Samsung has launched its most scathing attack yet on Apple’s iPhone, claiming that without its patents and technology the iPhone couldn’t have shifted a single unit. Apple has repeatedly accused Samsung of ‘slavishly’ copying the design of its iProducts, which has seen several Galaxy devices temporarily suspended from sale in various countries.
“Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today‘s smartphones. Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung‘s patented technology.” Samsung revealed in a trial brief.
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Samsung said Apple is in no place to complain when its iPhone’s design was originally borrowed from its rivals, including Sony.
“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.”
The concepts Samsung is referring to are CAD mock-ups created by Apple industrial designer Shin Nishibori, who had been asked to create a “Sony-like” device based on a 2006 Businessweek interview Apple SVP Tony Fadell had circulated to Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive.
In the article, Sony designers Takashi Ashida and Yujin Morisawa talked about a device with minimal ornamentation, fewer buttons and rounded corners, which served as the inspiration for Nishibori’s design.
Ironically, despite senior Apple designer Richard Howarth disparagingly claiming that the design “looks old”, it ended up being the basis for the iPhone 4 four years later.
Although technically Apple did not rip off Sony, the point Samsung is trying to make is that the almighty iPhone design was not plucked out of thin air and was clearly influenced by a competitor’s idea.
“Samsung has used the very same public domain design concepts that Apple borrowed from other competitors, including Sony, to develop the iPhone,” argued Samsung.
Credit: USwitch
