Apple looks to trademark iPad likeness in China

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  • Reply 41 of 68
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,772member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    HD seems like an antiquated term to me.


    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.

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  • Reply 42 of 68


    Originally Posted by tylerk36 View Post

    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.


     


    Wait, are you questioning that there is a greater than average amount of corruption in China?

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  • Reply 43 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Wait, are you questioning that there is a greater than average amount of corruption in China?



     


    Probably depends on what he considers to be the "average amount of corruption".


     


    I mean, what if he's from New Jersey?

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  • Reply 44 of 68
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    gatorguy wrote: »
    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. 
    <span style="line-height:1.231;">http://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/features/</span>

    <span style="line-height:1.231;">When cheap sunglass ads started claiming HD as a feature a couple years ago the bloom was off the tree.</span>

    I have recently converted or amended all my videos so they can be added to iTunes. My biggest is that iTunes only has an 'HD' tag but I have 720p and 1080p content. I'd like it to be more specific.

    As an aside, I have some 720p files that have a higher bit rate than the 1080p content but I think it's asking too much to get anything that details the encoding profile. I'm not even sure of how a simple way to market that could be used or useful to customers.
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  • Reply 45 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post



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


     


    It could be that they simply registered a bunch of names just in case.   I found these Apple trademarks in China, as well:


     


    IPOD PAD


    IPOD SLATE


    IPOD TAB


    IPOD TABLET


     


    APPLE PAD


    APPLE SLATE


    APPLE TAB

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  • Reply 46 of 68
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    kdarling wrote: »
    It could be that they simply registered a bunch of names just in case.   I found these Apple trademarks in China, as well:

    IPOD PAD
    IPOD SLATE
    <span style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;">IPOD TAB</span>

    <span style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;">IPOD TABLET</span>


    APPLE PAD
    <span style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;">APPLE SLATE</span>

    <span style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;">APPLE TAB</span>

    So it goes. I thought, naively I'm sure, that you found evidence of an imminent retina mini. Oh well.

    Seems it would have been a controversial label anyway. I find those discussions tiresome, because Apple is going call it whatever they want for good or ill, usually against the advice and opinions of multitudes.
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  • Reply 47 of 68


    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post

    Probably depends on what he considers to be the "average amount of corruption".




    There's a scale; it's graded worldwide.

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  • Reply 48 of 68
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 7,123member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post


     


    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:


     



     


    None of which changes the fact that the patent is for a "mobile device" design, and includes the specific radius of the corners of the solid lines. To state that Apple is patenting "rounded rectangles" is very simply a falsehood.

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  • Reply 49 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    None of which changes the fact that the patent is for a "mobile device" design, and includes the specific radius of the corners of the solid lines. To state that Apple is patenting "rounded rectangles" is very simply a falsehood.




     


    The articles that you claimed "misrepresented" the patent (before it was explained how design patents are drawn) did not state that Apple had patented "rounded rectangles" (plural).   They used the singular:


     



    • Arstechnica -  "Apple awarded design patent for actual rounded rectangle"


    • The Verge   -  "Apple finally gets its patent on a rectangle with rounded corners"


     


    Your point about the patent being for a specific corner radius ratio could be a good one (*).  That should likely also apply to the length/width ratio.  So, what you're saying is, even if other "display devices" use a rounded rectangle, it's not copying as long as they use different ratios, correct?


     


    (*) I'm looking up to see how close these things have to be to infringe with design patents.  I'm more familiar with trademarks and trade dress.  Ah okay.  Interesting:


     


    1)  For design patents, the Egyptian Goddess case established that the main test is if an "ordinary observer", who has been exposed to prior art, doesn't think the patented design is obvious, and if they see no difference.   In other words, if the accused shape is not seen as clearly different, it can infringe.  However, if the patented shape is seen as obvious, the accused cannot infringe.


     


    2) For trademarks, the test is if an ordinary consumer would be fooled into buying the wrong product.  That's actually harder to prove.  Even if the cases were identical, other identifying marks such as brandnames can be enough to prevent confusion. (Think about how similar bottles and boxes look at the pharmacy.  Even with similar colors, you still have to look at the brandname.  Courts have often ruled that a consumer cannot be fooled if a similar looking item has a different and well known brandname.)


     


    Perhaps most pertinently, Apple didn't care about exact radii at the recent California trial:


     


    " Apple argued vigorously that the overall visual impression of the accused Samsung tablet and smart phone designs were substantially similar to its patented designs.   Conversely, and strategically, Samsung focused on differences in detail.  Indeed, Samsung challenged Apple’s witnesses by pointing out differences in the precise radius of curvature for each corner of the devices when compared to Apple’s patented design."   -  designpatentattorney.com

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  • Reply 50 of 68
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 7,123member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post


    The articles that you claimed "misrepresented" the patent (before you were explained about how design patents are drawn) didn't state that Apple had patented "rounded rectangles" (plural).  



     


    But various dishonest posters on these forums have.

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  • Reply 51 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    But various dishonest posters on these forums have.



     


    I get the feeling that you think people are inherently evil.  I suggest that the truth is far less menacing.


     


    Sometimes people generalize.  Sometimes people repeat what they read somewhere.  Especially these days, tech blogs are often quite incorrect.  Sometimes people are too busy to learn new facts.    Sometimes people just aren't aware of important details, such as when you jumped all over those articles about design patents.


     


    The point is, you don't need to constantly be calling other people "dishonest" or "liars", just because of their mistakes or if you disagree with their opinions.  At least, not unless you want the same names applied to you, for the same reasons.


     


    People can debate and point out mistakes without using insults or engaging in personal attacks.

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  • Reply 52 of 68
    archarch Posts: 66member


    An interesting rounded rectangle 1981 apple story.


     


    http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt

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  • Reply 53 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by arch View Post


    An interesting rounded rectangle 1981 apple story.


     


    http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt



     


    Thank you.  That is a cool tale.


     


    I especially liked the bit about the math shortcut.   In the early days, figuring out how to speedily calculate and draw required lots of inventive thinking.


     


    Like that story, I remember having to figure out binary multiplication and division on a very slow microprocessor around 1979.   I needed it for 3D graphics transformations, and later, Fourier analysis for speech recognition.   I ended up creating a binary logarithm lookup table.   As everyone knows, especially those who grew up with slide rules, to multiply you simply add two logs.  To divide, just subtract.   Then do a reverse lookup to find the real number.   Voila!


     


    This is a reason why I'm glad we didn't have major companies involved in a software patent arms race back then.  Every day you had to invent a basic function, and often you'd find later on that someone else with the same need had invented the same thing. If every developer at every company had had to come up with different ways to draw lines, circles, look up data, etc, without infringing someone else's similar idea, it would've been very difficult for complicated projects like the Macintosh to come to fruition.

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  • Reply 54 of 68
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 7,123member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post


     


    I get the feeling that you think people are inherently evil.  I suggest that the truth is far less menacing.


     


    Sometimes people generalize.  Sometimes people repeat what they read somewhere.  



     


    And sometimes people -- and I mean you -- come here and bullshit about how they created browser engines with their bare hands and have decades of multitouch development experience.


     


    Did you ever notice that it's the people lying through their teeth who talk about how it's not nice to talk about how dishonest people are?


    I wonder why that is?

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  • Reply 55 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    And sometimes people -- and I mean you -- come here and bullshit about how they created browser engines with their bare hands and have decades of multitouch development experience.



     


    The depth of my knowledge and experience is visible in my posts.  I have seen none in yours.


     


    "Decades of touch experience" is what I said.  I talked a bit about my early 1990s capacitive touch experiences in this post and this one.  The browsers I talked about in this post.    


     


    Those things are just a tiny fraction of what I've been involved with since I took my first programming courses at UNC-CH back in 1971.  I've been a Sergeant in a Tactical Electronic Warfare unit on the Korean DMZ (329th ASA - 2ID), written entire UIs in assembler / C / Java, wrote and sold home computer software, customized and ported OSes, worked in startups and major corporations, written a book on a multitasking OS, designed a multinational casino touch system, been head of an interactive TV lab for a major carrier, and for the past fifteen years I've coded handheld touch systems for field techs.  And that's still not everything, not by a long shot.


     


    You must be very young or very inexperienced to not understand what a full career and life can involve.  I suspect there are quite a few people reading these forums who have similar long experiences in various fields. 


     



    Did you ever notice that it's the people lying through their teeth who talk about how it's not nice to talk about how dishonest people are?  I wonder why that is?



     


    What I've noticed in thirty years of being online, is that there's always a few people who try to hide their ignorance or laziness or insecurity behind personal attacks.


     


    If you think someone's facts are incorrect, then you should have no problem finding and intelligently presenting counter facts.  Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious from your post history that you won't ever make such an effort.  It's much easier for you to just label everyone else a liar.   I'm sad for you, and frankly, I"m sad for a forum whose mods allow such attacks to drag it down.

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  • Reply 56 of 68
    tylerk36tylerk36 Posts: 1,037member


    I am not from New Jersey.  I am actually from the west coast.  The wet part.  So I guess that means I am moldy oldy.

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  • Reply 57 of 68
    There is no company that can patent a particular shape.
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  • Reply 58 of 68
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    peter236 wrote: »
    There is no company that can patent a particular shape.

    http://www.google.com/patents/USD107977?printsec=drawing#v=onepage&q&f=false

    ^ That company has a simple swoosh shape they like to protect too.

    Apple is trying to protect the iconic style of their tablet. It's possible to make a tablet look different, it's just that nobody wants to because Apple's one looks the best. They could just as easily make them all look like this:

    1000

    It's to stop things like this:


    [VIDEO]


    and this:


    [VIDEO]


    All fakes.
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  • Reply 59 of 68
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post



    Apple is trying to protect the iconic style of their tablet. It's possible to make a tablet look different, it's just that nobody wants to because Apple's one looks the best. They could just as easily make them all look like this:





     


    Which is ironically often what consumers end up doing.   Just look at the huge aftermarket for iPad products to improve grip, or protect the device & screen from falls or environment, or to add a keyboard, etc.


     


     



     


    People often ask why no one came up with the iPad design before Apple.  The answer is, they did.  We saw it in small company products, science fiction, and Apple fan concepts.


     


    It's just that no major manufacturer ever dreamed that millions of people would actually want to buy a glass fronted device that seemed so impractical, with no inherent protection from a fall.  Certainly companies using tablets in harsh field conditions did not, and they were the primary buyers back then and preferred ruggedized devices.   


     


    Making a style statement instead, is something only a company like Apple can accomplish.  Kudos to them!

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  • Reply 60 of 68

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    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.


     


    Sorry for the delayed reply. I've been traveling.


     


    You raise some GREAT points, although, at the end of the day, it's somewhat impressionistic and based on your personal experience, not data-driven. The clincher (for me) is when you claim "We see more variety within a single "race' than we see within a syntype across all "races"  and then go on to justify it with an example of a person of Japanese descent that you know in Brazil.


     


    First, Brazil (and perhaps even Latin America, more generally) is a poor example, since over generations, it has become more of a multi-ethnic mix than most places (although not entirely). With the exception of certain counties that have a high proportion of native populations (Bolivia, Peru), this is true of LatAm more than anywhere else.


     


    Second, consider parts of the world with huge populations: China (1.3B, Han descent), India (1.1B, Negroid/Caucasian/Mongoloid/Aboriginal descent), Europe (600M, largely white), Japan (130M, ?? descent), Indonesia etc. These are all fairly ethically homogeneous countries at this point. To claim that the variety among whites within Europe is greater than the variety in 'those in poverty' across these countries is questionable. Perhaps in a strictly economic sense, but not when it comes to a whole additional bundle of attributes that need to be factored in, such as language, religion, food, dress, looks, non-verbal communication cues, entertainment etc. For example, Manmohan Singh is likely much closer to a poor Indian on all those dimensions than he is to Barack Obama or David Cameron.


     


    I think what you're saying is perhaps true is a small minority of highly educated, highly well-off socio-economic across most countries (in that they like their PCs and good cars and washing machines and Polo LR and Hollywood and Coca Cola), but I don't think it applies to a vast majority. I think you're over-generalizing.

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