4 ms·

If you look at Android phones from 2007 (to me the one in the link looks very similar to a Blackberry) and if you look at them now you cannot miss how much they

If you look at Android phones from 2007 (to me the one in the link looks very similar to a Blackberry) and if you look at them now you cannot miss how much they have changed to look like the iPhone. You can't even tell it's the same OS. So when you copy you are sued. (If the copying/taking inspiration was reasonable or not is a different issue.) Samsung was sued to copy "look and feel". [http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-like-before-and-after-the-launch-of-iphone/ http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-l...]

MikeCapone 15y ago
I'm sure that if you look at computers before and after the PC you'll see that most companies followed the leader. Probably same with various generations of cars, planes, televisions, toasters, whatever. Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things? I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line.
- ashishgandhi 15y ago
  "I'm sure that if you look at computers before and after the PC you'll see that most companies followed the leader. Probably same with various generations of cars, planes, televisions, toasters, whatever." That's true. And I'm sure we all remember the lawsuits that followed. Like I said, it being reasonable or not is a different issue. Of couse, if you ignore advances made towards "a better way to do things" to avoid being labelled as copying there will be no progress. At the same time you want to make sure there is incentive for them who put in the effort to come up with the "better way to do things" otherwise the competition will simply sit around and copy while those who bear the burden to innovate aren't rewarded. So where to draw the line? That's a difficult question.
- sbuk 15y ago
  "Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things?" Somewhere between here; http://cl.ly/8lZ5 http://cl.ly/8lZ5 and here; http://cl.ly/8lIC http://cl.ly/8lIC "I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line." The line in the sand is there already and crystal clear. This dispute is nothing new. To be clear, Apple aren't arguing that the phones cannot have radiused corners or have silver bevels, they are saying that the look of the Galaxy S phone is too close to the look and feel of the iPhone to be anything other than plagiarism and therefore an infringement of copyright. When you compare the two phones I've linked here, one can clearly see that HTC have done their own thing. They have their own design language that differs significantly from their competitors. It would generous to claim that Samsung where only inspired by Apple's IP; the look of the icons, the grid layout, the shape of the icons, the look and feel of the hardware, the placement of the d-pad. It's all too similar.
bad_user 15y ago
But Samsung hasn't lost yet and IMHO it was a stupid move from Apple's part -- besides the fact that Samsung also produces chips for them, Samsung has the right patents to counter-sue; and they are doing just that. Apple also sued Nokia, but they ended up paying royalties to them anyway. Do a little exercise -- try patenting something worthy that people may want to "copy" and then go to IBM telling them "fuck you IBM, I patented this so you can't use it". You'll give them a good laugh ;-) And if IBM ever thought about copying the iPhone, even if it made the most faithful replica ever including naming it something like "xPhone", there's practically nothing Apple could do without effectively getting bitch-slapped. Also, the term "copy" itself is misleading: it makes people think that new developments should be original, when clearly nothing is original or evolutionary. Everybody copies from everybody. The patents system is terribly broken and rewording the current mess as something moral and just is really ignoring reality.
- jsnell 15y ago
  > Apple also sued Nokia, but they ended up paying royalties to them anyway. The question there was never whether Apple would be paying, but how much. Given the pittance (a few euros per phone) Nokia apparently ended up getting with the best mobile patent portfolio in the world, it hardly seems like a win for Nokia or a loss for Apple. More likely it was Nokia being desperate to get the cash now to make their Q2 results look a little bit better.
ashishgandhi 15y ago
There are others who see this too. [1] Seems to me I'm being down voted un-objectively. To quote from another up voted post: "Before the iPhone was announced, android was an OS for a blackberry type device. It was better than RIM's OS, I believe, but it was the RIM formfactor and UI style. After the iPhone was announced, suddenly android became a touch-screen phone OS, copying the iPhone. It is important to remember that a touch screen UI was never done before in this way. There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement. It isn't like the iPhoen was just another phone... the iPhone was a new kind of phone. It created a new category. Just as the iPad created a new category (despite there being table PCs in the past, going way back, there was no tablet device market prior to the iPad.) Apple invented the touchscreen UI, and much of the technologies for the modern smartphone. Apple started working on the iPhone and iOS system for the iPad project sometime around 2002-2003. Google started working on the touch version of android in 2007- after the iPhone was announced. If google had decided to compete, and launched a massive R&D effort, and invented a bunch of stuff, then they'd have patents of their own to defend with. They didn't, they just copied the iPhone. There is no question android is designed to be an iPhone like OS running on touch screens with multi-touch. Apple invented this category of product, Apple has patented it with legitimate, innovative, non-obvious inventions." 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2770550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2770550

MikeCapone 15y ago

I'm sure that if you look at computers before and after the PC you'll see that most companies followed the leader. Probably same with various generations of cars, planes, televisions, toasters, whatever. Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things? I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line.

ashishgandhi 15y ago
"I'm sure that if you look at computers before and after the PC you'll see that most companies followed the leader. Probably same with various generations of cars, planes, televisions, toasters, whatever." That's true. And I'm sure we all remember the lawsuits that followed. Like I said, it being reasonable or not is a different issue. Of couse, if you ignore advances made towards "a better way to do things" to avoid being labelled as copying there will be no progress. At the same time you want to make sure there is incentive for them who put in the effort to come up with the "better way to do things" otherwise the competition will simply sit around and copy while those who bear the burden to innovate aren't rewarded. So where to draw the line? That's a difficult question.
sbuk 15y ago
"Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things?" Somewhere between here; http://cl.ly/8lZ5 http://cl.ly/8lZ5 and here; http://cl.ly/8lIC http://cl.ly/8lIC "I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line." The line in the sand is there already and crystal clear. This dispute is nothing new. To be clear, Apple aren't arguing that the phones cannot have radiused corners or have silver bevels, they are saying that the look of the Galaxy S phone is too close to the look and feel of the iPhone to be anything other than plagiarism and therefore an infringement of copyright. When you compare the two phones I've linked here, one can clearly see that HTC have done their own thing. They have their own design language that differs significantly from their competitors. It would generous to claim that Samsung where only inspired by Apple's IP; the look of the icons, the grid layout, the shape of the icons, the look and feel of the hardware, the placement of the d-pad. It's all too similar.

bad_user 15y ago

But Samsung hasn't lost yet and IMHO it was a stupid move from Apple's part -- besides the fact that Samsung also produces chips for them, Samsung has the right patents to counter-sue; and they are doing just that. Apple also sued Nokia, but they ended up paying royalties to them anyway. Do a little exercise -- try patenting something worthy that people may want to "copy" and then go to IBM telling them "fuck you IBM, I patented this so you can't use it". You'll give them a good laugh ;-) And if IBM ever thought about copying the iPhone, even if it made the most faithful replica ever including naming it something like "xPhone", there's practically nothing Apple could do without effectively getting bitch-slapped. Also, the term "copy" itself is misleading: it makes people think that new developments should be original, when clearly nothing is original or evolutionary. Everybody copies from everybody. The patents system is terribly broken and rewording the current mess as something moral and just is really ignoring reality.

jsnell 15y ago
> Apple also sued Nokia, but they ended up paying royalties to them anyway. The question there was never whether Apple would be paying, but how much. Given the pittance (a few euros per phone) Nokia apparently ended up getting with the best mobile patent portfolio in the world, it hardly seems like a win for Nokia or a loss for Apple. More likely it was Nokia being desperate to get the cash now to make their Q2 results look a little bit better.

ashishgandhi 15y ago

There are others who see this too. [1] Seems to me I'm being down voted un-objectively. To quote from another up voted post: "Before the iPhone was announced, android was an OS for a blackberry type device. It was better than RIM's OS, I believe, but it was the RIM formfactor and UI style. After the iPhone was announced, suddenly android became a touch-screen phone OS, copying the iPhone. It is important to remember that a touch screen UI was never done before in this way. There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement. It isn't like the iPhoen was just another phone... the iPhone was a new kind of phone. It created a new category. Just as the iPad created a new category (despite there being table PCs in the past, going way back, there was no tablet device market prior to the iPad.) Apple invented the touchscreen UI, and much of the technologies for the modern smartphone. Apple started working on the iPhone and iOS system for the iPad project sometime around 2002-2003. Google started working on the touch version of android in 2007- after the iPhone was announced. If google had decided to compete, and launched a massive R&D effort, and invented a bunch of stuff, then they'd have patents of their own to defend with. They didn't, they just copied the iPhone. There is no question android is designed to be an iPhone like OS running on touch screens with multi-touch. Apple invented this category of product, Apple has patented it with legitimate, innovative, non-obvious inventions." 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2770550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2770550