EU Court Adviser Says Software Ideas Can't Be Copyrighted

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by leebase

Oh please. I bought my wife a Samsung Galaxy II. The extent they went to copy even Apple's box and packaging is ASTOUNDING. This is not "the only logical way" things can be done. It's copying.

Lee

Dunno about the GII, but the Tab's box (which is supposedly one of the problems) is a white box with a picture of the product on it (of which I can see hundreds of different examples of if I go down to Wal-Mart). The iPad 2's box front is a textless white field with a picture of the product so angled that you can barely see its face and nothing, while the Galaxy Tab 10.1's white box has the product at a very different angle (can see its entire face clearly), the name, the Google branding, and a bunch of icons floating up above the Tab in soap bubbles.

Frankly, the only time the Tab could ever even slightly seem like an iPad is if you turned it off, switched it to portrait mode (its natural orientation is landscape), covered the branding, and looked at it from a distance when it is displayed in such a way as to obscure its shape compared to the iPad/iPad 2.

[HansTWN]

It is strange how the rules differ. In our industry (we sell industrial machinery in Asia) the machines are copied down to such details that even virtually all the parts are interchangeable. They use the same machine model number and often just change one letter of the brand name is different (for example Juki becomes Yuki or Juky). And nobody can do a damn thing about it. All you can do is to keep costs as low as possible and try to innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Funny thing is that now the first line of copiers is being copied again by new upstarts.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Actually Samsung is using the new industry standard PDMI. That was agreed upon by many different companies and while it looks similar to Apple's the connections are totally different. My Dell phone also has a PDMI connector (though I wish they would have used mini or microUSB, it would be much easier to buy replacement cables.

Really? Wikipedia say that actually is it a non-standard, incompatible, adaptation of PDMI:

It also has a 30-pin docking and charging connector very similar to the standard PDMI connector (a non-proprietary alternative to Apple's docking connector). It appears so similar to the PDMI connector that it is widely mistaken for it, but it is non-standard and all accessories, including charging cables, are incompatible with other equipment and only available from Samsung

So a group got together to produce a copy of the Apple dock connector, then Samsung produced a slightly different copy of that.


Edit: Some pictures from an Android forum post:
First is Galaxy connector and dell Streak PDMI connector:
Second is Galaxy connector and Apple connector:

Which does it look more like to you?

[Edit edit: pictures were too big, you can find them here]

[kartu]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Here's the relevant judgment:


There's more: here's the link http://www.damm-legal.de/lg-duesseld...ng-im-volltext

I happen to speak German.

Spoiler:

Judge has agreed that generic ("community design" in discussion is VERY generic) rounded rectangle design could be patented (the worst part of the judgement). As alternative she cites "alternative designs" of number of failed tablets, not mentioning Motorola Xoom, that looks so much like the generic tab design patented by Apple:

she cites "look, asus did it different way", too bad, when trying to take "lightest, thinnest" route, Asus had to do it the same way, Asus Transformer Prime:



Samsung having to add silly looking "ears", to sell it in Germany (Apple still insists, that's not enough):


And here is the "patented" design itself, the only reason of the ban in Germany:



note that community designs are accepted without being reviewed!