News & Analysis
Apple vs. Samsung: Reading Steve Jobs' emails
Rick Merritt
8/9/2012 12:41 PM EDT
Investigating the enemy
Apple alleges Samsung copied its innovations and showed a document in which the Korea giant did a feature-by-feature comparison of its handsets to the iPhone. Everybody does that sort of benchmarking, Samsung said, pointing to the email from Apple below.
Here Chris Stringer, one of Apple's top industrial designers and its first witness, asked a colleague for some ammo about competitors for a brainstorming session.
Click on image to enlarge.
Next: Dialing into competitors
Apple alleges Samsung copied its innovations and showed a document in which the Korea giant did a feature-by-feature comparison of its handsets to the iPhone. Everybody does that sort of benchmarking, Samsung said, pointing to the email from Apple below.
Here Chris Stringer, one of Apple's top industrial designers and its first witness, asked a colleague for some ammo about competitors for a brainstorming session.
Click on image to enlarge.
Next: Dialing into competitors
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selinz
8/9/2012 4:06 PM EDT
Very interesting stuff! Thanks for weeding through the haystack for the pins!
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selinz
8/9/2012 4:07 PM EDT
Interesting. So Apple copied the clickwheel from Samsung?
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Frank Eory
8/9/2012 5:09 PM EDT
Read it again. They're talking about using a clickwheel with numbers around the periphery as a replacement for the standard cell phone numeric keypad. Apparently Samsung had done that (news to me) and Steve thought they screwed up by not having the numbers 3, 6 and 9 match their positions on a clock.
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BrainiacV
8/9/2012 5:07 PM EDT
Wait, what? If it is previously done outside the US it is not considered prior art?
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rick.merritt
8/11/2012 8:31 PM EDT
It is my understanding that in the current case the LG Prada handset is not being considered as prior art at least in part because it was not sold or marketed in the U.S. prior to the launch of the iPhone.
Any patent experts here can feel free to clarify the law.
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gatorfan
8/9/2012 5:49 PM EDT
Samsung claiming to patent a wheel and a clock? Sorry I don't get their point.
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dylan.mcgrath
8/10/2012 3:38 AM EDT
Great reading. Shows what everyone knew all along: both companies benchmark and evaluate other products and ask themselves what they can do to incorporate and build on the features and capabilities they find. I am no lawyer or judge, but I would argue that the Jobs email is the most damming of all.
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negative_delay_buffer
8/10/2012 11:11 AM EDT
Would love to be a juror on this one.
I know I'm not seeing the whole picture just from these selected emails in this article, but what I see so far is not convincing of either side's case. Also, the timeline is unclear from the dates of these emails. Who allegedly copied who, and when?
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rick.merritt
8/10/2012 12:00 PM EDT
The emails are interesting but not core to the case, IMHO. They establish industry practice is to examine in great detail competing products.
The emails do not speak directly to whether Samsung copied Apple's patented technologies.
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Nando Basile
8/20/2012 5:34 AM EDT
I share this point 100%.
All companies serve customers. What every customer does before purchasing is comparing. Being competitive ''literally'' requires to know what competition is doing. Competitive and reverse analysis are necessary, any big company does it, this is one major task of any marketing department. To make a counter example, Nokia overlooked competition in 2009 and you see how it ended. I don't see how these sort of e-mails can seriously stand a trial about particular patent infringement.
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t.alex
8/10/2012 2:31 PM EDT
Interesting reading. This reminds us to write less emails at work :)
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eewiz
8/11/2012 8:50 AM EDT
Yup. Infact one IP expert advised me always talk important stuff over the phone and leave no records/emails for anyone to findout.
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Eric Verhulst_Altreonic
8/10/2012 4:47 PM EDT
This will the most ridiculous lawsuit of the century, if it wouldn't be happening. Apple's great competitive position is only due to good design and good marketing. The technology itself comes from others (e.g. Samsung in Korea). Even the assembly is done in China. Get real!
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Scott Elder
8/11/2012 1:42 AM EDT
Bravo! Company X will win, damages = $1. You are 100% correct. This trial will affect nothing except keep Apple out of the TV market a while longer. Maybe they will buy Vizio for their IP?
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Bert22306
8/10/2012 5:30 PM EDT
I'm with Dylan. This proves what everyone already knew. Companies always study each others' products in the greatest detail.
As to copying patented features, I've yet to see what features of the ones mentioned so far could be construed as credibly patented.
This is a matter of when technology reaches a certain stage, a flurry of new products can emerge, and they do. Certainly we saw this happening with the single-chip computer, with digital image compression, and countless other examples from the Industrial Revolution to today. Almost like a floodgate opens up, when a key invention is made.
Apple cannot credibly prevent progress.
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elPresidente
8/10/2012 6:08 PM EDT
I never would have thought, for the briefest moment, that the words 'may" and "could" were in Jobs' vocabulary.
So it appears to me that Jobs could have been insecure, hiding behind intimidation - this may make sense to me now.
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Simiyon
8/10/2012 7:20 PM EDT
I thought LG Prada also called as KE850 was sold in the USA. So how come it's not considered prior art.
I searched the net and came with this comparison done against the Prada when Iphone first came out.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/72B08E9A-D467-45EA-B214-28D3A340C3E5.html
Also, it most probably was available through Amazon in the USA.
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hm
8/10/2012 8:09 PM EDT
The gist of story is one has to be very careful in writing emails. Email needs to be stored for around three to five years by law.
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Scott Elder
8/11/2012 1:44 AM EDT
What??? In which country is there a law regarding storage of emails?
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t.alex
8/11/2012 1:58 AM EDT
I understand it is usually company policy not country law.
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Etmax
8/11/2012 8:49 AM EDT
I once worked for a major US electronics manufacturer and they had a whole department dedicated to the reverse engineering of competitor's products. They went as far as using an E-beam prober to read out the contents of protected EEPROM. They didn't copy the code, just use it for understanding benchmark results. I'm sure they weren't alone. Regarding prior art overseas, I would be very surprised if they could patent a a foreign invention overlooking foreign prior art. If they could then there would be very little stopping a foreign country from discounting any US IP rights overseas.
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bmonk
8/12/2012 1:08 PM EDT
When I was interviewed at Intel in the 80's, one of the manager said they reversed the graphic design of fellow competitors but they could never master it.
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t.alex
8/15/2012 12:35 PM EDT
Is the competitor AMD :) just random guess
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rick.merritt
8/11/2012 8:34 PM EDT
Someone told me recently some companies are having an attorney staff every major meeting so it can be considered privileged communications and exempt from discovery.
Anyone else heard of such practices?
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t.alex
8/11/2012 9:22 PM EDT
Really ? Why would it be privileged if there is an attorney sitting in?
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eewiz
8/11/2012 9:59 PM EDT
Haha. This is interesting. So get an attorney to sit in the meeting to avoid discovery!
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Sheetal.Pandey
8/19/2012 8:53 AM EDT
I guess its the competitive strategy to know your opponents strengths and weakness. After all everything is fare in war and it seems to be a big war to be at number 1 position.
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