The latest in Apple versus Samsung patent trial, is the tide turning for Samsung?

The patent trial between Apple and Samsung resumed earlier today, and while testimony hasn't yet finished for the day, already we're seeing signs of what's to come.

Yesterday Apple secured a significant step toward victory when Judge Koh barred the designer of Samsungs F700 phone, which predates the iphone yet is similar in style, from testifying.

Why is this good for Apple?

Apple had originally included the F700 in its list of Samsung devices that infringed on Apples patents but, on realising that it was designed prior to the iphones release and therefore could not have been a copy, they dropped the phone from the court case.

This makes sense as it would have helped Samsung show that it had an iphone like design prior to Apples and that the features Apple claim are infringed, such as the rounded corners for example, were selected as part of the natural evolution of a products design rather than by slavishly copying the competition as Apple claim is the case for the remaining Samsung products.

By barring Samsungs designer discussing the F700 and its design process Judge Koh has prevented them from introducing a key piece of evidence that would show, with little room for doubt, that Samsung really did have similar products to the iphone before Apple released any details of it, swinging the case a little more in favour of an Apple win.

Judge Koh ruled that, because it was no longer accused of infringing Apples patents the F700 was irrelevant to the current case and therefore discussing its design is also irrelevant. This seems to ignore the fact that such evidence would help the jury more easily reach a conclusion were they to be aware that such a design predated Apples but unfortunately the Judges decision is final.

Apples damages expert, Terry Musika, testified that despite his estimation that damages should be set at $2.5 billion he personally believes $2.7 billion is what they should really be as he took the jury through the way he had calculated the damages amount and explains that Apple paid him and his team $1.75 million dollars to help them come up with computer models and calculations, saying that it was not an easy thing to do despite just fifteen minutes earlier saying it was a fairly straightforward process of "sliding" money from a sale that would normally go to apple over to samsung if it wasn't an apple sale.

Samsung are, as the days legal action draws nearer its end, asking the Judge to end the case today based on their argument that Apple have not convincingly proven their case. Koh gave Samsung just five minutes to explain their arguments merit. Samsung argued that this was not long enough to respond to claims worth $2.5 billion in damages but tried their best to do so.

Judge Koh has, at the time of writing, just dismissed the case against three of the accused Samsung products because they were not sold in the United States. However she does allow these same products to be used against one of Samsungs subsidiaries and so in practice they are still part of the case but in respect to subsidiary companies rather than Samsung itself.

In fifteen minutes Samsung will call their first witness who will testify on examples of prior art. If Samsung have done their homework well his testimony could be a turning point in the case which has, in general, shifted more in favour of apple.

Gloves come off in Samsung vs Apple

People who want to buy an ipad or iphone are mistakenly ordering Samsung products instead, or at least this seems to be the crux of Apples legal argument.

Forgetting the fruity logo emblazoned on Apple products, the Samsung name right on the front of Samsungs or the fact that unless you blindly walk into a shop and just pick something up (in which case, shame on you) you will have an idea of what you want and purchase accordingly, Apple believe you will confuse their products with Samsung despite their admission early in the trial that Apple products are always on a seperate display to non Apple products (which makes it much harder to confuse them with those from other companies).

Of course Apple could be seen as arguing, unintentionally, that the kind of person who buys an Apple product does so based solely on its looks and not on its features, price, etcetera, which would mean that Apple considers it's customers are somewhat stupid and need protecting from themselves by removing any other product that has any similarities.

A large part of Apples attack on Samsung relates to the fact that Apple products are often rectangular in shape, have rounded corners, a centred screen and a speaker grill.

This was highlighted yesterday when Samsung cross examined Apples expert witness on design yesterday. Displaying four different cases of prior art Samsung asked the witness, Peter Bressler, whether these designs that came out before the iphone had a flat screen, a speaker, grille on the front, rounded corners and so on.

Bressler had to admit they were but then argued that it was unfair to only consider the front or back of a device without looking at every side and accused Samsung of being misleading.

Of course the argument that Apple make is that customers see a device from Samsung and think it is really an Apple product, that they then purchase it and this loses Apple money as a result.

In such a situation the front would likely be all the customer really looked at or could see on display in a store but were all possible viewpoints of a product considered Apple would no doubt be in a slightly stickier situation as the Apple logo would pretty quickly give away that, wait a minute, this is an Apple product.

Unfortunately Apples defence team are doing their best to avoid the fact that the design of certain things tend to evolve so that they have a lot of similarities, for example your car probably has four circular wheels, a steering wheel with a horn in the centre, exterior mirrors, airbags at the front and so on just as your television is probably rectangular, flat, thin, dark black or grey with two speakers hidden at the side or bottom of it.

With phones for example it feels nicer using something with rounded corners rather than sharper square edges, you need a speaker at the front to hear who you are talking to, buttons at the side for volume control, a head phone socket at the top etcetera.

These are common sense directions that smartphone designs were already moving in before the iphone was released. Indeed in the picture below you can see a 2006 Samsung design that predates the iphone (meaning it did not copy it because no one had seen the iphone at that time because the iphone was unveiled in 2007).

The gloves were off this week with Samsung highlighting just how much money each Apple expert was being paid to say that Samsungs products were copying those of the fruity giant (for those who are curious Peter Bressler, mentioned earlier, received $75,000) and by spending much of their time grilling Apples experts on the finer points of the design, pointing out a number of significant differences.

Samsung went into often minute detail about the Samsung devices accused of being copies, going so far as to point out that the Infuse 4G for example does not have a bezel but a case and that, were the casing to be considered a bezel it would still not be a copy of the iphones which not only has a distinct bezel but is also much slimmer than the casing / bezel from Samsung.

An interesting point the jury in the trial won't get to know is that Apple also accused Samsungs F700 of copying their look but quickly dropped it from the case when they realised it was in development before the iphone.

Why is that interesting? Because by that action Apple have clearly shown that the F700 looks like an iphone, so much so they wanted to prosecute, but that was in fact designed independently and without copying the iphone. Because of this they can't sue over that particular model, but unfortunately for Samsung they are niot allowed to use this evidence in court against Apple.

After all it would damage Apples claims of Samsung copying them if they had to admit they knew of a Samsung phone with many of its patented design features that predated their own. They couldn't then expect a jury to believe Samsung copied Apples.

But once you see some of the design "features" Apple have patented you begin to see that most modern smartphones can be seen as violating them. Here are some of the more unbelievable design elements at dispute in the current trial:

• rectangular hand held mobile device with rounded edges
• the colour black being used for the front of a device
• use of the colours black, blue, brown, brown-grey, grey-green, green, orange, red, silver, tan, white and yellow as part of the products design (used in display elements such as icons)

Apple also claim, despite not having patented the following, that they are original to Apple and Samsung are copying them by using the following non patented features:

• a rectangular box for packaging
• minimal lettering
• front view of the product displayed on top of packaging box
• a two piece box where the top nestles over the bottom
• a tray within the box that cradles the product
• being able to see the product immediately upon opening the box

Apple hit back with a Samsung document from 2007 that praised the iphones in several areas and stated that Samsung needed to compete with the iphone, and that the iphone was now the phone all others were being compared to.

Unfortunately it didn't say Samsung should copy any of the design in any way but that they should build a better product to compete. And that is exactly what the tech industry does, a good product comes out and then others improve upon it. This is the very reason why cars look like cars (with the accelerator, gear stick etc in the same place within the vehicle, having a steering wheel and so on), why laptops look like each other,  etcetera.

It remains to be seen who will win the trial but with each side having a set number of hours allotted to them, and with Samsung using a lot of theirs in just cross examining Apple witnesses, they may have to start cutting back on lengthy cross examinations that elicit a few small victories in favour of their own presentation of witnesses which, hopefully, will yield them more significant victories.

(Boxing gloves image used courtesy of Generationbass)

Perfectly clear hits Android [REVIEW]

Athentechs ios app "perfectly clear" hit android this week, with some users seeing it more as a hit to their wallet thanks to the use of in app purchases but we'll get to that later.

Perfectly Clear is a clever photo enhancement application that uses some clever code to analyse your photo's and automatically adjust them so that they look better, a kind of automated photoshop.

It does a fairly good job of automatically adjusting images (as can be seen in the picture below which is the automated version of the picture, not a manually tweaked version, and which shows the difference even totally automatic adjustment can make) but perhaps its greatest feature is that you can manually adjust settings to tweak a picture until it's just right for you and then share it in various ways or simply save it.

Pictures can be saved at the original size or at various alternate resolutions, this caused problems in testing as with an average of a hundred megabytes of ram free it could only save large pictures (such as a fourteen megapixel image) at 2048 by 1536 resolution, telling me that it required fifty two megabytes of ram which it could not allocate.

On devices with more free memory this won't be an issue of course and even at 2048 by 1536 pixels images are detailed enough for everyday use, with a little more ram you can save at higher resolutions which makes the app equally useful for those with high resolution images.

For an in app purchase of  under a pound you can unlock additional features which include teeth whitening, face smoothing, skin tone correction and making eyes more noticeable.

This has annoyed some users who feel cheated at the use of in app purchases and claim it makes the application unusable, but in this case their annoyance is misplaced.

All the automatic correction and a number of manually adjustable settings work with no additional payment needed. The only features you pay extra for are those specifically targeted at improving pictures of faces, something you may find useful for enhancing a facebook profile picture for example but even without the in app purchase the software still performs well on a variety of different pictures (including faces of course).

Indeed the ios version has this same use of in app purchases, and charges a small one time fee for certain features that are more specialised.

In app purchases can be annoying when they make an app almost unusable without spending out more money however this is one case where everything works without these purchases and unless you're planning on editing pictures of faces where you want to to whiten teeth or make eyes look sexier than you aren't going to need those features in the first place.

But should you want them, are they worth the extra money?

Surprisingly yes. The eyes can be made clearer larger and more defined (in what some would call a cute way, almost like becoming a human version of an anime character) and the teeth can indeed be whitened should you really have a need to do so.

Clearly there is some clever calculation going on to target specific areas of faces within pictures, and clearly if it is something only certain users will find useful an argument could be made that it makes sense to sell the app for less and simply charge extra for those who need those more specialised features.

At its introductory price of just over sixty pence (sixty three at the time of writing) it makes sense for budding photographers, or even those with a habit of taking not so good pictures, to get Perfectly Clear while it's on offer.

The use of in app purchases is of course always going to remain a sore point for some users, and rightly so, but at least in this instance it doesn't interfere with the intended use of the application and isn't going to stop your photo's looking better if you don't want to pay more for those more specialised extras.

If you want to know more, or to buy the app yourself, head on to the Play store and, as is recommended with any app purchase, check the user comments there before making your decision.