Samsung: Kubrick beat Apple to iPad design
Summary: Samsung has told a US court that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey showed tablets that predate Apple's efforts by decades.Apple and Samsung are engaged in numerous legal battles in nine countries at the moment.
Samsung has told a US court that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey showed tablets that predate Apple's efforts by decades.
Apple and Samsung are engaged in numerous legal battles in nine countries at the moment. One of them is in the District Court for the Northern District of California, where Apple is trying to have four Samsung smartphones and tablets banned from the US due to alleged design patent infringement.
However, Samsung has struck back by saying there are precedents for the tablet designs that Apple claims should be exclusive to the iPad. One such example of 'prior art' can be found in Kubrick's 1968 classic, where characters are seen using devices that are, to all intents and purposes, tablet computers.
Samsung's filing on Monday was picked up by patents expert Florian Mueller, who also noted Apple's original filing for a preliminary injunction against its Korean rival. The opposition brief includes a link to a YouTube clip showing the 2001 devices in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo
The brief points out that, in common with one of Apple's design patents, the tablet shown in the clip "has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor".
"It would be amazing if the court agreed with Samsung that this constitutes prior art for that particular iPad-related design patent," Mueller wrote on Tuesday. "Whether or not Samsung will succeed, the mere fact that they proffer this kind of evidence is remarkable."
The opposition brief also reportedly claims that a tablet similar to the iPad was depicted in the 1970s British TV show The Tomorrow People.
While tech companies usually sue each other over technological patents, Apple has recently started going after Samsung for allegedly infringing on the aesthetic design of the iPad and iPhone, as Samsung's devices also have large, rectangular touchscreens and shun physical buttons as much as possible.
Apart from the Californian filing, Apple has also succeeded in getting a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, although a similar ban across the rest of the EU has been lifted due to jurisdictional concerns.
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Talkback
Surely TNG also had touch screens before iTyrant claimed to invent them, they must have been capactive as they were also multi-touch?
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/applications/2011/07/22/apps-of-the-week-decaf-monitor-star-trek-40093493/5/
1) They are at exact angles and placement in table. What two people would place their pads at exact angles to each other.
2) In another scene where HAL is playing chess with Frank, he's simply looking at a similar screen, not interacting with it. HAL controls the screen.
3) All screens shown in 2001, were merely displays. none were ever used as an input device
As much as I have a distaste for Apple's nazi-esque approach to computing, I believe this method of defense is spurious at best. I think a hi-def screen capture of the screens on the table (in 2001) will show they are, in fact, inset...
This is a *design* patent. It related to how the object looks. What those panels actually are in the clip is irrelevant. They look quite convincingly like tablets .
If you want to real forerunner of tablets you need to go back to 1909 and E. M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops'. You will find it on the first page!
Look carefully, they are not "hanging over". Apparently they are placed into the edge with a bolt of sorts to allow a moderate swivel of the monitor below. Further, if it were a tablet as we know it, it wouldn't be anchored.
As one who has worked with patent attorneys, I can tell you that, once again, look at BigBadger's comment. If this screens in "2001" is a 'design similarity', so would missile command's 'interface'. or for that matter, any monitor which is hidden around other pieces of hardware. There is no case here my friends... I wish there were.
I really don't see that who you have worked with has any significance in this matter. You are completely missing the point, and I'm beginning to wonder if you are doing so deliberately.
The key patent at issue is a design patent. It is not concerned with the functionality of the device, merely its appearance, or Trade Dress as they say. The example given has the APPEARANCE of an iPad, casually placed with one corner hanging over the edge.
To a casual observer watching the film, it does NOT look like a part of the structure it sits on - regardless of what it is physically. Also, all the other 'monitors' on the set show the classic curvature of a CRT. These look totally flat. The proportions are an extremely close fit although the overall size looks bigger. It has the right shape, the black surround, and SEEMS to be a tablet device.
There is a similar issue with 'devices' in some episodes of Star Trek, and these are even called PADDs for heavans sake!
There are particularly good reasons why a black surround is an obvious choice. In the first place it is totally neutral and therefore will never clash with the visual content. A more subtle reason is that of what is known as light crushing. If you put two objects of identical size and shape side-by-side, the darker one will always look smaller. Therefore making the frame of an illuminated object black will make it seem much thinner.
Finally, as I said in my other comment. Go and read 'The Machine Stops' and then think just how 'innovative' any of these toys are, when someone over a hundred years ago can describe machine dependence, video conferencing, instant massaging, and, yes, tablets. He also went on to explore the social consequences with uncanny accuracy.
> That can't be a bolt, it has to be a button. You wouldn't bolt something through
> the frame of a table.
Agreed, it's obviously a button or a knob. Those two tablets are identical, both with a knob on their bottom right corners. But only one tablet is positioned so that the knob might be mistaken for being a bolt to the edge of the table. Just look where the knob is on the other tablet. And since both tablets overhang the table's edge, neither can be inset.