Apple looks to trademark iPad likeness in China

Trademarking rectangles again it looks like. When will Apple ever innovate /s

I have to wonder if Apple in some way has to bribe the officials or so called director of the patent office to get anything approved?

C-H-I-N-A. That's part of the approval process.

Oh please...Come on Apple just innovate and beat the competition with quality products at a sensible price, and make litigation a minor part of the game. The only folk who benefit from this headlong rush to the courts are the lawyers, and they are fat enough already.  

Don't people ever get tired of posting this canard? Apple isn't in the top 10, probably not even in the top 20 of patents granted. There was patent litigation before Apple and there still will be after Apple.

Samsung Seeks U.S. Ban on Ericsson Products

Samsung sues LG Display over OLED patents

LG Display countersues Samsung over OLED patent infringement

I guess Samsung, LG and Ericsson need to innovate, not litigate?

 

The shareholders are doing also ok, a $650 million damages award overturned in East Texas, $1 Billion ??? from Samsung, Apple's lawyers have more than paid for themselves.

Well it's a good thing Apple is one of the wealthiest companies in the world.

They have the resources to both innovate and litigate when and where they see fit.

 

Ericsson's better days are probably behind them. Expect a lot more lawsuits from them in a quest to slow the descent by monetizing their patent portfolio, much the same as Nokia. 

This will not be about the general rounded rectangle shape, it will be about all the details that make them up, that make an iPad an iPad if its on or off, all the details that make them unique.

Examples... You get cars, hifi's etc that look similar but are not copies of other makes. There are distinguishing differences to all of them, & it's not just the brand name or logo on them.

No, this time it appears they're trying to trademark the combo use of black and silver colors in an electronic device, going by the trademark records page image at PatentlyApple. I wonder if that would include black combined with the color of aluminum? Or how about more titanium-colored? Maybe a light gray metallic?

http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c017ee79c66f8970d-pi

Apple's recent design patents, at least any I've read, are typically broad rather than highly detailed and restrictive. And yes FWIW, Apple has filed for and been granted a US design patent on a rounded rectangle shape for an electronic device and not for "all the details that make an iPad an iPad"

 

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/apple-awarded-design-patent-for-actual-rounded-rectangle/

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rectangle-with-rounded-corners

Edited by Gatorguy - 1/20/13 at 6:52am

If you look at Patently Apple's pictures, one of the things that Apple is claiming for their trademark is the colors "silver and black" for the front view.   iPad clones might have to use different colors.

 

Edit:  Oh.  GG posted about the colors already. 

 

I couldn't find the full trademark application on the official China trademark site, but I did run across an entry where Apple had registered "IPAD MINI HD", which sounds like a possible name for the retina model.

Edited by KDarling - 1/20/13 at 6:17am

Er, Samsung sued Ericsson.

And only Apple is granted these types of patents?

Didn't you know Apple can't walk and chew gum at the same time. If they're in litigation that means there's no time for innovating. I guess only companies like Samsung can innovate and litigate at the same time.

Where did you read that?

Er,  Ericsson sued Samsung first, then Sammy responded with their own counterclaims. 

I didn't. But that seems to be the meme whenever these stories come up. Quite honestly I don't get why Apple being granted a patent is news anyway, they're granted lots of patents all the time just like other companies. Big deal.

Most manufacturers don't have their own patent blog followers, so these kinds of reports just tag along with the good stuff. It comes with the territory.

Well my larger point still holds - Apple's neither the first, nor will be the last to be involved in patent litigation. This innovate don't litigate slogan is just silly.

 

Really? For any and all rounded rectangular shapes? Or for rounded rectangular shapes that look like iPads?

 

Here we have yet another instance of Google/Android promoters using half truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies to make their case. Why is it that they can't make it with the plain truth?

You're right.

You talk like the lawyers, the engineers etc are all the same people.

Surprise, they're not

Might also surprise you to find out that every other tech company has just as much litigation going on. We just don't hear about it because the blogs focus on the companies that get them the most page hits (since that is how they make their money) and number one on that list is Apple

 

I think it's kind of quasi-racist the way this always gets said about China and everyone laughs, but the exact same thing can be said of lots of countries (that are full of white people) and no one even brings it up.  

 

Russia for example is a country with a far, far, higher level of corruption than China in almost every avenue of public life, but somehow it's not funny if you say this about them.   

If you changed the term to bigotry I would agree with the convenient use of stereotyping but racism I tend to reserve for comments that are not based on what have historically* been deemed a race, not something cultural.



* I believe races are an outmoded and unscientific way to classify people.

 

The fact is that it's *never* been about patenting "the general rounded rectangle shape."  That's a just stupid canard that the tech blogs keep pushing and idiots repeat it ad nauseum.  

 

It's a Trademark of the general look and design of the product including the main visual elements and how they relate to each other.  This has been done since the very beginning of the Patent and Trademark systems in every country around the world by most companies that make products.  

 

Because part of the process is you have to describe the product, a lot of complete f*cking idiots have picked out that sentence where they describe the "rounded rectangular shape" and made fun of it.  It's only possible to make fun of it if you have no idea what it's all about though.  In fact, it's nothing unusual and never has been.  It's closer to standard practice in the industry, but somehow all the morons who comment on the web are now under the impression that Apple is "trying to copyright rectangles" or some such BS.  These people are morons and shouldn't be listened to of course but hey, ... it's the Internet.  

 

Morons Rule!

 

Fair enough.  It's not really racism which is why I went for the "quasi," it's just weird how we always seem to pick on China.  I was struggling with my terms as I wrote it. 

 

Oh, look, he edited his post because he got called out on it by someone he "has on ignore". Ha, ha, ha.

 

But, you're still misrepresenting facts, and linking to articles that misrepresent facts. If anyone wants to actually look at the patent application,

 

   http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1701443/USD670286S1.pdf

 

where you will see that none of the images that are part of the claim are simply a rounded rectangle, let alone all rounded rectangles. The application is for a very specific design, and even the image that is full front on isn't a simple rectangle, but has lock, volume, etc buttons protruding from the edge.

 

Can we stop this "rounded rectangles" lie once and for all, and can you Google/Android promoters stop the lies, misrepresentations, half truths and twisted facts, once and for all.

 

Edit: If Google and Android and its OEMs are so great, you shouldn't have to constantly lie to make it look good. The fact that you do, speaks volumes, about Google/Android, and you.

Edited by anonymouse - 1/20/13 at 10:24am

I agree wholeheartedly.

 

 

Elaborate? (I think there's still a high enough -- but certainly not perfect -- correlation between race and culture).

 

No, they get a free-pass. The tech elite only hates Apple.

They have already done this. What makes you think they are doing something different?

 

 

Seems you posted in the wrong thread.

This article has nothing to do with litigation or headlong rush to courts.

 

In design patents, dashed lines are NOT considered part of the claim.  

 

Apple drew all the connectors, buttons, bezel and even the back in dashed lines:

 

 

The only solid line is the one around the outside, which I've partially marked in red:

Sure. Race is defined as each of the major divisions of humankind but we are all very much indentical genetically. We're all Homo sapiens sapiens (extra sapiens being used for subspecies to differentiate from Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) which is genetically close enough to have allowed for crossbreeding).

We made these artificial divides based on physical characteristics. This is the basis for racism. We don't separate people as different races based on being left or right-handed, or having free or attached earlobes. We do it on mostly color and other features that we have deemed distinct as a way of showing they are not like 'us', whatever that may be.

At one point in the not too distant past this really did have a huge bearing on the likelihood of the culture we came from which would also likely lead to other stereotypes that were likely true. These assumptions no longer hold true in a world that is connected by machines that can move people and data so quickly. You can't look at someone who looks a certain way and assume they are have a certain culture. Location is still very important as nurture plays a primary role in how we see the world and what we find comfortable but our culture is almost completely irrelevant to the nature of our physical characteristics that only vary as a way to adapting to the variety of environments this planet has to offer.

We see more variety within a single "race' than we see within a syntype across all "races." I know a girl in Brazil. Her parentage is 100% Japanese. Her parents were born in Brasil and they are also 100% Japanese. She is 2nd generation Brasilian speaks, only Portuguese and English, and so her culture is Brasilian and American (by the nature of the US being such a powerful source of media and entertainment). There are surely cultural aspects she has that originate from her parents and her grandparents but that dwarfed by the other cultural influences in her life. She doesn't identify with the Japanese culture because she is not Japanese, she is only a recent decedent of Japanese.

I don't see how her being of Japanese decent means that her nature would naturally be aligned with Japanese culture. It seems to me the environment plays a huge role in how we shape our culture. The term environment also includes technology since it exists within the environment.

Just on this forum alone I interact with people from all over the world and what I assume are different ethnic backgrounds, cultures and religions. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than a world that gets increasingly more connected.


PS: I find it interesting that I can go to anywhere in the United States and be able to speak the same language and dialect but I traveling in the UK I find this to be much more difficult over a much smaller area.

So Apple should simply innovate and then sit idly by and let everyone else steal their technology? So what's the incentive to innovate if you have to allow everyone else to use everything you invent?


The difference is the long-standing, entrenched history of China copying Western products. There are entire malls in China based on nothing but knock-off products, almost all of them using the original designer's logo without permission. It's been going on for decades and is a major part of the culture there.

Is it changing? Yes, very, very slowly. But it's common enough and widely accepted enough that the meme is valid.

Seems to me your last paragraph there is an interesting discovery. "iPad mini HD" has a very nice ring to it.

So we'd have "iPad with retina display" and "iPad mini HD"? Seems a bit confusing, plus no need to copy Amazon with product names.

Wow you are there and involved in China and it's internal political working's.  Tell me whats your name?  I want to get to know a high official of the China Government.

HD seems like an antiquated term to me. It only speaks to a resolution, not a pixel density, and even with resolution is really only assumes a minimum of 720p. With Retina Display we can assume that at minimum someone with 20/20(6/6) vision wouldn't be able to see the pixels when viewed at a normal viewing distance.

I'm not a fan of using television aspect ratios and resolutions for phones and tablets and yet I don't go a day without seeing someone comment that the iPad and iPhone are crap because Apple didn't make it 16:9 at 1920x1080. If 1080p was the resolution for all television and movies and that quality, performance and battery life were grossly affected when viewed on some other display resolution I'd understand the complaint but that's not the case. Cable TV is usually 720p at 16:9 and Blu-ray movies are typically some 1:2.35 or some other ultra-wide aspect ratio around 1080p.

It's so overused it just doesn't have the same appeal as it once did. Ignore that Apple uses it over and over (Facetime HD camera, HD video, shows HD movies, etc) as does everyone else. 

http://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/features/

When cheap sunglass ads started claiming HD as a feature a couple years ago the bloom was off the tree.