Samsung exec whines: Apple’s trying to patent the rectangle!

14 years ago

“The Apple v. Samsung trial that begins in a San Jose federal courtroom on Monday could emerge as the most important patent dispute of the decade. Apple and Samsung are accusing each other of infringing on a number technology patents, while Apple also claims that Samsung’s Galaxy phones and tablets wrongfully copy the look and feel of the iPhone and iPad,” Nathan Olivarez-Giles reports for Wired.

“The outcome of the battle could have far-reaching ramifications across the consumer electronics and mobile industries. Kevin Packingham, Samsung’s Chief Product Officer, knows what’s at stake, having previously worked as an executive at Sprint Nextel before launching a start-up that helped China’s Huawei bring its phones and tablets to the United States,” Olivarez-Giles reports. “Ahead of the trial, Packingham stopped by Wired’s newsroom in San Francisco to talk about Samsung’s role in the ongoing patent wars that have spawned dozens of lawsuits across the globe, involving not only Samsung and Apple, but also HTC, Motorola and Microsoft, among others. For its part, Samsung owns more than 100,000 patents worldwide, so it’s certainly no stranger to the patents game, and all the litigation it involves.‪”

Wired: It seems most of the patents that Samsung is either licensing to other folks, or using against competitors in patent suits, are related more to technology than design — 3G technologies and other wireless technologies, for example. But what’s used against Samsung most often focuses on design. Does Samsung just not have a ton of design patents? Or is it just impossible to patent a rectangular piece of glass with a touchscreen, which every smartphone and tablet has today, and is under dispute in the Apple trial?

Packingham: In terms of patents, we have a made lot of contributions in the design space as well. I would say the patents we’re struggling with — where there’s a lot of discussion and litigation right now — are around these very broad design patents like a rectangle. For us, it’s unreasonable that we’re fighting over rectangles, that that’s being considered as an infringement, which is why we’re defending ourselves.

Hopefully the entire industry is in the position now where we have to defend ourselves and say, “Look, it’s unreasonable for us to be in the position of claiming that there is design, claiming that there is some sort of protected property, around a rectangle.” So I would say, yeah, we have design patents as well, but they’re not as simple as the rectangle. And so that’s where I think you see a little bit of this challenge.

In some cases, for most of us in the industry, it’s defying common sense. We’re all scratching our heads and saying, “How is this possible that we’re actually having an industry-level debate and trying to stifle competition?” Consumers want rectangles and we’re fighting over whether you can deliver a product in the shape of a rectangle.

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Kevin Packingham is a disingenuous serial trade dress infringer who works for an unethical company run by a convict. He knows this is about more than “rectangles,” but the slavish copier has nothing else, so rather than being smart and saying nothing at all, he makes himself look like an idiotic ass on top of being a blatant knockoff peddler. We’d rather scrape shit at the local sewage plant for minimum wage than have Kevin Packingham’s soul-siphoning job.

Apple’s products came first, then Samsung’s, Kev:

Here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “andintroducing” for the heads up.]