Calvin Klein, Dieter Rams, Norman Foster, and over 100 of the world's leading design professionals have filed a lengthy amicus brief [PDF] in support of Apple in an over five year old patent lawsuit against rival Samsung.
The design professionals, which have collectively provided services to Apple, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Ford, General Electric, GM, Google, IBM, Knoll, Lenovo, LG, Louis Vuitton, NASA, Nike, Polaroid, Porsche, Starbucks, Target, Xerox, and even Samsung itself, among others, believe that Apple is entitled to all profits that Samsung has earned from copying patented designs.
The designers argued that a product's visual design has "powerful effects on the human mind and decision making processes," citing a 1949 study that showed more than 99% of Americans could identify a bottle of Coca-Cola by shape alone. The amicus brief further states that "successful technology companies use design to differentiate themselves from competitors."
Apple may have canceled the super scratch resistant anti-reflective display coating that it planned to use for the iPhone 17 Pro models, according to a source with reliable information that spoke to MacRumors.
Last spring, Weibo leaker Instant Digital suggested Apple was working on a new anti-reflective display layer that was more scratch resistant than the Ceramic Shield. We haven't heard...
Apple has completed Engineering Validation Testing (EVT) for at least one iPhone 17 model, according to a paywalled preview of an upcoming DigiTimes report.
iPhone 17 Air mockup based on rumored design
The EVT stage involves Apple testing iPhone 17 prototypes to ensure the hardware works as expected. There are still DVT (Design Validation Test) and PVT (Production Validation Test) stages to...
Wednesday April 30, 2025 3:59 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is preparing to launch a dramatically thinner iPhone this September, and if recent leaks are anything to go by, the so-called iPhone 17 Air could boast one of the most radical design shifts in recent years.
iPhone 17 Air dummy model alongside iPhone 16 Pro (credit: AppleTrack)
At just 5.5mm thick (excluding a slightly raised camera bump), the 6.6-inch iPhone 17 Air is expected to become ...
Apple will likely manufacture its 20th anniversary iPhone models in China, despite broader efforts to shift production to India, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In 2027, Apple is planning a "major shake-up" for the iPhone lineup to mark two decades since the original model launched. Gurman's previous reporting indicates the company will introduce a foldable iPhone alongside a "bold"...
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too.
2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3
Apple didn't update the...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 1:30 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 3:36 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
All upcoming iPhone 17 models will come equipped with 12GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence, according to the Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station.
The claim from the Chinese leaker, who has sources within Apple's supply chain, comes a few days after industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max will all be equipped with 12GB of RAM.
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Good. I'd love to jump into an alternate universe and show them how Samsung phones would look in 2016 had it not been for Apple.
Samsung are historically a company that steal design, functionality, features, make bagloads of profit, and then glue the lawsuits in redtape for years -- until it's not a financial hit for them to pay the fine, as they've made all the money already.
We're not just talking about Apple of course. Kodak, SHARP, Dyson... the list goes on and on and on.
Notice the lawsuit was for copying things like rounded corners and rubber bounce scroll feature. Yeah it looks like these were copied but should they be stuff that is patentable?
Right, but wrong. The lawsuit contained these items, though was not the flagship of the case. That is part of the larger picture; namely, the look and feel of the product. There were hundereds of other software and hardware patents which were being disputed.
Let's also not forget that the 'look and feel' extended to:
Chargers
Packaging So many other things. Operating system icons, etc.
Come on people, thinking Samsung are in the wrong here does not mean you think Apple are in the right about all similar cases.
You can despise Apple for the same stuff. You can even hate Apple and never want one of their products. But open your eyes here. Samsung are flagrant rip-off merchants.
So blatantly obvious. Nothing at Samsung looked like an iPhone UNTIL the iPhone. Then everything "smart-phone-wise" looked like an iPhone AFTER iPhone.
Hate to pop your bubble, but Apple didn't patent the screen.
And what came out of those Samsung prototypes? Exactly, exactly what you would expect for a company at that time.
They weren't prototypes of full touchscreen phones. They were just prototypes of slider phones. Prototypes of phones that Nokia already had released in the market, by the way.
I don't know what the problem is with this, it's clear that Samsung copied the iPhone design, Apple were awarded $1Billion and that's what they should of got.