Quote:
Originally Posted by jjallenupthehill
There is no difference in ripping off someone's design or ripping off someone's functionality.
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It may take one person ten minutes to lay out an icon matrix on a screen, and 100s of thousands of man hours to design the functionality of a cell phone radio and baseband, for example. Even if the icon matrix took longer than a few minutes, there is no indication that more than a few minutes is required, or that extensive education is required. There certainly is no chance at all of throwing together a smartphone radio and baseband in a few minutes, and the education in multiple disciplines of the people involved is very extensive. Even the work involved in ripping off significant functionality is far greater than the work involved on the design elements in question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jjallenupthehill
Both activities require a lot of time and effort. One is no less valuable than the other.
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The time and effort required are not even within several orders of magnitude of each other, so there is certainly a huge difference in value. I think part of the whole point of this Samsung vs. Apple thing is that the design elements in question are so trivial that it is withing the realm of possibility that something that appears to be a copy is just purely accidental. Others have already pointed out that close examination reveals differences in design elements that were allegedly copied.