Apple v. Samsung Electronics: The Patent War Claims, Uncut

The gloves have emphatically come off in the patent war between Apple and Samsung Electronics.

A courtroom confrontation, scheduled to begin Monday, is only one of dozens of suits and countersuits around the world involving these two smartphone giants. But this one promises to be more lively than most. It’s a jury trial, set in Silicon Valley, in a federal district court in San Jose, Calif. The document discovery and deposition-taking by the corps of lawyers on both sides, running for months, will be rolled out in this showdown.

The broad themes of the accusations on each side are well known by now. Apple complains Samsung is a copycat, stealing the product designs and user-experience programming in the iPhone and later the iPad. Samsung replies that Apple is claiming ownership for ideas it may have modified, but certainly did not invent. Meanwhile, Samsung counters that Apple has pilfered some of its patented wireless communications technology and should pay up itself.

Earlier this week, Apple and Samsung filed their trial briefs, but in redacted form. So the juicy nuggets of evidence were blacked out. On Wednesday, the unredacted trial briefs were filed.

Here are a few excerpts, from the uncut court documents.

APPLE’S BRIEF
– Samsung saw the iPhone, shook in its corporate boots, and vowed to compete any way it could.

Samsung’s documents show that Samsung developed an overall plan to copy Apple’s
innovative designs and features so that it could compete with Apple. In September 2007,
Samsung concluded that the iPhone’s “beautiful design” and “[e]asy and intuitive” user interface
could make it as successful as the iPod, which captured 75% of the global MP player market in
just five years. (PX34 at 38.) Samsung concluded that it “will have to compete with the iPhone
in whatever way,” and that the iPhone’s hardware is “easily copied, including its “Touch Screen
UI.” (Id. at 37.) In September 2008, Samsung’s C.E.O. commented that Samsung should probably
adopt “the Apple i-Phone’s Touch Method (C Type),” which “is becoming the De facto standard
in the market.” (PX9 at 1.)

– Internal Samsung documents show it slavishly copied Apple.

. . . Samsung’s documents show that Samsung developed and released products that look almost identical to Apple’s, despite repeated warnings that Samsung’s products were too similar. As part of a formal, Samsung-sponsored evaluation, famous designers warned Samsung that the Galaxy S “looked like it copied
the iPhone too much,” and that “innovation is needed.” (PX47 at 1.) The designers explained that
the appearance of the Galaxy S “resembles the iPhone shape so as to have no
distinguishable elements,” and “[a]ll you have to do is cover up the Samsung logo and it’s
difficult to find anything different from the iPhone.” (PX47 at 27.) Similarly, in February 2010,
Google told Samsung that Samsung’s “P1” and “P3” tablets (Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1)
were “too similar” to the iPad and demanded “distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad for the
P3.” (PX42, PX43 at 2.) In 2011, Samsung’s own Product Design Group noted that it is
“regrettable” that the Galaxy S “looks similar” to older iPhone models

SAMSUNG’S BRIEF

Apple refined others ideas, but definitely borrowed them.

For good measure, Apple seeks to exclude Samsung from the market, based on its
complaints that Samsung has used the very same public domain design concepts that Apple
borrowed from other competitors, including Sony, to develop the iPhone. Apple‘s own internal
documents show this. In February 2006, before the claimed iPhone design was conceived of,
Apple executive Tony Fadell circulated a news article that contained an interview of a Sony
designer to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and others. In the article, the Sony designer discussed Sony
portable electronic device designs that lacked excessive ornamentation such as buttons, fit in the
hand, were square with a screen and had corners [which] have been rounded out. Ex. 18
(DX 649).
Immediately after this article was circulated internally, Apple industrial designer
Shin Nishibori was directed to prepare a Sony-like design for an Apple phone and had CAD
drawings and a three-dimensional model prepared. See Exs. 1-2 (DX 623; DX 562).

More Sony envy, and its influence on the iPhone.

Eliminating any doubt about the origin of the design‘s inspiration, Apple‘s internal CAD drawings
had the Sony’s name prominently emblazoned on the phone design. Id. Only days later, Apple
designer Richard Howarth reported that, in contrast to another internal design that was then under
consideration, Mr. Nishibori‘s Sony-style design was a much smaller-looking product with a
much nicer shape to have next to your ear and in your pocket and had greater size and
shape/comfort benefits. Ex. 3 (DX 562). As Mr. Nishibori has confirmed, his Sony-style
design changed the direction of the project that yielded the final iPhone designs.

Apple knew well that was not originate many ideas in the iPhone.

Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal
documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully
commercializing them. When Apple was developing its campaign to promote the first iPhone, it
considered – and rejected – advertisements that touted alleged Apple ―firsts with the iPhone. As
one Apple employee explained to an overly exuberant Apple marketer, I don‘t know how many
things we can come up with that you can legitimately claim we did first. Certainly we have the
first successful versions of many features, but that‘s different than launching something to market
first.‖ See Ex. 4 (DX 578). In this vein, the employee methodically explained that Palm, Nokia
and others had first invented the iPhone‘s most prominent features. Id.