Court documents allegedly show Samsung copied iPhone icons - Page 3

Here are a few non-Samsung Android home screens for reference... 

 

 

 

of course Samesung blantantly copied the iPhone.  Even with countless of side by side comparisons, pictures of Samesungs phones and tablets before and after the iphone and ipad and the fandroids still are in denial.  Samesung copied Apple, that is all Samesung can do.  They join the long line of Apple copiers which include Microsoft and Google

Careful. Like me you'll be accused of being racist, xenophobic and bigoted by the politically correct gestapo. Even though you're correct.

Mmm love that status bar. I can haz more iconz please?

I can see the similarities that would lead you to believe that Apple has no basis to make the claim of ownership, but it is important to note motive/intent in this discussion.  There is a big difference between being inspired by previous icons and then improving them to the point where they are your unique interpretation, vs. blatant copying in order to piggy back on the success of another product.  There are of course similarities between the Apple and Skype icons you posted, however it is clear that Apple re-imagined this icon and came up with a different shape, different high resolution background, and it is there unique take.  They were inspired, but did not try to mimic Skype, as there would be no reason to do so.  Skype 2.0 was never any sort of mainstream success, and had very little brand recognition for most people.  Trying to copy this would get Apple nothing.  On the other hand, in Samsung vs. Apple, Samsung had every reason in the world to copy Apple's designs, to latch onto their huge successes, and try to have a successful product of their own that people assumed was as good as the iPhone because it looked so similar in almost every way.

Even so, if Apple's icons resembled other popular icons (that's why the word "icon" means, after all), I doubt they were trying to copy anybody, it would be absurd to "downgrade" the product. In case of Samsung, it is completely obvious that they are trying to make a device that looks and feels exactly like an iPhone. That's the whole point of this trial.

So I googled the Nokia you mentioned to see what your argument was, and I think you are missing something important.  Are there aspects of these Nokia icons that are similar to the iOS icons?  Of course, but they are clearly not copied.  I am not a designer (although my wife is), but even I can tell that there is a difference in the design aesthetics of the two sets.  Simply including a phone receiver in the icon does not make something a copy.  On the Nokia for example, they have a blue receiver facing downward on a white background with a large label "Telephone" on an oval-ish outline.  This looks nothing like Apple's phone icon.  In the Nokia set, they are all showing these icons from a different perspective, as if you are looking at them through a little square clear window.  Apple just has the icons themselves, in first person (for lack of a better way to describe it).  Color and angle and perspective all make a huge difference in the overall design and impact of the icon sets.  Apple has put a lot of time into making their icons unique to the iPhone, whereas Samsung hasn't put much time in at all.  They didn't try to give it there own look or theme.  My opinion of why they didn't change much is that they wanted to piggy back on the iPhone  success and give the impression that their handset was as good as Apple's.  We'll see if the jury agrees.  But in any case, looking at the examples you gave, no one would ever confuse the Nokia and Apple icons with each other.  They are clearly from two different design teams.  The same can't be said when comparing the Samsung and Apple icons.

If this isn't a smoking gun, I don't know what is. The copying is obvious.

 

Except it doesn't look and feel exactly like it. There's no icon that's an exact copy. They're all "similar to". The same applies to the design. Is it a crime to make "similar to" products intentionally? Should it be? It's certainly not a nice thing to do, but courts seem divided on whether it's actually illegal, especially in this case since the products are still visually distinctive from each other. Apple has been here before with the windows 2.0 trial, but they never got a solid precedent from the courts.

 

Now, I get why samsung copied the aesthetic of the iphone. It's a rotten move, but it makes business sense. What I don't get is their insistence on papering over android 4 with touchwiz. Android 4 looks better than touchwiz. They're deliberately spending time and resources in making it look worse than it would if they did nothing. That to me indicates that samsung's design decisions are made at C level, by people who have no sense of aesthetics. If there's a crime they should pay a fine for, that is the one.

 

at the risk of sounding pedantic, there are differences and similarities among all three (3) icons in whichever combination you choose.  differences include the orientation and size of the telephone handset, and the presence or absence of 'icon gloss'; similarities include the green/white colour scheme and usage of a left-leaning telephone handset.  in other words, none of the icons are exact copies of the other(s).

 

regardless, i'm keen to read what the jury thinks (the opinion that actually matters in this situation).

Really?

This is pretty strong evidence.

The standard Google icon for 'phone' is a white handset on a blue square background. Instead of using that, Samsung chose to make the color green and round the corners just like the Apple icon. What would be the purpose of that other than copying Apple? Similarly, look at how they changed the music icon from a generic Android icon to one that copies Apple's.

There are plenty of examples. Look at the three little dots showing which page you're on. There are certainly a zillion ways to show that - how did they happen to come up with the idea of one dot per page?

I agree that none of them are identical.  Even Samsung knows to make little changes here and there.  However, if you compare the three sets of icons, it is clear that the Apple icons and Nokia are very different.  If you then compare the Apple icons to Samsung, many people might think they were done by the same design team as they are much more similar.  But to recap, my main point is intent.  It seems clear that Samsung's intent was to make something that closely resembled the iPhone in both hardware and software in order to get noticed and sell more product.  Apple on the other hand may have been inspired by many different things, but what they delivered was their own vision and not someone else's.

Um, the "defense" is called the defendant. The party bringing the complaint is called the 'plaintiff" (the offense?)

 

this issue comes down to who (i.e., Samsung or Apple) can articulate better to the jury what is or is not 'similar'.  it's tricky, for sure.

Agreed.

 

And even Google's icon is the same, but with a rotation and different colors.

What we have here is an argument between originality and ubiquity and I tend to fall just (and only just, mind you) on the side of ubiquity. Green is the color for calling and red for hanging up - it's a common schema that Apple has applied producing an Icon that is like and old mobile phone's call button, just as it's red button to terminate the call follows that same visual language. So that's a common motif for phones and one that Apple also follows. Calendars, settings and other common functions have developed a set of common visual references that we are all familiar with. Those that do not follow it have chosen another path usually because they don't want the hassle of a ridiculous court case, not for any reason of improved user friendliness. So IMHO this is a storm in a teacup. Disagree if you wish and a lot of you do based on all the comments on this thread (which I have read) so please don't say it all again in response to this post just because of little old me disagreeing with you. Oh, and before I forget, to all you merry band of simplistics, please drop all that racist horsesh*t about yellow people not being creative and all being focused on community. Lazy inaccurate stereotypes like that are just disgraceful, pathetic and vile. Next you'll be saying it's because of all the dogs they eat.
Edited by WayWard - 8/7/12 at 1:07pm

I agree with the other poster... Why not call up Samsung's icon graphic designers? It's almost guaranteed one of them will say " My boss rejected my design and said it needs to look more like the iPhone."

Why can't they come up with cooler designs? They have to be out there.

 

That's a big difference here.

 

Anyone can argue that a silhouette of a telephone handset is an obvious icon for a telephony app, but there is no way you can argue that all the other elements of the icons (angle, scaling, color, background, etc.) are self-obvious.  The fact that many different smartphones (including many different vendors' releases of Android) do not use the Apple icon is proof.

 

 

Your logic is faulty.

 

If someone was trying to copy the iconography of the physical buttons used on non-smart phones, then the handset itself would be green on some other color (or transparent) background, since that's what feature-phone handsets all use universally.  A white icon on a green background (especially one with a very detailed textured background) is not an obvious port.

 

As for other apps, have you actually looked at the Android screen shots that have been posted here?  There are plenty of alternate ways to represent these features.  Are you trying to argue that Apple came up with the one and true perfect icon for every application and that companies who don't copy Apple are deliberately crippling their UI to avoid lawsuits?  I don't think anybody is going to make such a claim.

 

The calendar is a perfect example.  A round-rect with a red stripe at the top and a large digit below is far from the only possible representation.  The Android-standard icon (a calendar page with spiral binding on top, a blue stripe, gridlines and a swirl) is pretty different, but also represents the concept of a calendar page quite well.  I don't know if Samsung's calendar icon dynamically updates with the system date the way Apple's does, but if so, then that's another aspect where they copied a feature that is otherwise unique to Apple.

 

Yes, icons tend to represent real-world objects, but as anyone walking into an office supply store can tell you, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of variations for the design of all these real-world objects.  To claim that there shouldn't be similar variety for the icons based on them is just silly.

Well, considering you seemed to be arguing that the other icons were too generic, I believe it does. My point is, they weren't as there are many other ways to represent the meaning of the icons.