Apple's iPhone Victory Over Samsung Might Not Stick?

I know that some of the more ardent disciples of the Cult of Mac were doing cartwheels that Apple won a massive victory over Samsung in court, but they may be celebrating prematurely. And hey, honestly, why would anyone get so emotionally invested in a corporation anyway?

iPhone and Epic 4G. Nope, these aren't really the same, sorry.

Then again, I've always been a MacPhobe, AppleAverse, iDon't. Well, until the last few years. I've owned exactly three Apple products: an iPod Nano, a PowerBook G4 and a MacBook Pro, which I still have. But Apple has never fully hooked me. I don't see them as "better," merely as different, and more expensive. For that reason, and also because of circumstance, I ended up with an Epic 4G phone, on the Android platform, by Samsung. I chose the phone on the strength of its beautiful screen, and because it had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which I preferred to the on-screen keyboard.

The Epic was not an iPhone. It doesn't look like an iPhone, it doesn't feel like an iPhone. . .nobody thinks their Epic is an iPhone. So, how did Apple just win a lawsuit that claimed patent infringement, based largely on look and feel? One of the key points was about how the icons were square (wow, only Apple ever thought of that), and that they "bounce" when you reach the end of a row of icons. Holy moley, stop the presses! And there was a thing about a glass screen, on a rectangle-shaped phone with rounded corners. Really???

I allege that Apple stole the idea for the iPad from
Star Trek.

It stands to reason that if Apple had decided to shitcan the iPhone idea (which allegedly almost happened), that somebody would have come up with a touch-screen phone. It would very likely have been a rectangle with rounded corners and a glass screen. This is not an original idea, it's a distillation of a flat-panel monitor, a typical non-smart phone, an MP3 player, a camera and a touch-screen. It's a combination that would have happened.

Now, if Samsung literally copied the technology required to make the phone, I can see Apple having a point. But if they merely aped the look? Tough toenails. How different are different brands of HDTVs? Car Stereos? Refrigerators? Dishwashers? All-in-one printers? Everybody apes everybody. You don't get to declare that you get the whole marketplace to yourself, and still charge out the ass for it! And anyway, how did only Samsung get on the hook for this? What about HTC, Google, Motorola, Nokia and all the rest? Is everyone supposed to go back to making flip-phones, and give the market to Apple?

[Excerpt]

Why the Apple v. Samsung Ruling May Not Hold Up

Late in the process yesterday at the Apple v. Samsung trial, when the parties and the judge were reviewing the jury verdict form, Samsung noticed that there were, indeed, inconsistencies in the jury's verdict form, a possibility Samsung anticipated [PDF]. Here's the jury's Amended Verdict Form [PDF], amended to fix the mistakes. Here's the original [PDF]. Here's the note [PDF] the jury sent to the judge when told to fix the inconsistencies. What are they, they asked? "Please let the jury know," they wrote in the only note ever sent in their deliberations, "of the inconsistencies we are supposed to deliberate on. . ." 

Read more at: Gizmodo