In case you
haven’t heard, Apple and Samsung have been swashbuckling around the courtroom
over patent battles for quite some time now. One highlight of the romance, concerning
similarities between the iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, has not had Samsung feelin' the love for most of 2011, and recently. Less than a week ago, a judge
held a preliminary injunction against Samsung, stating that it had to put sales
of its 10.1 tablet on halt in the U.S (for the moment, at least) because it
wrongfully infringed upon one of Apple’s patents. Ouch.
Check out the
pictures of each tablet above. Pretty similar, right? Do you think it was the
right decision? At first glance, I was thinking that Apple certainly has a
right to argue, but there are a few things that make me think different. (See
what I did there? Amazing).
Firstly, it should
be noted that it was a ‘design patent’ that was infringed upon. Design can be
quite a broad term, but for the moment just think of aesthetics and the
device’s exterior rather than hardware and tech-specs. Let’s start with the
shape: it’s a rectangle (round of applause). Can the shape of a rectangle be seriously copyrighted? Srsly? Televisions have generally resembled the exact same shape as each
other and so have laptops, but nobody seemed to care about that.
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| "You all look the same to me" |
If televisions and
laptops are exempt, does the ruling apply specifically to things that are
‘tablet-sized’? Because that would be bad news for the vast majority of tablet
manufacturers. Thankfully, for the sake of competition, it doesn’t, which
leaves me wondering, what exact part of the design are they talking about? Are
only Apple allowed to use black? Are slim and flat products exclusive to them
as well?
Even if you make
it a matter of Android creeping up on iOS, (yeah, get in here, Google) you
can’t really accuse anyone of imitation without pointing
out how operating systems have managed to live in both harmony and similarity in the past.
Background, desktop icons and a menu bar vs. background and desktop icons?
Seems legit.
But hey, maybe The
Man is just getting stricter. Maybe there has been enough tomfoolery up to this
point and somebody needs to clamp down. The judge had actually rejected the
injunction against Samsung initially, but, as in the past with patent wars, the
final word was still a long time to come. What is surprising though is that
preliminary injunctions (i.e. banning sales before
the court has made its full investigation) for these sorts of cases are
extremely rare, and it seems that Apple will be walking away from this one with
a sly grin. All that aside though, I’d still like an iPad 3.
