7 ms·

Fascinating to see how much is 'inspired' by Apple's design and Microsoft's for the document app. I'd feel dirty in so blatantly copying someone else's design,

Fascinating to see how much is 'inspired' by Apple's design and Microsoft's for the document app. I'd feel dirty in so blatantly copying someone else's design, but Huawei doesn't share those concerns. Maybe for good reason.

Santosh83 5y ago
Yeah of course the same way Western world feels "dirty" because they copied Yoga or patented indigenous herbals or any number of other things? Perhaps it's time we recognised ideas and concepts are meant to be taken up and extended by other people? That's how humans have progressed these thousands of years. Not by paranoid, corporate silos and NIH syndrome and draconian patents.
- FrozenSynapse 5y ago
  wtf? How can you copy Yoga?! You can copy a design language tho
  - dragonsh 5y ago
    Oh sure a specific set of exercise or regime which has a specific effect on body can be a copyright or patent depending on the media and the way they are presented. Like people talking about Ashtang Vinyasa Yoga, Viniyoga, Kundalini Yoga all can be patented in a specific way e.g. [1], obviously need to pay lawyer fee and go to courts to determine later if it can be used to earn money when other party who need to pay do not agree. It waste resources, hamper growth and dissemination of knowledge. If someone patented the Decimal System or Abacus or Gun powder or Pythogorus Theorem or Fibonnaci Series or Newton patented its laws of motion and anyone using this laws and formula's in any system needs to pay royalty not sure what weird world will be. Human knowledge stand on the giant shoulders of others and patent and copyright with ever-greening and useless litigation are making it hard and difficult. Can't fathom someone can copyright a rectangle drawing and sue phone companies for launching rectangle phones. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US8605152 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8605152
    - monocasa 5y ago
      Jeeze, that's one of the most egregious patents I've seen in a while. Hopefully it wouldn't stand up in a post Alice Corp world.
    - WanderPanda 5y ago
      > Human knowledge stand on the giant shoulders of others and patent and copyright with ever-greening and useless litigation are making it hard and difficult. Can't fathom someone can copyright a rectangle drawing and sue phone companies for launching rectangle phones. How is this even an argument, given that patents expire?
      - dragonsh 5y ago
        It is an argument given there is a concept of ever-greening. Also most of the time Patent system stifles the innovation it was designed to encourage [1] [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/patent-system-often-stifles-the-innovation-it-was-designed-to-encourage/ar-BB1eExdy https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/patent-system-often-stifle...
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > How is this even an argument, given that patents expire? These days, many patented technologies expire faster than patents on them. In those cases, patents are quite literally halting progress.
        WanderPanda 5y ago
        Wait, are you saying that because technological progress is too fast, technological progress is slow?
        TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Yes. It's because technological progress is fast in general, halting a particular avenue of development down can cause it to never be pursued again. Technological progress isn't a line, it's a graph. Someone patents an invention and decides to sit on it, and by the time the patent expires, the entire technological environment has shifted around in a way which makes that invention worthless, and follow-up work unlikely to happen. Whereas, were it not for that patent, the invention would had people extending it further, perhaps generating even more immediately useful technologies. In this way, a patent - in particular, a defensive patent, taken to prevent anyone from developing a technology that endangers your business - is closing off avenues of progress.
  - unixhero 5y ago
    You wouldn't download a yoga.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Patents by the "western world" is a solution to secrecy. It's not perfect, but i don't think there's a better way. Corporate silos is exactly what it's trying to fix.
- mosselman 5y ago
  > Yeah of course the same way Western world feels "dirty" because they copied Yoga or patented indigenous herbals or any number of other things? I don't think the comparison holds at all: Yoga is something people do in many different ways, not a specific product, nor is 'the western world' a single entity. When I do Yoga I am not selling my attempt at whatever 'real' yoga is for profit. This comparison might have made sense, mind you, not much, if I had said that other companies should feel dirty for making tablets after the first one was made. > Perhaps it's time we recognised ideas and concepts are meant to be taken up and extended by other people? I agree with this and is a bit stating the obvious. This is, as you say, basically how mankind works. To be clear I don't think Huawei should be prevented from doing this, I just think it is unauthentic which I don't like. It is purely an expression of my dislike of what they've created not a call to action for some team of lawyers.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    Maybe a better example would be when a US company patented basmati rice and wanted to extort India into paying royalties and almost succeeded with it: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/72228/The-story-of-the-basmati-rice-patent-battle https://sciencebusiness.net/news/72228/The-story-of-the-basm...
    - throwaway210222 5y ago
      …or like India broadcasting the IPL cricket back to England? Because, either no one can clone and customise, or - god forbid - everyone can. [Oddly its the latter idea that seems to bother many people, even though its clearly and objectively less prejudicial].
533474 5y ago
Let the best win, isn't that our modern capitalism's answer? If Huawei is copying they will always lag behind. Still, are they really copying? or are they piecing innovations together into a new improved product? Give them a break and a chance to bring something new - sanctions and all, it is pretty impressive they have persevered.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  China is copying sure but SELLING FOR LESS. Why is Xiaomi in second place now in Europe? Because their phones are cheap. They are the IKEA of smartphones.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    Not only are they cheap, but they are good too. I'm typing this on a Xiaomi Mi 9 SE, which I've had for 2 years now, and it's the best phone I've ever owned - build quality is fantastic (as good as Samsung), it's really fast, and the battery life is amazing - I use it a lot, but only need to charge it every other day.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    which is great. Few companies have done more for the wallet of ordinary people than IKEA.
    - WanderPanda 5y ago
      After my last trip to IKEA I got a different impression. I get a feeling they are starting to cash in on their brand, you can get furniture with better price/quality ratio elswhere.
      - notyourday 5y ago
        The founder is dead. IKEA is returning to the mean. Steve Jobs is dead. Apple is returning to the mean. Bezos is out. Amazon is returning to the mean. Google founders are out at Google. Google is returning to the mean.
Lio 5y ago
The problem is that, in general, when a company doesn't respect intellectual property laws or obviously makes use of industrial espionage (and I'm not suggesting either is true for Huawei) they are sending a clear signal that laws do not apply to them. So as a customer why would I trust any company with my most personal health, banking or own intellectual property if that company sees no reasonable limitations to its behaviour in any other sphere? The original purpose for branding was to allow customers to identify food products they could trust. The same is true for technology.
- roenxi 5y ago
  You might be the sort of person who takes a principled stand against intellectual property, so not see Huawei's behaviour as inconsistent with protecting consumer privacy? I don't personally trust Huawei to behave responsibly. But I don't really trust any other company either. Android is basically a Google anti-privacy play. Western IP law is arguably just a tool to delay Chinese progress (speaking from an international perspective). A Chinese company ignoring it doesn't really tell us much about how the company will behave towards its customers.
  - toyg 5y ago
    > Android is basically a Google anti-privacy play. That's uncharitable. Android effectively started as a pro-web play: a way to ensure Google could deliver their services to mobile users regardless of what mobile manufacturers wanted (we're talking Nokia and Blackberry, which dominated the sector at the time and, together with phone carriers, could dictate what would or would not get to phones). They later got greedy with data-siphoning, but Apple effectively does the same, they're just a bit shy about over-exploiting it.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      I think it is unfair to say Apple does the same. It is night and day between the two platforms when it comes to privacy and I say it as someone who really dislikes Apple’s walled garden.
  - 5y ago
Ly5846N929Rm6bb 5y ago
“Good artists copy, great artists steal”
rchaud 5y ago
Somebody at Xerox PARC thinks the same about Jobs and Gates every day.
- rasz 5y ago
  Xerox was allowed to invest in Apple in exchange for that PARC tour.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Well those companies put a lot of money into design and customer feedback so it isn't much of a leap to think it will still work even on a new "OS", and Huawei doesn't seem to think it's bound by international copyright laws.

Santosh83 5y ago

Yeah of course the same way Western world feels "dirty" because they copied Yoga or patented indigenous herbals or any number of other things? Perhaps it's time we recognised ideas and concepts are meant to be taken up and extended by other people? That's how humans have progressed these thousands of years. Not by paranoid, corporate silos and NIH syndrome and draconian patents.

FrozenSynapse 5y ago
wtf? How can you copy Yoga?! You can copy a design language tho
- dragonsh 5y ago
  Oh sure a specific set of exercise or regime which has a specific effect on body can be a copyright or patent depending on the media and the way they are presented. Like people talking about Ashtang Vinyasa Yoga, Viniyoga, Kundalini Yoga all can be patented in a specific way e.g. [1], obviously need to pay lawyer fee and go to courts to determine later if it can be used to earn money when other party who need to pay do not agree. It waste resources, hamper growth and dissemination of knowledge. If someone patented the Decimal System or Abacus or Gun powder or Pythogorus Theorem or Fibonnaci Series or Newton patented its laws of motion and anyone using this laws and formula's in any system needs to pay royalty not sure what weird world will be. Human knowledge stand on the giant shoulders of others and patent and copyright with ever-greening and useless litigation are making it hard and difficult. Can't fathom someone can copyright a rectangle drawing and sue phone companies for launching rectangle phones. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US8605152 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8605152
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Jeeze, that's one of the most egregious patents I've seen in a while. Hopefully it wouldn't stand up in a post Alice Corp world.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    > Human knowledge stand on the giant shoulders of others and patent and copyright with ever-greening and useless litigation are making it hard and difficult. Can't fathom someone can copyright a rectangle drawing and sue phone companies for launching rectangle phones. How is this even an argument, given that patents expire?
    - dragonsh 5y ago
      It is an argument given there is a concept of ever-greening. Also most of the time Patent system stifles the innovation it was designed to encourage [1] [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/patent-system-often-stifles-the-innovation-it-was-designed-to-encourage/ar-BB1eExdy https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/patent-system-often-stifle...
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > How is this even an argument, given that patents expire? These days, many patented technologies expire faster than patents on them. In those cases, patents are quite literally halting progress.
      - WanderPanda 5y ago
        Wait, are you saying that because technological progress is too fast, technological progress is slow?
        TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Yes. It's because technological progress is fast in general, halting a particular avenue of development down can cause it to never be pursued again. Technological progress isn't a line, it's a graph. Someone patents an invention and decides to sit on it, and by the time the patent expires, the entire technological environment has shifted around in a way which makes that invention worthless, and follow-up work unlikely to happen. Whereas, were it not for that patent, the invention would had people extending it further, perhaps generating even more immediately useful technologies. In this way, a patent - in particular, a defensive patent, taken to prevent anyone from developing a technology that endangers your business - is closing off avenues of progress.
- unixhero 5y ago
  You wouldn't download a yoga.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Patents by the "western world" is a solution to secrecy. It's not perfect, but i don't think there's a better way. Corporate silos is exactly what it's trying to fix.
mosselman 5y ago
> Yeah of course the same way Western world feels "dirty" because they copied Yoga or patented indigenous herbals or any number of other things? I don't think the comparison holds at all: Yoga is something people do in many different ways, not a specific product, nor is 'the western world' a single entity. When I do Yoga I am not selling my attempt at whatever 'real' yoga is for profit. This comparison might have made sense, mind you, not much, if I had said that other companies should feel dirty for making tablets after the first one was made. > Perhaps it's time we recognised ideas and concepts are meant to be taken up and extended by other people? I agree with this and is a bit stating the obvious. This is, as you say, basically how mankind works. To be clear I don't think Huawei should be prevented from doing this, I just think it is unauthentic which I don't like. It is purely an expression of my dislike of what they've created not a call to action for some team of lawyers.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  Maybe a better example would be when a US company patented basmati rice and wanted to extort India into paying royalties and almost succeeded with it: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/72228/The-story-of-the-basmati-rice-patent-battle https://sciencebusiness.net/news/72228/The-story-of-the-basm...
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    …or like India broadcasting the IPL cricket back to England? Because, either no one can clone and customise, or - god forbid - everyone can. [Oddly its the latter idea that seems to bother many people, even though its clearly and objectively less prejudicial].

533474 5y ago

Let the best win, isn't that our modern capitalism's answer? If Huawei is copying they will always lag behind. Still, are they really copying? or are they piecing innovations together into a new improved product? Give them a break and a chance to bring something new - sanctions and all, it is pretty impressive they have persevered.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
China is copying sure but SELLING FOR LESS. Why is Xiaomi in second place now in Europe? Because their phones are cheap. They are the IKEA of smartphones.
- GordonS 5y ago
  Not only are they cheap, but they are good too. I'm typing this on a Xiaomi Mi 9 SE, which I've had for 2 years now, and it's the best phone I've ever owned - build quality is fantastic (as good as Samsung), it's really fast, and the battery life is amazing - I use it a lot, but only need to charge it every other day.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  which is great. Few companies have done more for the wallet of ordinary people than IKEA.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    After my last trip to IKEA I got a different impression. I get a feeling they are starting to cash in on their brand, you can get furniture with better price/quality ratio elswhere.
    - notyourday 5y ago
      The founder is dead. IKEA is returning to the mean. Steve Jobs is dead. Apple is returning to the mean. Bezos is out. Amazon is returning to the mean. Google founders are out at Google. Google is returning to the mean.

Lio 5y ago

The problem is that, in general, when a company doesn't respect intellectual property laws or obviously makes use of industrial espionage (and I'm not suggesting either is true for Huawei) they are sending a clear signal that laws do not apply to them. So as a customer why would I trust any company with my most personal health, banking or own intellectual property if that company sees no reasonable limitations to its behaviour in any other sphere? The original purpose for branding was to allow customers to identify food products they could trust. The same is true for technology.

roenxi 5y ago
You might be the sort of person who takes a principled stand against intellectual property, so not see Huawei's behaviour as inconsistent with protecting consumer privacy? I don't personally trust Huawei to behave responsibly. But I don't really trust any other company either. Android is basically a Google anti-privacy play. Western IP law is arguably just a tool to delay Chinese progress (speaking from an international perspective). A Chinese company ignoring it doesn't really tell us much about how the company will behave towards its customers.
- toyg 5y ago
  > Android is basically a Google anti-privacy play. That's uncharitable. Android effectively started as a pro-web play: a way to ensure Google could deliver their services to mobile users regardless of what mobile manufacturers wanted (we're talking Nokia and Blackberry, which dominated the sector at the time and, together with phone carriers, could dictate what would or would not get to phones). They later got greedy with data-siphoning, but Apple effectively does the same, they're just a bit shy about over-exploiting it.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    I think it is unfair to say Apple does the same. It is night and day between the two platforms when it comes to privacy and I say it as someone who really dislikes Apple’s walled garden.
- 5y ago

Ly5846N929Rm6bb 5y ago

“Good artists copy, great artists steal”

rchaud 5y ago

Somebody at Xerox PARC thinks the same about Jobs and Gates every day.

rasz 5y ago
Xerox was allowed to invest in Apple in exchange for that PARC tour.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Well those companies put a lot of money into design and customer feedback so it isn't much of a leap to think it will still work even on a new "OS", and Huawei doesn't seem to think it's bound by international copyright laws.