Document Reveals How Samsung Used iPhone as Reference
132 pages of trouble for Samsung.
While Samsung may have gotten away with what could be considered a small victory on Monday, Tuesday was a whole new day and with it came one very big problem for the company. On Tuesday morning, Apple was successful in admitting into evidence the entire 132 pages of an internal Samsung document that compared the iPhone with the Galaxy S and detailed how the Galaxy could be improved.
As reported by All Things D, the document clearly reveals the fact that Samsung took Apple's iPhone into heavy consideration when looking to improve its Galaxy S products. The document compares two aspects of the iPhone and Galaxy S (labeled as S1) side by side and includes footnotes for "Directions for Improvement".
In a majority of the pages, these directions involved adding features from the iPhone interface that the S1 lacked. They also involved making adjustments to have the S1 interface better match that of the iPhone. Although common sense will tell you it's only natural for competing companies to compare their products, in the courtroom this document hammers in Apple's assertions that Samsung went through very great lengths to copy its iPhone.
Of course, an important part of innovation is to compare your product to that of the industry standard and to find ways to make your product better. Whether you like the device or not, it's indisputable that the iPhone was one of the most popular and best selling smartphones on the market in 2010. Now, we'll just have to wait and see what the jurors think.
You can read the document for yourself here. Did Samsung put too much effort into becoming the iPhone rather than finding original ideas to beat it? Let us know in the comments below.
This sounds like a bug list from a very early build of Samsung's phone.
As was pointed out, it is natural to compare your product to the current market leader and try to make you product better. All of that being said, there are some items where they certainly wanted it to work just like an iphone and the text clearly shows that, but most of them seem to be limitations of pre-gingerbread android that were automatically implemented courtesy of Google.
The question of the day would be if anything in this entire document relates to round icons, rectangular devices, silver bezels, and prompting to automatically call a phone number when its received in email or text messages, which after reading the entire thing, does not appear to be.
This sounds like a bug list from a very early build of Samsung's phone.
As was pointed out, it is natural to compare your product to the current market leader and try to make you product better. All of that being said, there are some items where they certainly wanted it to work just like an iphone and the text clearly shows that, but most of them seem to be limitations of pre-gingerbread android that were automatically implemented courtesy of Google.
The question of the day would be if anything in this entire document relates to round icons, rectangular devices, silver bezels, and prompting to automatically call a phone number when its received in email or text messages, which after reading the entire thing, does not appear to be.
If this is a violation of copyright then the entire legal system can expect to handle just copyright cases for centuries.
This just goes to show how the patent system, copyright system, etc are all out dated and need to be reformed.
I was under the impression that every good company/corporation does this by taking the best designs and ideas and applies them to their own designs and ideas to improve their own products.
Of course! Apple never got the idea for a smartphone from anybody else, they were the first! Same goes for the iPad!
/sarcasm
Haha good point, if this was turn around against Apple they would be screwed instantly.
Maybe Apple should take a look at its own past before slinging mud
http://www.zurb.com/article/801/steve-jobs-and-xerox-the-truth-about-inno
I am just saying.