The thing i don't understand is how Apple can put a patent on something that is a natural assumption. For example, red is accepted by everyone as meaning danger or at least something that should be taken more seriously, vice versa green is accepted as something positive by everyone. These are what i would call natural assumptions. I notice that traffic lights are the same colours all over the world. The same goes for features on the iphone, the green phone button and red hangup are both natural assumptions. How can you put a patent on that? It's like someone putting a patent on the order of the colours on traffic lights!
Also the same goes for the zooming by pinching. The pinching is something that anyone would automatically do to zoom in and out. It is a natural assumption. I don't get it.
Notjust that green means start and red means stop, on cell phones way back before smart phones, on my old Treo phone, the call button was either green, or had a green handset. It is an accepted control on phones to have the button to initiate calls be green. Just like it is accepted for the steering wheel on a car to be round, for the brake lights to be red, for the gas pedal to be on the right and brake on left.
For pinch to zoom, Samsung is moving away from that with the SIII anyway. Place two fingers on either side of the screen and tilt the phone forward and back to zoom. Much better than pinch, move fingers, then have to reposition fingers and repeat over and over. You have the entire zoom range available in one motion.
This all is likely to be reversed (at least in part) in appeal. I have a feeling the jury foreman had as much to do with the verdict than the trial itself. Statements by Steve Wozniak seem to indicate even he thinks much of this will be overturned. O course, Apple went and tried to toss in some current phones like the SIII that look nothing like the iPhones.
Samsung likely tried to make their early smartphones look similar to iPhones, sure. Before that similar to Blackberres. But then the Motorola Q looked very similar to a blackberry. Some layouts for things just make sense and if its what consumers want, and is familiar to them, then thats what you make.
This is all corp silliness, meanwhile Samsung makes chips and displays for Apple, and Apple continues to use Samsung as a supplier. Money, makes the world go round.
Apple seems inclined now to go into a 'maintenance mode' as a lot of corporations with a highly sucessfull product do. Protect your product, make little tweaks to it, try to keep customers hooked on it (or simply unable to go elsewhere). This is where Blackberry was. Where Palm was. Where Commodore was with the 64. Where Atari was with the 2600.
