And yet none of the photos of their devices show a screen that's flush with the front of the tablet - in all of them the surface of the screen is slightly indented from the face of the tablet, like laptop screens and TV screens often are.
Being oblivious to that rather crucial point rather invalidates the entire argument being made since you've clearly designed something which doesn't have an identical design to an iPad, thus the design and form of an iPad is not the only possible design for a tablet.
It's fairly important to remember that in order to infringe a design patent you need to have a design that is 'substantially similar' to the described design rather than simply having design features in common with the described design. Rounded corners is fine, as long as its not rounded corner AND a whole bunch of other design decisions that makes it look identical to an iPad.
And yet that would have made CrunchPad Prototype B an iPad infringer before the iPad came out. In later versions, they seem to have abandoned the mono-surface design, but they clearly considered having it in their initial phase.
I think the larger point here is that inventions and innovation don't happen in a vacuum, and most of the stuff around us is anything but novel. Yet our legal systems act otherwise.
the crunchpad went on to be released as the joojoo, which did have the screen flush. IIRC there was only a single prototype we built out of the later 4-5 where that wasn't the case.
and you can play the 'but its just a..' game all the way back to vacuum tubes with anything. that's what innovation is.
what I am arguing against is the Apple expert claim about the design being a complete leap and unique and not something that would be reproduced without knowing the ipad. I can argue against that because we did just that (as did others).
Did you feel the least bit ridiculous writing that? I know I felt a little ridiculous just reading that. Perhaps I just have a really hard time understanding how any kind of rounded corners or edges could possibly qualify for a patent unless it had some sort of unique function. Form should never be patentable. Function maybe sometimes.
elemeno clearly stated that rounded corners alone is not enough, it's part of many other things. You may disagree that design patents should exist at all, but they do not just cover a single thing.
Being oblivious to that rather crucial point rather invalidates the entire argument being made since you've clearly designed something which doesn't have an identical design to an iPad, thus the design and form of an iPad is not the only possible design for a tablet.
It's fairly important to remember that in order to infringe a design patent you need to have a design that is 'substantially similar' to the described design rather than simply having design features in common with the described design. Rounded corners is fine, as long as its not rounded corner AND a whole bunch of other design decisions that makes it look identical to an iPad.