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Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone 5 design
- tomflack 14y agoSeems like a slam-dunk leaked photos = prior art.
- ukoki 14y ago...if only Chinese courts cared about such obtuse concepts as 'facts' and 'logic'.
- sebastianmarr 14y agoWhat is your experience with Chinese courts regarding patent cases? Any sources?
- ukoki 14y agoI live in China. A friend of mine was recently assaulted in a bar. Family of the perpetrator came to the hospital with the policeman assigned to the case and pressured my friend to accept money in lieu of pressing charges. Depending on how much 'guanxi' the perpetrators family have, if he does press charges, documents and evidence may get 'lost' and my friends employer could get in trouble with the local government, lose it's license etc. Although I can't talk about patent law, I know there are really no 'laws' in the city I live in - everything is negotiable and rests on how much you can spend and what your standing is with government officials. I love living here, but China is a mafia state.
- sebastianmarr 14y agoThanks for your insights.
- tomflack 14y agoI was expecting a glib reply such as your own and I'm saddened that I'm not disappointed.
- ukoki 14y agoI live in China... money and relationships come first, justice is an afterthought.
- sageikosa 14y agoChina, where they Party all the time. Just don't cause China to lose face, or your's will be seen no more.
- tomflack 14y agoA couple of things: Your friend's assault case - he's not a multi-billion dollar company with a massive investment in the mainland. Chinese consumers don't simply love him, like they do Apple products. (First-hand experience.) I notice the Goophone people are based in Hong Kong where the rule of law is quite a bit stronger. Apple have the money, they have the relationships. This whole thing is clearly grandstanding on the Goophone people's part. I am willing to put cash money on the line to say it's inconsequential to Apple launching the iPhone 5 on the mainland. There will be a delay - the usual delay for Apple products that mainland China experiences and nothing to do with this knockoff junk.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoIf money and relationships come first you're suggesting that this other company has more money than Apple? Or indeed more clout (given how big a client of Foxconn, the largest private employer in China, it is)?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Natsu 14y agoDon't be too sure. In Apple vs. Samsung, one of the allegedly infringing phones was dropped from the case. You see, it had been made prior to Apple's patent. I believe that they were also unable to inform the jury of that for whatever reason.
- ewang1 14y agoLOL, the goophone website even tell consumers to avoid getting a fake goophone and to report all fakes...
- Loic 14y agoMaybe the best demonstration of how broken the patent system is.
- notatoad 14y agoExcept this is the Chinese patent system, not the American one. Both systems are broken, but in entirely different (and opposite) ways.
- maximveksler 14y agoWhat do you mean? Could you please highlight the attributes of the Chinese patent system?
- jamesaguilar 14y agoI'm interested that you and others on here so badly want this to be about the patent system you know and hate that you completely miss that it's China's patent system. It has far more of a problem with both laxity and corruption than over-enforcement.
- olalonde 14y agoTheir fake iPhone (Goophone Y6) apparently retails for 250$ USD. http://shop.goophone.hk/product-28.html http://shop.goophone.hk/product-28.html. I suspect the quality is pretty bad... Also, Google apps such as Maps, YouTube, etc. might not be available since they require a license from Google. I'll try to get a hand on a sample this weekend if I pass by Huaqiangbei (mostly out of curiosity).
- dutchbrit 14y agoAnd that one obviously does break Apples design patent. Apple could easily sue them over that.
- gst 14y agoApple does have a design patent in China?
- fpp 14y ago...and judges to enforce it?
- josephlord 14y agoIf they imported it into the US or manufactured it there. And if it did Apple might be able to get an injunction by 2014 based on the speed of the Samsung case. It may be that Chinese law offers some protection but it won't be the same as US law.
- grkovalev 14y agoi think, Goophone plans to use patent at design for legal action. And Chinese judiciary acting on behalf of Chinese companys. On this based apple may lose in China again
- onetimeuse001 14y agoApple is too big for that, at some point comrades from the Politburo start getting involved, as it hurts business.
- mrich 14y agoI would not say this for any other company, but Apple somewhat deserves it.
- onetimeuse001 14y agoFor re-inventing the smartphone back in 2007 and for not wanting others to clone the best features?
- TeMPOraL 14y ago> not wanting others to clone the best features? Yes. It hinders progress. Also for all this patent mess with Samsung, et al.
- onetimeuse001 14y agoOh no, not another thread about whether patents should exist or not or for how many years. The fact is that they exist, iPhone was REVOLUTIONARY when announced and soon after others started cloning it. Go and look at Samsung and Android pre-iPhone and let's talk. Just because something is copied a lot doesn't mean that Apple should roll over. Nokia, for example, came up with a great phone that doesn't seem to clone the iPhone. By the way, E=Mc2 is pretty obvious to me too--now.
- dexter313 14y agohttp://img03.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i3/101108915/T2dGR5XhBXXXXXXXXX_!!101108915.jpg http://img03.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i3/101108915/T2dGR5XhBXX... The last picture on their website...
- 1gor 14y agoWhat goes around comes around.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dutchbrit 14y agoOn the subject of Chinese phones, check out the Mi Two. http://www.xiaomi.com/mi2 http://www.xiaomi.com/mi2 Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 Quad core, 1500 MHz, Krait Adreno 320 2GB RAM Pretty impressive, especially for the price.
- jemeshsu 14y agoXiaomi has cult followers in China, fyi. Its like the Apple for Android phones in China. And Mi Two is running Android 4.1.
- tomflack 14y agoApple is a mass-market cult, Xiaomi is Peter-jackson-before-he-was-famous cult-movie cult. Everyone I have ever asked in China about Xiaomi and Meizu phones brushed them off as "shānzhài iPhone..."
- darklajid 14y agoThese guys are pretty well known for running a very polished custom ROM as well, MIUI. Ran it on my devices until 4.x was (kind of, not really, in a crappy way) available. If you have an older android handset which won't receive any future upgrades: Might be worth checking out these guys.
- tsahyt 14y agoSame here. I ran it until my device (HTC Desire Z, T-Mobile G2 in the US) was discontinued by the MIUIAndroid folks.
- devsatish 14y agoPeople defending GooPhone and making stupid comments about Apple? I agree Patent system's kinda broken. But if this is real, is real stupidity and height of IP theft.
- yarrel 14y agoHow do you steal IP? Has someone broken into the patent office and rifled through the filing cabinets?
- regularfry 14y agoTechnically it is possible to steal a copyright, by falsely claiming to be the owner. I presume you could do something similar with a patent.
- LaRakel 14y agoIt's not theft, they just found it on the floor and used it.
- chmike 14y agoAs far as I know, design can't be patented. It can only be a matter of authorship and thus copyright. Apparently there seemed to be some confusion about this in the Apple vs Samsung case. Maybe it is only the media that is making such type of confusions. The problem with China is that its legal system is told to have a strong bias in favor of Chinese companies/people. I expect such situations might incline countries to retaliate in the same way and on similar basis instead of fixing the patent system.
- jkn 14y agoThere is a category of patents called "design patents". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent In Apple v. Samsung, Samsung was found to infringe some of these, see e.g. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/ban-this-apple-lists-8-samsung-devices-it-wants-kept-out-of-the-us/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/ban-this-apple-lists-8-...
- netcan 14y agoIn most countries there is some bias. The legal system might be unbiased, but the legislative system is not.
- dayjah 14y agoI'm so tired of these stupid phone patent wars. Is there a realistic solution to this or will it just phase out and be replaced by the next rebecca black-esque tech-reporter-BS?
- s3b 14y agolive by the sword, die by the sword ?
- kumarm 14y agoSo they did an apple on apple itself? :) [Yes I know its extreme but Apple is a company that sued MOTOROLA inventor of cellphones with cellphone patent]
- rimantas 14y agoYou got your facts mixed.
- Axsuul 14y agoHow serious does the Chinese government actually take copyrights? =p
- BostX 14y agoCopyrights well... it's like you make up some deals (in your western family) and then you go somewhere else (to the east) and ask people there to live by your deals. Because you see yourself as the One everybody must follow. And it works as long as you have a (military) might to protect your interests. BTW this is the principle how any legal system works, all over the scale from a family law to international law. And now imagine yourself loosing that might: two lost wars, economic crisis... well, deals made up by clowns have never been taken seriously.
- Mordor 14y agoWould be interesting to hear if they can ban Apple's exports from China.
- tsahyt 14y agoThat would in fact be pretty devastating for Apple I believe.
- gurkendoktor 14y agoDepends on how fast Foxconn builds new facilities in Vietnam.
- protomyth 14y agoThey are already in Brazil.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoThat would do massive damage to Foxconn and given that they're the single largest private employer in China, I suspect that the Chinese government would be pretty keen to make sure that that didn't happen.
- kbronson 14y agoHahahahaha... swallow this, Apple. It seems you were not really innovating because somebody patented it before. El que a hierro mata, a hierro muere.
- stretchwithme 14y agoAs if Apple didn't already file the same patents. As if the leaked photos aren't already prior art.
- progrock 14y agoYou better watch out for the skin deep. The best rebuttal Apple can make to any of this, is to polish their OS and their core apps as much as possible. It's ropey software that takes the polish away from supposedly glamorous devices.
- jrmg 14y agoSad to see this is the top HN story. The fact that this seems to be being taken seriously here is crazy. Obviously, a patent of someone else's design, no matter how it was come by, is not a valid one. [Decline of HN, jumping the shark, get off my lawn etc.]
- marme 14y agounfortunately in china patenting someone elses design is valid and will result in apple having to settle with them. The rules and laws in china are very lax and poorly enforced especially when foreign companies go to court with local companies. Just look at what happend with proview and apple a few month ago over the ipad trademark
- jrmg 14y agoCan you provide evidence that "patenting someone elses design is valid" in China? Lacking it, I find it very hard to believe that there's a patent system anywhere that doesn't require you to attest that the thing your applying to patent was invented by you. The Proview case is a tangent - Proview (claimed to?) have had the iPad trademark (not patent, but ignoring that...) since 2000, well before Apple. From what I've read, the lawsuit was about whether Proview had in the past sold the Chinese rights to it Apple or not.
- tsahyt 14y ago> very hard to believe there's a patent system anywhere that doesn't require you to attest that the thing your applying to patent was invented by you. 11 years ago a man from Australia patented the wheel. It's obvious he didn't invent it. You can basically patent anything in some countries as long as there's not yet an existing patent.
- jrmg 14y agoPresuming this is not just an urban legend, being granted a patent doesn't mean it's valid. No one who managed to get a patent on the wheel would be able make it stand up in any court.
- Monotoko 14y agoCan anyone translate this? http://www.goophone.hk/ http://www.goophone.hk/ - I've noticed they mention iPhone 5 on the actual site! Also, it looks like it's Hong Kong, not China (different rules to play by)
- luke_s 14y agoI just got my wife (Taiwanese) to read it, and she translated the red block of text. She wasn't very clear, but it says something along the lines of: "Beware of imitation products. The genuine goophone has a 'small bee' logo. If you see any phones with a similar design to the goophone but without the 'small bee' it is an imitation. Report counterfeit products by calling 0755-88877119" I've been laughing for the past 5 minutes ...
- felipemnoa 14y agoAnd thousands of people will call to report a counterfit product with apple in it instead of the 'small bee'.
- deepGem 14y agoI'll be surprised if Apple has not patented iPhone 5 in China by now, their second or third biggest market.
- markthien 14y agocheap chinese
- Mitt 14y agoThis whole thing is a difficult issue. Who is to decide what devices look similar enough, to deserve calling it a “copy”? In principle what we do here is: we implement a neural network for object recognition, and train it to recognize a certain device. Now we run this classifier on other devices and need to settle for a confidence value which says if a device is a copy or not. But who should decide what exactly this confidence value should be? For example, what if we decide to say that a 0.921 value means a device is a copy, and we find out that Samsungs older devices get a 0.884 confidence? All those values are very artificial.
- praptak 14y agoThe law will always have to deal with continuous and imprecisely defined concepts. Speed limits, drinking age, gross vs non-gross misconduct, etc. Continuity alone is a weak argument against anything, sometimes it's so weak that it has its own fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy So, while I believe the intellectual "property" should be eliminated, it's not because of the continuity involved in enforcing it.
- batista 14y ago>This whole thing is a difficult issue. Who is to decide what devices look similar enough, to deserve calling it a “copy”? Here's a guideline: if there is a document in your company saying ("let's copy this thing") --as in Samsung's case--, it's a copy. Or if you created your design from leaked photos of prototypes ("as in this case") --it's a copy. For the rest, how about a "jury" (i.e impartial to both parties common people)?
- Mitt 14y agoEven when we directly say “We’ll copy it!”, it could still come out as having the classifier outputting a small confidence value. So, in my opinion this should not count. There should be a confidence value of a neural network involved. In the case of a real copy, the classifier should have a confidence of 1.0, or be enormously close to it.
- wr1472 14y ago
- PeterLiddiard 14y ago"... the company has actually patented the knockoff design in China and is poised to sue Apple if it launches the next-generation iPhone in China later this year." Take that, Apple!
- krigath 14y ago"... the company has actually patented the knockoff design in China and is poised to sue Apple if it launches the next-generation iPhone in China later this year." Seems like the Apple vs the rest of the World patent war is taking on new heights...
- Cushman 14y agoHilarious as this is, it's a bit baffling that so many people seem to think it "serves them right" when in fact it makes the perfect case for why design patents exist. If you're the sort of person who thinks a rounded rectangle shouldn't be patentable, this should annoy you.
- pasbesoin 14y ago'First to file' FTW. /snark+depression