You’re right but for a long time patents haven’t been this clear cut. It’s been a long time practice for tech and bio companies to file for vague patents then sue anyone who comes close.
There also isn’t a bright line between how close you can’t get to a patented tech without being burned. Customers are constantly screaming a tech companies to get what their competitors have...”apple has this, why doesn’t my galaxy S whatever”.
Just the other day I tried to tap to share a website with someone only for them to look at me crazy. Didn’t know only Windows and Android phones had that.
My point is, tech companies know that as soon as a product is released, the first thing their competitors do is take it apart to first, look for new tech for them to copy, and two, look for patent violations. They don’t want to break the law but they do want to skirt it as close as possible...tech development is more often evolutionary then revolutionary so going off in a completely new direction is impossible for every new phone generation.
And you want to break them for this? No, it should be weighed on the severity of the infraction. You know how this lawsuit started...it was over the freakin shape of the Galaxy 4 and some of the colors it used! So yes, it should only be a slap on the wrist.
Apple's iOS has had that for years. . . long before the Windows phone and Android. You can choose to use either Messaging, email, Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other means of sharing. It's that little box with an arrow icon at the bottom of the iPhone's Safari window or in the upper right hand corner of the menu bar of the iPad's Safari window. Tap, and a plethora of sharing means pops up.
In the case in question, Samsung did not try to avoid infringing Apple's iPhones but to try to deliberately copy every feature of the iPhone as much as possible. One of the featured pieces of evidence in the case was a 132 page internal memo from Samsung top management to their "design team" reviewing their efforts, item by item specifying that this and that had to be exactly like the iPhone's features! Here is a link where you can read the entire 132 page memo:
132-page internal document shows how Samsung set out to copy the iPhone pixel by pixel
By Zach Epstein on Aug 8, 2012 at 10:45 AMAn internal memo from February 2010 emerged in the Apple (AAPL) vs. Samsung (005930) trial on Monday that was fairly damaging to Samsung's case. In the memo, mobile boss JK Shin expressed outrage at how far Samsung's user experience had fallen behind even Apple's first iPhone, which was already three years old at that time. The difference between the iPhone's UX and Samsung's devices was like "Heaven and Earth," Shin wrote repeatedly.
One month after that memo was sent, Samsung assembled a massive 132-slide report comparing the iPhone's user interface to Samsung Galaxy interface, and it detailed hundreds of ways that Samsung devices should be more like Apple's. "In short, the evaluation report makes the case that the Galaxy (identified here as the "S1") would be better if it behaved more like the iPhone and featured a similar user interface," explained John Paczkowski and Ina Fried of AllThingsD.
The internal report was presented by Apple attorneys on Tuesday afternoon, and considering the basis of the company's case is that Samsung pivoted in 2010 and shifted its product line to "blatantly copy" Apple's iPhone and iPad, this is certainly one of the most damning pieces of evidence we've seen so far.
The document is embedded below in its entirety.