|
|
|
| Authored by: _Arthur on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 04:53 PM EDT |
Apple's design patent doesn't cover all possible 'rectangles with rounded
corners', only corners with a specific radius, and a specific bezel margin,
and a specific color pattern.
Samsung did produce a score on non infringing phones models, even if
they were rectangles with rounded corners.
Those models, by and large, were not commercially succesful.
It is only when Samsung phones started to resemble the iPhone to a such
degree that they infringed most points of Apple patent design, that
Samsung phones started to become popular.
You can bet that Samsung gets design patents over its phones designs too
(to protect itself from cheap knock-offs). Samsung most certainly patented
its ovoid phone design.
The user interface patents are dreck, and harmful, but trade dress design
patents (part of the trademark law, actually) are useful and enforceable.
Every single commentator of the phone industry remarked on the obvious
similarity between the new Galaxy phones and the iPhone, when they were
launched.
Samsung deliberately chose to risk a lawsuit. They lost their gamble, and,
with it, all the profits from all those devices. And then some.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
