While Apple may have spent most of Tuesday on the defence, the company entered into into the trial’s evidence a document that may prove to be a checkmate against Samsung — a document that shows beyond a reasonable doubt that Samsung may have “slavishly copied” the iPhone’s design.
The document in question is a 132-page internal Samsung report that compares the iPhone to the original Galaxy S phone and outline ways that it can be improved.
What is particularly damning for Samsung, is that a number of sections of the report appear to advise on how Samsung can copy Apple’s designs, without overly appearing as such.
For a company that is trying to defend itself against allegations that amount to it attempting to cash in on the prominence of the iPhone and iPad in the cultural zeitgeist by making devices that looked a little too similar, phrases such as “Double Tap zoom in/out function needs to be supplemented” won’t do much to help its case.
Samsung, in its defence, says the report is nothing more than a benchmark against a competing company.
“Samsung benchmarks many peer companies,” said a company spokesperson. “In fact, these are typical competitive analyses routinely undertaken by many companies in many industries – including Apple. Samsung stands by its culture of continuous improvement and innovation. We are very proud of the product innovations driven by our more than 50,000 designers and engineers around the world who have made Samsung’s products the products of choice.”
The trial resumes Friday in San Jose.
Below is the document in question:
Samsung Relative Evaluation Report on S1, iPhone
