimately connected and depend on each other. You can’t just do one without the other three and have anything worthwhile. That’s why this was so hard. It’s why analysts that just focuses on one obvious feature - a touch screen - misses the point so badly. If a touch screen was all that mattered, why didn’t the Android team copy one of the previous touch screen phones instead?

c3534l 8y ago

A choice isn't a technology. You didn't invent anything, you made the right choice. Patents used in this way aren't rewarding invention or creative work which is being plagurized, they're rent-seeking. They're using the government's power to stop competition from improving on their products by registering things that already exist. The mere fact that they made a good choice is not grounds to prevent other people from making that choice. It's anti-capitalist corporatism at it's finest.

rayiner 8y ago
There are two kinds of patents: design patents, which protect the arbitrary look of a product, and utility patents, which protect a technology. The relevant patents here are design patents that address the recognizable "look" of the iPhone (rounded corners, colored border, etc.). These are arbitrary choices, and that's precisely why it isn't rent-seeking to protect them. There is an infinite number of arbitrary designs that would achieve the same function; the only reason to use the ones Apple chose is to try and trade on the consumer goodwill Apple has created with its products, or confuse people into associating your product with Apple's. Those aren't legitimate bases for competition; they are free-riding (a concept at least as important as "rent seeking").

kumarm 8y ago

As someone who developed for Mobile Phones pre iPhone era, I can say they are people who never worked on software for Mobile before iPhone :). There were number of Phone that existed with several of those styles. How many people know Verizon Had a decent app store (Apps developed with Brew) in US before iPhone? This included similar testing that you see for AppStore TODAY.

lyzan 8y ago
I've probably used more brew apps than play/appStore/etc combined since. Was a wonderfully useful store with generally high quality, useful, apps that we easy to find.
threeseed 8y ago
I commercially developed both Windows Mobile and Palm apps. None had exactly the same design nor look & feel as the iPhone. Which phone are you referring to ?
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I think maybe he is talking about the general IDEA, not necessarily the look and feel. You're right in asserting that there really was nothing like iPhone before iPhone, but the IDEA was there from way back with HP Jornadas and the older BREW phones. (I do concede that the UI of all of those devices was, in PRACTICE, much different than the iPhone UI. That much is undeniable when you look at old pictures of them. Back then, basically they all tried to copy MS Windows in a small screen.)
  - c22 8y ago
    You could look further back, all the way to 1992. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Even Nokia had touch phones before iPhone was a thing. https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_7710-review-31.php

nitwit005 8y ago

As others pointed out, other phones had similar layouts. Remember that some of the graphics just weren't possible with older phone hardware. The iphone came out at a time when nicer graphics were doable, but it was still fairly expensive. They sold them for $500-$600 with a 2 year contract.

outside2344 8y ago

It was not the patents that were amazing, it was the execution and that it worked, every time, with amazing polish.

bitmapbrother 8y ago

>The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple. The LG Prada was shown off before the introduction of the iPhone. To imply that the iPhone was polarizing/radical and that the LG Prada was not is ridiculous IMO. https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/apple-iphone-vs-lg-prada-separated-at-birth-part-2/ https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/apple-iphone-vs-lg-prada...

berti 8y ago
Until you look at the home screen.. and the hardware buttons... Samsung's problem is that they cloned the iPhone look and feel (aka design).
mattkevan 8y ago
The only reason anyone remembers the LG Prada is to bring it up in this kind of discussion. If it was so radical and ground-breaking, how come LG are an also-ran Android OEM and not the most valuable company ever? It's an asinine argument as it takes the most superficial elements, such as a full touchscreen, conveniently ignoring the actual things that made the iPhone so innovative, such as multitouch UX, proper web browser, full featured operating system, exclusive carrier partnerships and more. Here's what the LG was actually like: * No multitouch * Flash-based UI * T9 keyboard – even though it was a touchscreen it still used predictive text * Basic browser, no pinch to zoom
- reitanqild 8y ago
  > The only reason anyone remembers the LG Prada is to bring it up in this kind of discussion. > If it was so radical and ground-breaking, how come LG are an also-ran Android OEM and not the most valuable company ever? The LG Prada example only destroys the "Apple invented rounded corners" argument. iPhone was groundbreaking. Rhe lawsuits afterwards were ridiculous IMO.
  - mattkevan 8y ago
    'Apple invented rounded corners' is also a wilfully incorrect simplification of the issues. It doesn't matter who invented what first, Samsung deliberately infringed Apple's design patents and were found to do so by the court. As I understand it, design patents are different to normal patents in that prior art is not a consideration. Samsung could have gone in so many different directions with the design. Instead they came up with something that even their own lawyers had trouble distinguishing from an iPhone.

WalterBright 8y ago

Check out the Minisec from 1976: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267 "Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode."

piyush_soni 8y ago

But "rounded corners"? Seriously?

wlll 8y ago

Perhaps someone could link an article about why these (IMO relatively trivial) design ideas are even patentable? Well before the iPhone 1 existed I had a phone with apps (or what passed for them back in the day) in a grid on the home screen, I've seen rounded corners (though not quite as rounded as the iPhone), and a rim around the screen. I'm no Samsung fanboy, I use Apple products, we're a 4 iPhone house, but this all just seems like petty stuff.

PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
I think the key to answering that question is derived in a supreme court case that is almost entirely unrelated to this. >There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. Regardless of the merit of this claim in regards to what exists in text, tradition, or practice, it, in my opinion, shows that the legal system is effectively a huge game where the rules matter more than the concepts of which the game's existence is justified (such concepts are right and wrong, harm, guilt and innocence). If you are about to be executed for a crime you were convicted of, but have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of your innocence, that alone is not worth demanding judicial consideration. If the rules by which we murder people in cold blood are less nonsensical than the most recent version of D&D, then what hopes does far more mundane and boring issues like patents have?
- bb611 8y ago
  Contradicted more recently by > The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing. Courts and laws change slowly, and changing them requires sustained, steady pressure. But they do change and adapt as their shortcomings are identified.

tim333 8y ago

Who in turn copied Sony it seems https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone-design-inspiration-iphone-4-looked-old https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...