Apple wants its ‘rectangle’ back
ONE of my favourite pastimes of late is baiting users of Samsung smartphones, particularly the new Galaxy S III. They invariably rise to the bait — a dangling iPhone 4S, which, I like to tell them, is where Samsung got the design for the Galaxy. The Galaxy, I say, is a cheap rip-off, a poor man’s iPhone that, despite being copied from it, is vastly inferior.
It’s occasioned, of course, by the much-anticipated court battle in San Francisco between Samsung and Apple (well, one of many, actually) in which jury selection got under way yesterday. Apple filed the initial suit last year, accusing Samsung of infringing on its patents by “slavishly copying” its iPhone and iPad in Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones and tablet PCs. It wants $2.5bn in damages and an injunction stopping Samsung selling any products that infringe on its patents. Samsung sued back, claiming Apple infringed on its patents related to the way mobile communications operate more broadly.
It’s a big bunfight, with the comedic value highlighted in a court filing in which Samsung’s lawyers demanded that both sides be referred to as “claimants”, rather than Apple as the plaintiff and Samsung as the defendant, and that each side be given equal time to sit in the court benches closest to the jury.
In a similar case in Australia, a judge called the dispute “ridiculous”, while in the UK, a judge said Apple’s claim had no merit and ordered the company to run advertisements saying Samsung did not copy any of its designs.
Neither of those cases will affect the current one, of course, and Apple must be feeling confident about its claims being judged by a jury in the state where Apple has its headquarters and employs nearly 35,000 people.
Despite getting a kick out of baiting people with the ‘my phone is better than yours’ routine, I agree with Samsung
Now, I’m no patent lawyer, and despite getting a kick out of baiting Samsung users with the old “my phone is better than yours” routine, I tend to agree with Samsung chief product officer Kevin Packingham that the whole thing is a bit juvenile and that Apple is essentially “fighting over rectangles”.
“How is this possible that we’re actually having an industry-level debate and trying to stifle competition?” he asked in a recent interview with Wired magazine. “Consumers want rectangles and we’re fighting over whether you can deliver a product in the shape of a rectangle.”
He said Apple should focus on things that were relevant to intellectual property and that “a rectangle did not come out of research and development investment that we’ve made. Some of our products happen to be in the shape of a rectangle, but I wouldn’t consider that to be an art or science that we’ve created,” he said.
It’s hard to believe this isn’t about Apple keeping Samsung from eating into its market share with devices that are soaring in popularity, especially now that there is likely to be a lull in iPhone 4S sales while consumers wait for the latest incarnation to be announced, probably in September.
I find it hard to believe any judge or jury will decide that a rectangular device with rounded corners and square icons on a multitouch screen is so original and iconic that anything else with similar features must have been copied from it.
And why isn’t Apple going after Google in similar fashion, given that Apple’s co-founder, the late Steve Jobs, once declared that Google’s Android operating system, which the Samsung devices use, was copied from Apple’s iOS, and is actually remarkably similar in many ways?
Like a wise and erudite friend said yesterday: “Toilet paper manufacturers face similar challenges!”