OPINION TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1928 McCormick Tribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South State Street Chicago, Illinois 60616 E-mail: editor@technewsiit.com Website: http://www.technewsiit.com TECHNEWS STAFF Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor Ryan Kamphuis Hannah Larson Campus Editor Utsav Gandhi A8E Editor Ryan Hynes Copy Editors Kori Bowns Kristal Copeland Layout Editors Kori Bowns Karthik Kumar Swasti Khuntia Pranava Teja Surukuchi Art Editor Adin Goings Distribution Manager Mike Purdy Business Manager Ryan Kamphuis IT Manager Pranava Teja Surukuchi Financial Advisor Vickie Tolbert Faculty Advisor Gregory Pulliam MISSION STATEMENT The mission of TechNews is to promote student discussion and bolster the IIT community by providing a newspaper that is highly accessible, a stalwart ofjournalistic integrity, and a student forum. TechNews is a dedicated to the belief that a strong campus newspaper is essential to a strong campus community. 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LOCAL 8 NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. S'.' I.. i.. ILLINOIs INSTITUTE l/ OF TECHNOLOGY opinion@technewsiit.com TechNews Tuesday, August 28, 2012 Apple, Samsung trial highlights software patent issues By RohitVandanapu TECHNEWS WRITER One of the most anticipated patent trials in the past few years, Samsung and Apple have been facing off against each other in a San Jose courtroom for weeks. The trial ended on Friday, August 24 with the nine-person jury unanimously finding Samsung guilty of will- ingly infringing upon Apple’s patents, and asked Samsung to pay $1.5 billion of damages. Samsung did escape any successful allega- tions of patent infringement committed by its tablets, but on the smartphone front, they re- ally were destroyed by Apple’s allegations that Samsung copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone. Here are some of the allega- tions Apple levied against Samsung: The designs created by Samsung for their phones before the iPhone was launched were all different from the ones they cre- ated after the launch of the iPhone. Once the iPhone was successful in the market, Samsung made a paradigmatic shift focusing heavily on full-touch devices. Samsung tried to argue that their F700 model phone resembled the iPhone, but was designed before the iPhone. However, in order to side with Samsung regarding this patent, the court wanted to see that prior art, which is the term used to describe images of a device shown to the public before the launch of said device in a market, was displayed for the F700 before the announcement of the iPhone. It then came out that the F700 had no prior art shown to the public until after the iPhone had launched, and Apple hammered on this point. Trade dress is the way a product is “branded” using its design elements, so that consumers know who makes particular prod- uct. Dilution is a fancy way of saying a prod- uct damages another product’s famous brand because it looks very similar. The Samsung phones have made Apple iPhone less distinct, diluting them and blurring the distinctive- ness between both the products. The phones include iPhone, iPhone 3G/S, iPhone 4. The trade dress features are as follows: a) A rectangular product with four evenly rounded corners. b) A flat, clear surface covering the front of the product. c) A display screen under the sur- face. d) When the device is on, a matrix of colorful square icons with evenly rounded corners with- in the display screen. 6 ) When the de- vice is on, a bottom dock of colorful square icons with evenly rounded cor- ners set off from the other icons in the display, that do not change as other pages of the user interface are viewed. Trade dress is generally looked at on a holistic basis, and based on the Apple’s trade dress; Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 are possibly in violation of copying the designs. Not only has Apple state that the iPhone’s trade dress is be- ing diluted, but they have stated that iPhone’s trade dress is “not only protectable, but fa- mous.” A design patent, by comparison, is a way to protect unique ornamental elements of a product. Design Patents are the biggest part of Apple’s case against Samsung‘s smart- phones. Apple alleges two hardware design patents for the iPhone and one software GUI design pattern for the iPhone were infringed by Samsung. The design patents infringed are: Design patent D’677, which covers a phone with a rounded rectangular shape, edge-to-edge glass, a thin bezel, and a hori- zontal speaker. Design patent D’087, which covers a phone with a home button, rounded corners, and a front edge border. This design depicts the shape of the iPhone. Design patent D’305, which covers a software interface with a grid icon layout, and an icon dock at bottom. This design depicts the software UI of the iPhone. These utility patents were also in- fringed: Claim 19 of the ‘381 patent, which depicts the bounce-back or rubber-banding, includes Galaxy Tab 10.1, Droid Charge, Epic , suns 5, III-I I-H .I-III 2' HI 'I .1_ r I? i: .5 II .5 'I. Image courtesy of Ian.IeXbIog.com 4G, Fascinate, Galaxy Ace, S2, Nexus S 4G. Claim 8 of ‘915 patent, which de- picts the distinguishing between one-finger scroll and two-finger zoom. Claim 50 of ‘163 patent, which depicts the double-tap to zoom, includes many Samsung phones in this. Samsung filed a countersuit against Apple that brought up questions about the UMTS standard and Apple’s infringement of Samsung patents by using the UMTS stan- dard, but the jury ruled completely in Apple’s favor on this issue. Samsung has already announced that they plan to appeal this decision, and it is unlikely that Apple will be interested in com- promising in exchange for Samsung foregoing this appeal. If the decisions of the court stand through the appeals process, Samsung will firstly need to remove all of the software func- tions from its phones that were found to in- fringe upon Apple’s software patents. Upon doing that, Samsung will sec- ondly need to evaluate the future of the Touch- Wiz UI, the software overlay they use on their Android smartphones, and the general hard- ware design of its phones. Something you’d like to get of your chest? Email opinion@technewsiit.com to sub- mit a Letter to the Editor, or an opinon piece. Reduced printing credits promotes sustainability, technology-based reading By Hannah Larson ASSISTANT EDITOR As if printing your 13 page research paper right before class starts wasn’t enough trouble, printing credits are about to get a whole lot stricter. According to IIT Today, free print- ing credits are being cut in half from 500 to 250 each semester, with credits rolling over until the end of the summer term. Though reducing student paper use is a great way to further our sustainability goals, IIT Today tried to make me feel guilty about printing copious amounts of reading materials. Listing off the stats on campus pa- per use like: 2.8 million sheets, which would be 121 feet shorter than the John Hancock build- ing, administrators are taking us all on a guilt trip. While that is a lot of paper, it’s not out of the question for a university. It’s ironic that we pride ourselves on being a technologi- cally advanced school, yet still use so many hard copies. This means one of two things: that hard copies are much more important than electronic copies. Hard copies can be critical to un- derstanding a subject, especially for students who are being submersed in entirely new sub- jects. According to a New York Times article, [“Room for Debate: Does the Brain like E- Books?”] a panel of brain specialists all agree that utilizing electronics devices to read and remember information is incompetent to us- ing hard copies. I agree with this whole-heart- edly. While electronic versions can be useful to copy problems from an e-textbook, reading 30 pages about the New Deal for my history class requires a little more concentra- tion and it’s always beneficial to actively read, i.e. taking notes, writing in the margin. I know there are plenty of applications and whatnot to actively read, electronically, but it’s not the same. The average American spends up to eight hours a day staring at a screen (cell phone, iPad, computer, television, et cetera) and it can be hell on your eyes. I spend the majority of my time on my computer laying out TechNews, on Facebook and Twitter, goof- ing off, listening to music, and reading blogs, so I’ve started to wear magnifiers to take the strain off of my old, failing eyes. With these new printing rules, I’ll have to start wearing them while reading hard copies for class. I just printed a 34-page read- ing, with four pages of reading on each piece of paper, back and front, black and white. My head is already spinning. This is not including the fact that when I opened my account, I had almost $22 in printing credits, now I’m down to $20. This brings me to another point, I’ve added almost $30 worth of printing credits at my time at IIT, and I have a printer at home, but I use the campus printers to save money, and for the convenience. I wouldn’t be as upset over the print- ing credits if the printing stations were a little more accessible. In my perfect world, there would be remote printing stations in every academic building, (which would be a great thing to try to implement, are you reading this SGA senators? Votebox?) and I wouldn’t be running to Galvin or the MTCC every time I needed to print something for class. But we’re a distance from that. I’m not trying to criticize our sus- tainability efforts, I’m just trying to be a good student! Something you’d like to get ofiyour chest? Email opinion@techhewsiit.com to sub- mit a Letter to the Editor, or an opinon piece.