Apple claims Samsung made iPhone knockoffs
The Samsung Galaxy Note / Josh Miller/CNET
The Samsung Galaxy Note
/ Josh Miller/CNET(AP) SAN JOSE, California - An attorney for Apple told a jury Tuesday that bitter rival Samsung faced two options to compete in the booming cellphone market after Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to critical acclaim in 2007: Innovate or copy.
Samsung chose to copy, making its smartphones and computer tablets illegal knockoffs of Apple's popular products, attorney Harold McElhinny claimed.
Samsung "has copied the entire design and user experience" of Apple's iPhone and iPad, McElhinny told a jury during his opening statement at the patent trial involving the world's two largest makers of cellphones.
In his opening statement, Samsung attorney Charles Verhoeven countered that the South Korean company employs thousands of designers and spends billions of dollars on research and development to create new products.
"Samsung is not some copyist, some Johnny-come-lately doing knockoffs," he said.
Verhoeven asserted that Apple is like many other companies that use similar technology and designs to satisfy consumer demands for phones and other devices that play music and movies and take photographs.
For example, he said several other companies and inventors have filed patent applications for the rounded, rectangular shape associated with Apple products.
Apple, Samsung face off in US court over patents
"Everyone is out there with that basic form factor," Verhoeven said. "There is nothing wrong with looking at what your competitors do and being inspired by them."
A verdict in Apple's favor could lead to banishment of Samsung's Galaxy products from the U.S. market, said Mark A. Lemley, a professor and director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology.
A verdict in Samsung's favor, especially if it prevails on its demands that Apple pay its asking price for certain transmission technology, could lead to higher-priced Apple products.
The witness lists of both sides are long on experts, engineers and designers and short on familiar names. Apple CEO Tim Cook is not scheduled to testify.
On Tuesday afternoon, Apple designer Christopher Stringer wrapped up the first day of testimony discussing his role in helping create the company's iPhone and iPod during his 17 years at the company.
Dressed in a tan suit, the bearded and long haired designer said because of Apple's desire to create original products, he and his co-workers surmounted numerous engineering problems such as working with the products' glass faces in producing both products over a number of years. Stringer said he was upset when he saw Samsung's Galaxy products enter the market.
"We've been ripped off, it's plain to see," Stringer said. "It's offensive."
The trial resumes Friday with the testimony of Apple senior vice president for marketing Philip Schiller.
Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. filed its lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co. last year and is demanding $2.5 billion in damages, an award that would dwarf the largest patent-related verdict to date.
The case marks the latest skirmish between the two companies over product designs. A similar trial began last week, and the two companies have been fighting in other courts in the United Kingdom and Germany.
In the patent case, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh last month ordered Samsung to pull its Galaxy 10.1 computer tablet from the U.S. market pending the outcome of the patent trial. However, she barred Apple attorneys from telling jurors about the ban.
Apple lawyers argue there is almost no difference between Samsung products and its own, and that the South Korean company's internal documents show it copied Apple's iconic designs and its interface.
Samsung counter-claims that Apple copied its iPhone from Sony. In addition, Samsung alleges Apple is using some of Samsung's own inventions without payment, such as a computer chip at the heart of the iPhone.
Samsung lawyers also stressed the company has been developing mobile phones since 1991, long before Apple jumped into the market in 2007.
Also at issue at the trial are some of the most basic functions of today's smartphones and computer tablets, including scrolling with one finger and zooming with a finger tap.
Tuesday morning's proceedings began with a bit of drama.
First, a juror pleaded with the judge to be released from the trial, saying she suffered a panic attack and spent a sleepless night after belatedly discovering that her employer would not pay her salary while she served. A sympathetic judge granted her request and left the jury with nine members.
Then the judge rebuked John Quinn, one of Samsung's attorneys, for refusing to stop a line of legal argument the judge said she had ruled on numerous times.
"Mr. Quinn, don't make me sanction you," the judge said as the lawyer continued his argument. "Please. Please. Please, take a seat."
Quinn relented and sat down, but his tenacity underscored the high stakes of the trial that is costing both sides millions of dollars in legal fees and expenses. Battalions of lawyers from prestigious law firms are working overtime to file myriad court documents.
The most senior lawyers on each side charge upward of $500 an hour for their representation
Legal experts said that most patent disputes are resolved way before trials that can bring unpredictable and ruinous verdicts.
"A patent case of this magnitude has the possibility of impacting phone technology for years to come," said Manotti Jenkins, a patent attorney with no stake in the trial. "Given the substantial revenue that is generated by smartphone technology, companies are likely to prompt more litigation of this type and continue to use the courts as an attempt to protect and expand market share."
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The Pirates of Silicon Valley
If it was your idea and you spent decades creating it and some other company comes along a copies it, it would be a WHOLE different tune.
My guess is that all you who agree with Samsung have never created anything of value but are simply trying to perfect what other people have done before you.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Ahh..Right, so it's okay for Apple to copy people but not for others to copy of them?
You mention that Microsoft ripped off Apple when they made Windows, but given that Apple ripped of Xerox when they made MacOS how was Apple disadvantaged by that exactly?
"never created anything of value but are simply trying to perfect what other people have done before you."
If you want to think of it like that, then Apple have never created anything...almost no one has.
Besides, taking a business application and converting to a consumer is enough of a leap unlike what Samsung did.
AND....
If Xerox did not defend their advancements, whose fault is that?
If Xerox did not see the potential for consumer applications, again, whose fault is that?
Oh,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-apple-samsung-lawsuit-idUSBRE86O1BX20120725
Apple shouldn't whine about Samsung's effective retort. This is a free market; Samsung can charge what it wants to who it wants, when it wants. (Apple wanting it both ways/all ways = tasteless. But their previous CEO started that toddlerish attitude, which seems to continue in some ways. For now.)
I, and many others, bought the Galaxy simply because our provider didn't/doesn't offer the iPhone. Apple did it to themselves when the only went with AT&T.
Sure I could get a jail broke iPhone, but why?
Secondly, I like the Android OS. And now that I got the new update for my II-S to Ice Cream Sandwich I am even happier with my Galaxy.
If I had a jail broke iPhone and wanted to get an update the it resets back to the original and I have to wait for someone to figure out how to jail break again and pay the cost.
Apple made a big business mistake from the get-go and now wants Samsung to pay for it.
At least here the loser, hopefully, will have to pay court costs and attorney fees and not the American tax payer.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/214268/20110915/top-10-android-features-ios-5-impersonated-apple-iphone-5-ipad-ipad-2-iphone-3gs-iphone-4-ipod-touch.htm
They all take from each other. Apple has been warping the patent system to do an end run around the system it benefited form.
Never mind its former CEO knew of an antenna defect prior to a product release and then, when customers complained about the product reception quality, he yelled at them...
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-4-antenna/
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365705,00.asp
Especially the latter article, if you or I were CEOs and treated our customers like pig dung, how long would we stay in business?
The company is unethical and has been for a long time. Some people may not know of all of Apple's antics and have lived off the myth the company puts out, but Apple is NOT deserving of all of the respect people give it.
And I want to repost a recent article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-apple-samsung-lawsuit-idUSBRE86O1BX20120725
Samsung, sued, could drop Apple entirely, but I found that action more interesting. And since we're a free market, with limited government intervention since companies and patent laws can regulate themselves but I digress, who at Apple decided Samsung was forced to sell the same kit to Apple at the same price they charge others? Samsung can choose to sell to Apple at the prices it wants. Apple can swallow the cost or to pass it on to customers. Given a 60% profit margin for off-the-shelf hardware that every other company manages a far lower profit margin on, customers will not take to price hikes from Apple very kindly. Who needs to know that, just knowing Apple's stock price and money it sits on is proof positive people will be up in arms if Apple dared to raise prices, and maybe companies should take the hit for their mistakes instead of passing it on to everyone else and then repeating their mistakes in the first place. Hopefully Tim Cook took ethics classes in college....
And with the amount of money coming from American taxpayers in the form of subsidy (corporate welfare, an anti-free market concept), we've been paying far more than we've realized, to many companies, for a very long time.
Who are they gonna sue next? My geometry teacher for drawing one on the chalkboard?
This company is a joke!
And those who are technically inclined will still note that Foxconn, Apple's favorite manufacturer, still wastes gobs of thermal grease - which in turn hampers the ability of heat transfer going from the CPU to the heatsink. And since the chassis is NOT the heatsink, it acts as a container instead (web search "aluminum vs plastic insulator" for all the proof one wants). Apple's mobile products are cute, but they are NOT well designed. And excessive heat will lower the lifespan of an electronic product. For being expensive and sold with the claim of quality, knowing technical details, one would dare say Apple is employing "planned obsolescence" by letting an overrated cheap company piece together Apple's products so sloppily, noting iFixit and other venues have found warped screws, puddles of grease, and other issues -- for a $800 Windows laptop, one might expect that. Not for $2000, however.
Even Apple admit to basing their design on Sony Concepts, plus the LG Prada (the first modern full touch-screen smartphone) was announced and available before the Apple phone, and Apple's design is very similar to that. And then if you want to look the Samsungs history of Phones and designs submitted before 2006 you may notice that the basic form of the phone which Apple are trying to say the created had been designed by Samsung (and many other companies) years before Apple even entered the phone market.
Justice? Hardly.
Even Apple admit to basing their design on Sony Concepts, plus the LG Prada (the first modern full touch-screen smartphone) was announced and available before the Apple phone, and Apple's design is very similar to that. And then if you want to look the Samsungs history of Phones and designs submitted before 2006 you may notice that the basic form of the phone which Apple are trying to say the created had been designed by Samsung (and many other companies) years before Apple even entered the phone market.
Justice? Hardly.
What is Apple working on new I would like to know? Nothing, apparently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
Steve merely blathered what all companies do. And he abused the patent system, but patenting the mousetrap design so nobody else could try to make a better one. I could spend a day describing, and citing links to enough sources to prove what sort of human he truly was (not a good one and a much overrated one) but that's the past and some people prefer his myth to the less palatable aspects. There is some good in the myth, FWIW...
Apple has been working on AppleTV, despite its own management calling it a "hobby". And, until bandwidth and compression quality improve, there's no reason to use streaming video - paying more money for the equipment needed to stream the video just to see and hear lower quality material being piped through is ridiculous.
How many products copied the Ford motor car?
Which product are you referring to, since that word is typically used as a generic placeholder?