Frankly, those images are rather damning. The devices and the interface are too similar for Apple to just let this slide. If anything I would say Apple has to do this to avoid setting a very dangerous precedent.
Those images are not that damning imo. Both phones are rectangular and thin. Does Apple have a monopoly on rectangular, thin phones? My G1 would look the same if it were thinner.
Does Apple have a monopoly on icons arranged in a grid? If so, the Windows desktop and many other interfaces are at risk.
It's trademark... No you can't go on individual features, like being rectangular, or a grid of icons, or thin, but once you put that all together in a certain way, you start getting into design trademarks.
Samsung's phone is close to the same dimensions AND has the grid of applications AND has that grid at the same dimensions AND has the "dock" AND that "dock" has 4 applications AND the phone has a single "home" button at the bottom AND the speaker at the top is thin and rectangular... as the iPhone.
Yes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when you start confusing consumers as to who's is who's, you're no longer in the "flattery" area.
I believe you only can stand on the "dock" issue, not including it having 4 apps, as the grid constitutes that number. EVERY other point can be found together on phones pre-dating the iPhone.
Even if the concept of third-party prior art applied to trademark disputes, there would have to be a pre-iPhone product that exhibited all of those features for it to be a good defense. Merely showing that each feature had appeared before in some product would not be sufficient.
Samsung's phone has an optical trackpad, a back button, and a home button at the bottom.
With the trackpad in the middle.
Oh crap, they have a speaker at the top, too. My goodness. I guess I'll have to make my next mobile phone ovoid with the speaker on the bottom and the icons arranged in a dodecahedron.
I'm not a lawyer but I don't really see how this has anything to do with trademarks.
The article mentions trademarks only insofar as some icons on the Galaxy may infringe on trademarks held by Apple (i.e., the icon is so close to the iOS version that a consumer would not be able to tell the difference).
Everything else is a patent dispute, and I think all of us know the validity of these patent-based suits.
It really doesn't have anything to do with trademarks at all, except for a couple of instances of icons distributed with the phone.
>It's trademark... No you can't go on individual features, like being rectangular, or a grid of icons, or thin, but once you put that all together in a certain way, you start getting into design trademarks.
If it is the trademarks, it's really no surprise that Apple is suing. In order to keep a trademark, you have to maintain it. So Apple probably had to sue to keep their iphone trademarks.
Google has the same issue with the use of the word "Google" as a verb.
Patents on a product's "image" are just as ridiculous as software patents. Apple tried the same thing when they sued Microsoft over the Windows GUI and lost.
'The court ruled that, "Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]"'
I wonder how Bill Gates feels nowadays for saving Apple, when Steve Jobs got back. Without MS moral support - promising future releases of Mac Office, and a ton of money - Apple would've probably went bust than.
Im sure Bill Gates feels fine about saving Apple. The only reason Microsoft bailed out Apple was to fight the antitrust suit the U.S. government filed against it. By saving Apple, M$ could (and did) claim it still had a competitor in the market, so it wasn't a monopoly. As long as they distributed Office and IE for Mac OS, M$ could claim they weren't being anti-competitive by bundling IE with Windows and not releasing key Windows API's to 3rd party developers.
Fortunately, all those patents are now expired. And more practically, those Braun products are no longer on the market, so Apple can't steal their market share.
It's a grid of icons. Nokia's menu screen has looked like that for a long, long time.
There may well be good legal or strategic reasons for suing but all those lawsuits sure suck for the consumer. I, the consumer, want everyone to copy everything. I don't want some cool feature to not be availible to me merely because of legal reasons.
I want Apple to blatantly copy WebOS multitasking or notifications.
