Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone 5 design

Re:Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone... by terhechte on Friday September 07, 2012 @05:37AM (#4488305)

Right, these are for entirely different types of devices. The Apple devices look similar, but they're entirely different beasts. There're lots of businesses that sell products which copy lots of Apple's distinctive design yet they're in entirely different markets and so Apple doesn't care about that, and nobody else does. The reason why Apple went against Samsung is because they're copying in order to sell the same type of device. In this case, the copying will cost them market share. I doubt that braun will sell less radios because the G5 or PowerMac looked like their radio.

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Re:Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone... by zerostar07 on Friday September 07, 2012 @06:34AM (#4488431)

Yet it wouldn't be unjustified to claim that, when an ipod looks like a braun radio or when instagram looks like a polaroid, it's a new product attempting to capitalize on previous brand awareness (even if they are not the same business).

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Re:Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone... by terhechte on Friday September 07, 2012 @07:48AM (#4488583)

Well, I wouldn't say capitalize. To be honest, before someone found out, a couple of years ago, most people never knew about the Braun products, while everybody knew about the iPod. Polaroid is a different example, since while Instagram is well known, Polaroid was also well known. But again, this is Ok, and this is also Ok with Apple. There're vibrators that look like Apple devices, there're TV's, radios, alarm-clocks, calculators, that all look like Apple devices, and Apple doesn't care about it. (Fun example: http://www.megagadgets.de/mipad-taschenrechner.html)

They care if somebody copies their devices really close, and then goes into their market

Years ago, there was a small american company selling PC's that looked 99% like Macs (not Psystar). I forgot the name, but here Apple also went to the courtroom. Same problem here, these people copied not only their designs, but they copied really closely on products that competed directly with Apple's products in Apple's markets.

Apart from that, the Braun products are from the 70ties, and the Braun designed said he was flattered by Apple picking up where they left off.

Interestingly, Polaroid does exactly what you said: When somebody releases something that has the distinct Polaroid picture look, they threaten with a lawsuit. I experienced it up front: One of my apps was rejected from the app store because my pictures in there looked like Polaroids, and the rejection was in order to prevent me from getting sued by Polaroid, which seems to have happened before.

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Re:Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone... by headShrinker on Friday September 07, 2012 @08:50AM (#4488759)

eMachines developed a computer that looked exactly like the original iMac similar to the way the Galaxy S looked exactly like the iPhone 3g. eMachines did end up getting sued by Apple.

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