Yesterday's court battle between Apple and Samsung continued with Apple showing an email from J.K. Shin, Samsung's Head of Mobile Communications. According to Apple, Samsung went through a “crisis of design” shortly before the launch of the Galaxy S in 2010. Shin's email said:
“All this time we've been paying all our attention to Nokia, and concentrated our efforts on things like Folder, Bar, Slide,”
“Yet when our UX is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple's iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth. It's a crisis of design.”
Later Samsung's Strategy Head Justin Denison took the stand and downplayed the language of the email calling it hyperbole. He went on to say “Samsung does an excellent job of remaining very humble, self-critical and maintaining a sense of urgency within its own ranks to drive hard work and innovation. We want to change so that it never rests on its laurels and becomes complacent. So you hear a lot of hyperbolic statements like ‘crisis of design' and ‘heaven and earth'.”
Samsung's attorney also attempted to downplay the importance of being first to market with certain designs and features by leading questioning in this manner. Denison said that Samsung introduced many features before Apple, which included voice recognition technology and he didn't feel “ripped off” when Apple introduced the same features afterwards.
As to screen size, Denison said he wouldn't mind if the next iPhone had a larger screen because it would be another example of following a trend as Samsung and others are already doing.
Apple also brought in Peter Bressler, an expert witness. Apple paid him $75,000 for this appearance. You have to love our legal system. He claimed that Samsung's designs were “substantially the same” as Apple's. He also said, “My opinion [is] that there are a number of Samsung phones and two Samsung tablets that are substantially the same as the design in those [Apple] patents.”
He also said consumers could be confused looking at the two products, but when cross-examined by Samsung, he admitted he hadn't witnessed the confusion for himself.
Today's proceedings should have more of Bressler and another Apple expert witness, Susan Kane. She is a former creative director of NeXT and a contributor to the graphical user interface of the first Mac.
source: ibtimes
This should be good, heh, how is she going to explain the blatant copying of the Xerox OS? This one I have to see how it folds out. Because the first Apple / Mac UI was taken from Xerox…. Good going Apple! :p