Apple Offered Some Helpful Suggestions to Samsung for Avoiding Patent Issues
Though Apple has played the part of villainous corporation out to destroy competition by attacking the makers of so-called copycat product from Android manufacturers, don’t think their legal advances didn’t come with some helpful tips for the accused parties. No, Apple was nice enough to provide a list of more than reasonable changes that would help to differentiate Samsung’s tablets and phones from the iPad and iPhone. The suggestions, which came to light thanks to recently surfaced court documents, involve Samsung avoiding things such as rectangular-shaped devices and utilizing “substantial adornment” on the front of of their Android handsets.
In any other context, Apple’s suggestions read as farcical as if they were ripped from the pages of The Onion, essentially asking Samsung to design product that in no way resemble standard tablets or smartphones. Apple talks as if they own the right to any device that utilizes a black case, displays centered on the front of a device, and a horizontal speaker grill (which, last I checked, was just about how every cellphone has ever handled its earpiece).
You can see some of the changes requested by Apple in the newly redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Germany, but even an enlarged metal bezel and repositioned speakers wasn’t enough to satisfy Apple. At this point we think if Apple had a time machine they would go back in time and sue Alexander Graham Bell because his telephone functions in a way too similar to the iPhone. Here is a quick look at some of Apple’s suggestions as reported by The Verge:
“On the smartphone side of things, the following is a list of some of the alternative design options Apple felt Samsung should have looked into further:
- Front surface that isn’t black.
- Overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners.
- Display screens that aren’t centered on the front face and have substantial lateral borders.
- Non-horizontal speaker slots.
- Front surfaces with substantial adornment.
- No front bezel at all.
As for tablets, Apple identified a similar list of alternative designs available to Samsung:
- Overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners.
- Thick frames rather than a thin rim around the front surface.
- Front surface that isn’t entirely flat.
- Profiles that aren’t thin.
- Cluttered appearance.”