Whatever. Get over it. All smartphones look like black bars with a screen. What is Samsung supposed to do.....put a big pink fur strip around it so it doesn't look like a black bar?
All cars look the same; they all have 4 wheels, and engine and some even use the same paint colors and carpeting. But Ford is not about to copy the look of the Corvette because they fear a law suit. And a Corvette is no different than a Pinto or Gremlin because it also has 4 wheels, an engine and quite likely, the same brand carpet or paint color as something Ford or Porsche sells.
My Opal GT looks like a Corvette, so there is that.
Perhaps rather than scream at Apple because they are protecting their products, manufacturers could either not develop a new phone that looks like an existing phone or come up with a new design. Perhaps if a design patent covers a particular shape and/or form factor, manufacturers should not try to sell a device that infringes on someone's patents.
That said, every phone must look the same because there is really no other way to make them. My Triumph looks like a dozen other phones.
Not sure how to say it any better than that. Granted, I expect many new phones to look like many old phones. Rectangular shape, buttons at either the top or bottom or on either side and so forth.
And I expect all laptops to look the same. Clamshell design, screen in the lid, keyboard in the other part and a row of buttons along the top with a three button mouse pad at the center under the keyboard. If a patent covered that design, every manufacturer would be in trouble and customers might reject designs that differ.
We all expect any phone we purchase to have a similar look and feel and feature set because there is really no other way to design one.
My thinking is this: manufacturers should look at existing patents or other legally protected IP and then ask whoever owns the design for permission to "copy" the design. Since when is making a phone a right? Lots of patents out there and someone will infringe sooner or later. Apple is blamed for going to court and I agree, it is a tad silly, but they must protect their rights even if the android community hates them for it.
Finally, there are way too many lawsuits these days. But never forget, if you own a patent, copyright, service mark, trademark or something else, you must protect what is yours or you run the risk of losing it.
If you do not protect your copyrights, you can lose them if you do not reasonably protect them.
We love to hang Apple out to dry but perhaps Google/Android has also infringed and gone to court for their activities? BT sued Google, apparently.
This is a difficult thing, indeed.
