Apple to argue Samsung was warned products copied iPhone, iPad
Documents from a federal patent infringement case involving Apple and Samsung show Apple is ready to argue the South Korean company was warned by several parties that its Galaxy products were too similar to the iPhone and iPad.
The Cupertino company’s trial brief shows Apple is ready to argue that internal documents show Samsung had spoken with various parties about the resemblance of its products to Apple’s.
“Samsung’s documents show the similarity of Samsung’s products is no accident or, as Samsung would have it, a ‘natural evolution,’ ” the Apple brief reads, according to All Things D. “Rather, it results from Samsung’s deliberate plan to free-ride on the iPhone’s and iPad’s extraordinary success by copying their iconic designs and intuitive user interface. Apple will rely on Samsung’s own documents, which tell an unambiguous story.”
Among those is Google, the maker of the Android operating system that powers Samsung’s Galaxy devices. The Apple brief says Google told Samsung that two of its products, which would ultimately become the Tab and Tab 10.1, were too similar to the iPad. The search giant demanded Samsung make the products distinguishable from the iPad.
And it wasn’t just Google who cast warnings. The South Korean company’s own product design group also told the company that it was “regrettable” how similar the Galaxy S smartphone looked like older iPhones.
The warnings continued at a Samsung-sponsored evaluation where famous designers also gave the company a warning about the Galaxy S, saying it looks “like it copied the iPhone too much.”
The designers also told Samsung that the Galaxy S so “[c]losely resembles the iPhone shape so as to have no distinguishable elements ... [a]ll you have to do is cover up the Samsung logo and it’s difficult to find anything different from the iPhone,” according to All Things D.
The trial is set to begin Monday.
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