Galaxy Nexus Designed To Avoid Infringing Apple Patents 226
An anonymous reader writes with an except from an article on Geek.com about the Galaxy Nexus: "Samsung has been on the receiving end of many an Apple lawsuit in recent months, and in some cases a ban on selling its products. The Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which was unveiled last night, could also come under close scrutiny in the courts once Apple takes a look at it. But unlike previous Samsung Android devices, the chances of that happening are apparently going to be diminished or even non-existent. Shin Jong-kyun, the president of Samsung's mobile division, admitted yesterday that the Galaxy Nexus has been developed taking into account Apple's patents."
I like it (Score:5, Funny)
They released a picture [imageshack.us] of it. Looks pretty sweet.
But it may still infringe on Apple's "Physical object with an ability to dial a number" patent.
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That single color scheme thing might get them too.
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But at least there are no buttons! Apple will be soooo jealous!
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Well at least they actually tried to not infringe on patents this time?
Indeed. I'm sure that users would much prefer that the company spent their time trying not to infringe on patents than actually adding useful features to the device.
Re:I like it (Score:5, Funny)
It has rounded corners -> fail.
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That was literally the first thing I checked for. Rectangular + corners that aren't so sharp they come with warning signs = Apple lawsuit.
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I believe AT&T may have some grounds for a suit considering that is a blatant rip-off of their design.
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Heh, Apple would probably photoshop a rotary phone to look like an iPhone...
http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Caught+Using+Photoshop+to+Fake+More+Pics+in+Lawsuits/article22500.htm [dailytech.com]
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They released a picture [imageshack.us] of it. Looks pretty sweet.
But it may still infringe on Apple's "Physical object with an ability to dial a number" patent.
IANAL, but I think trying to avoid a legal battle with Apple, also violates one of their patents.
And making fun of Apple is also a violation of some patent...
Useless (Score:3)
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Crap, cut your tongue right now...
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Humor. You don't have it.
Re:I like it (Score:4, Insightful)
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At the sensor size involved, a smaller number of pixels might actually give a *better* picture. (I have a DroidX too, and am relatively happy with the camera, except for the lag time.)
That's another big plus photographically (if it's true) of the Galaxy Nexus: zero shutter lag.
Finally, Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) has some improvements, photo-wise.
Proof positive (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Proof positive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. I hope it works out for Samsung, but I think it's unfortunate they had to resort to this at all.
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Not innovation, just needless small alterations to an over all design.
Ah, but there's been great legal innovations as a result - behold The iSuit!
Samsung is ramping up their hires of lawyers .. Honestly, this is the sort of junk between companies which killed Ashton Tate and dBase
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Re:Proof positive (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is not a sign of the system being broken, that is just a sign of you not understanding its purpose. The system is working exactly as these big companies want it too. They can live through suing each other and are more than willing to deal with it if it keeps out any new competitors.
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That's why we have to fight back. Someone needs to file "Method of filing a patent" and then sue everyone into oblivion.
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It is going to infringe on patents no matter what you will do.
I think Samsung is trying to avoid the strongest patents that Apple has in its arsenal. Most patent claims can easily be defended in court if you have the resources to hire the right attorneys. Apple has a few killer patents that it is trying to attack Samsung for, so it will be best strategy is to find a way to work around them.
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Re:Proof positive (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Proof positive (Score:5, Informative)
Unquestionably! (Score:2)
Yay! Proof positive that patents encourage innovation.
And THAT, SIR, is the undisputed hallmark of excellent design.
Do NOT tread lightly to avoid stepping on the toes of others! Design yourself some new feet that fit between their toes instead!
This is not innovation (Score:3)
Shin said that the past six months of lawsuits in which Samsung and Apple have filed numerous suits and countersuits was "just the start" of a long patent war, from which he sees no end in sight. ... Samsung added personnel to its legal team to ramp up the battle against Apple and plans to hire more lawyers, according to Shin. "(I realized that) having technological power and being business savvy aren't enough," he said.
How is this innovation? The patent system is encouraging companies to spend money on lawyers and lawsuits instead of engineers and technology. Instead of doing proper development, engineers have to waste their time making minor visual changes to a product line in the vague hope that someday a judge will find that these changes are significant enough to make a product "not infringing" of some random patent.
Using a global patent war to get a competitor's products banned outright is certainly an innovation i
A sound strategy (Score:2)
And who knows, while Samsung work to avoid IP pitfalls they may have (and likely have done) developed their own technology and patents which could trip up Apple in the long run.
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I'm hoping Samsung patents the bejeesus out of every tiny design element they make from now on, and it bites Apple in the ass down the road.
What goes around comes around.
It's not all about Apple... (Score:2)
Yes, but if they become such a giant it's just as bad... It would be better to hope that they all damage each other so much that some kind of sane regulation is imposed over this broken and trollish system.
Galaxy SII (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Galaxy SII (Score:5, Funny)
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However, from a 'we are trying to convince people to buy this instead of ____' point of view it is completely accurate.
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From what I've read, the galaxy s II is actually a step above the new nexus prime. Based on the soc they used and the graphics process in that soc vs the galaxy s II
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I have your answer:
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Re:Galaxy SII (Score:4, Insightful)
(Feel free to laugh at this if you want) I'm no fan of Apple but their products do work. They do exactly what they are designed to do. The disconnect comes when consumers expect them to do something different.
But I thought iPhones were supposed to make telephone calls.
My bad.
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What features are they missing?
How can they even know? (Score:2)
From what I understand about how easily patents on extremely general ideas on technology, how can anyone know what design is going to infringe on a patent? I don't see how anyone can write a design specification with one of the ground rules being to not infringe on a specific company's patent.
How can you know how a given patent will be interpreted by a court?
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From what I understand about how easily patents on extremely general ideas on technology, how can anyone know what design is going to infringe on a patent? I don't see how anyone can write a design specification with one of the ground rules being to not infringe on a specific company's patent.
Which is generally the point every anti patent proliferation supporter has been arguing.
How can you know how a given patent will be interpreted by a court?
Take it to court.
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You don't. You hire very expensive lawyers and ask them. They don't know either, but when someone sues you even though your lawyers said they wouldn't, you can fire the lawyers.
Interesting admission (Score:3, Interesting)
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That's not how English works. "We did X" does not imply "We used to do the opposite of X".
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That's not how English works.
Since we're talking about Samsung, wouldn't "how Korean works" be more relevant?
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Actually, with a comment like,
the adverb "now" implies that it was not so in the past.
-dZ.
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But what does it mean in court. Lawyers seem to have a whole different interpretation of both law and English.
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The patents they're accused of violating are ridiculous, it's not a case of ignoring them, it's a case of not realizing the patent office is stupid enough to give a patent for a "rectangular device with a minimal number of physical buttons" or "A photo viewing app that switches between photos by swiping".
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To be fair, Samsung's designs more blatantly copy off of Apple than any other Android manufacturer. They set themselves up to be attacked.
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How so?
A couple of their models have some cosmetic similarity to the iPhone, and the way they arrange the app icons in the All Apps screen looks kind of like on an iPhone, but it's really just superficial. Did Apple really patent having one physical button below the display?
It's an entirely different operating system as anyone familiar with both devices would instantly notice.
Ultimately, Apple's aggressive pursuit of these kinds of similarities will find themselves on the receiving end of similar lawsuits.
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Having a one button below the display is fine by itself, but copying the colors, shape and icons in the process makes it a blatant copy. Other Android phones have 4 buttons on the bottom because it is what the OS requires. Samsung decided to put one button because it is what the iPhone has.
Anyone who is familiar with the devices can tell the difference, but the casual consumer can get confused and buy the Samsung thinking it is the same as an iPhone.
This is more of a trademark issue, but it looks like Appl
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As a side note: nobody's going to get confused and accidentally buy a Samsung device when they meant to buy
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And they come in white boxes with the exact same shade of gray lettering Apple uses, with a picture of the device taking up most of the front of the box. Inside the box is a white cardboard insert holding the device.
Oopsie. And it doesn't matter what "anyone familiar with both devices would instantly notice," trade redress suits are about complaints that a product is designed so that someone NOT familiar with the product might confuse them.
The only thing Samsung did that's different than a cheap knockoff
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Re:Interesting admission (Score:5, Insightful)
Incidentally, all of the items you list -- those aren't patent violations, at best they're trademark issues.
-GiH
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Incidentally, all of the items you list -- those aren't patent violations, at best they're trademark issues.
Agreed. Those are trademark, not patent issues, but the core of Apple's complaint against Samsung cites the latter's "slavish copying" of Apple's designs, and those two examples do nothing to deflect the criticism. It may have been nothing more than oversights by the graphics department, but Apple's counsels could argue that they demonstrate a pattern on Samsung's part. The stakes for Samsung are extremely high, and one would have thought they would have been much more circumspect. They appear to be doing t
Design patents (Score:2)
Not functional patents. The basic issue is Samsung's blatant copying of Apple, and in doing so Samsung tripped over some of Apple's design patents.
Look at this image [tipb.com] to get a good idea of the extent that Samsung has been riding Apple's coattails where the iPad is concerned. It paints a larger picture of willful copying that Apple can use to bolster the court case over the design patents.
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Here [peanutbuttereggdirt.com] is a good reference for Samsung products before and after Apple's products. Go forward to packaging. Notice how it used to be the standard cluttered packaging, now a lot like Apple's.
Hell, the judge held up a Galaxy Tab and an iPad in court and Samsung's own lawyers couldn't easily tell the difference. That's kinda proof right there.
It's a design patent. (Score:2)
Apple has a design patent [wikipedia.org] on the shape of the iPad. Read the article I linked. This is not a trademark issue, it is a patent issue.
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That's why Apple's not suing them for patent infringement. Well, okay, they are, but that's over a whole other set of complaints.
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After all the courts have apparently accepted it as relevant that one or more people at Google went through the thought process "We could use Java for this. But if we do that then we'd owe Oracle lots of money. Therefore perhaps we should use something else instead." and is allowing Oracle to use that as an argument that Google is infringing on their patent
Bad PRs and patents. (Score:2)
I wonder how much the bad PR accumulated from stupid patents hurts companies like Apple- or if it even feels any affect,
Don't say any public exposure is good exposure. Toyota found out that that was not the case when their cars decided they didn't want to stop.
When it comes time that I decide to buy a smart phone [as if I will ever have that much money :( ] I will weigh the pros and cons of each option; however, I won't deny- I have a bad taste in my mouth about apple so I may be less inclined to buy their
Get used to it, they all do it. (Score:4, Interesting)
If companies suing each other over patent issues leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you might want to just abstain from using cellphones at all.
This is a year old (I had seen a more recent one, but can't find it now): http://flowingdata.com/2010/10/11/mobile-patent-lawsuits/ [flowingdata.com]
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Interesting article- it certainly suggests to me that Nokia, Kodak and Apple are the most letigious and therefore the ones to avoid the most (at least as of a year ago- if decision was to punnish the letigious companies).
I will have to look for the more up-to-date version myself.
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In case you didn't see it, another poster in this thread found it:
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/RNGS/2011/AUG/PATENT_CI.jpg [thomsonreuters.com]
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This looks to be an updated version from 8/17/2011
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/RNGS/2011/AUG/PATENT_CI.jpg [thomsonreuters.com]
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Thanks! That's exactly the one I was looking for.
Blue phone icon (Score:5, Insightful)
The first thing I notice is they've changed the phone icon from green to blue, which I'm sure is an attempt to avoid Apple's claims of trademark infringement [copymarkblog.com]. The color green has long been used to indicate placing a call, which is why Samsung changing the color from green to blue is such a good example of IP law being so stifling that companies have to intentionally avoid making anything remotely similar to another company's products. The problem is there's only so often you can do this before you run out of things to avoid.
Aside from the green phone icon, another example is Apple's claim that Samsung's yellow notepad icon infringes on its own yellow notepad icon. Yellow notepads are fairly common, yet for some strange reason it is wrong for Samsung to use the color yellow for its notepad icon. If all other companies acted the same, imagine the many different colors each company would have to avoid, like mines in a minefield.
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Re:Blue phone icon (Score:5, Informative)
The standard color for cell phone "send" buttons is green and has been so long before Apple even entered the cell phone market. The color red, on the other hand, has long been used for cell phone "end" buttons.
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Just look at pin pads at stores... you enter your pin and hit the *green* button with the arrow to process, or hit the *red* button with the X to clear or cancel
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Green means go, and red means stop. If I am going to initiate some process, I would look for a green button. If I was to stop a process, I would look for red. How obtuse are you, Troll?
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We're talking phone calls not automobiles.
Most office phones I've used have a line indicator that lights up red when the line is active, and is not lit when the line is not in use.
Does your computer have a green power button? Sheesh.
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Well, wenn we are talking cellphones, especially PDA phones, my old T-Mobile MDA from 2003 (a rectangle with rounded corners and a 3.5" touchscreen by the way) running Windows Mobile 2003 has got (*gasp*) a green phone button for placing a call and a red one for hanging up.
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Funnily enough. Yes, yes it does.
And I'd wager that, if you ask around, you'll find a lot more people who will guess a red thing means stop and a green means go/start/good in just about ANY system.
They cannot. (Score:2)
So when are they..... (Score:2)
Going to sell all the current Ones for $99.00 to dump all the ones already built? I'll take a couple!
Does it come... (Score:2)
In a circular box?
Anyone? (Score:3)
Of course Apple are all over this (Score:5, Informative)
They need to get all its features ready for the 2013 model iPhone so they can claim them as own their invention, the same way the half assed iPhone update from 2 weeks back magically got the widgets and notifications Android has had from the start.
How did they avoid that? (Score:2)
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Patent that, bitches.
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I think the strong hand response would be to attack the validity of the patents. I believe that's what Samsung is doing in the EU.
-GiH
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How is that not a fair agrument? Besides all that, every court that has reviewed the case has concluded that Samsung infringed on Apple's patents. It doesn't mater whether or not Samsung thinks they are infringing or not at this point.
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Why don't they put in a SD reader? That is one of the things I love about my Galaxy S and makes it a replacement for my MP3 player but without it I am thinking twice about getting this phone and making the Galaxy S II look a lot more appealing.
I'm with you. I was hell bent on getting this phone as an upgrade to my Nexus One. Then I saw this and started having second thoughts. Why would they do this? It's just plain ignorant to not put SD slots on any smartphones these days.
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Yes, the Nexus S also lacked the SD card reader, which seems strange that samsung continued w/ that design choice in their second Nexus phone. If I were a betting man I'd guess the next Nexus phone will be from Motorola.
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To shave 14c from the manufacturing cost, consumer benefits be damned?
The problem is that consumers aren't Samsung's customers -- AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are. The US isn't the world, but those three specific carriers are unquestionably Samsung's three biggest customers by several orders of magnitude, so their demands drown out pretty much everyone else on earth. All THEY care about is meeting a specific price point. As far as they're concerned, if the lack of things like microSD slots, discrete two-st
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Is the S2 bootloader unlocked?
That is what will decide my next phone purchase.
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All phones look pretty much the same these days in case you haven't noticed. A black rectangle with child-safe corners and a screen taking up most of the face. The only way the iPhone ever stands out is the silver edging, and the chrome back before that.
Way oversimplified (Score:2)
Anybody who says just "rectangle with round corners" shows they don't know the case.
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Uh, talkback, kickback, and soundback have been available on android for a while though they are marked as for more accessable usage for people with impairments.