Samsung copied designs from Apple's application icons, said Susan Kare, former Apple employee.
The patent trial of Apple and Samsung moves further with Apple calling in award-winning graphic designer and former Apple employee, Susan Kare as a witness. The move by Apple was to support Apple's stance that that the South Korean company copied Apple's application icons for designing its tablets and smartphones which looked "confusingly similar."
The application icons are patented designs on an iPhone said the graphic designer. In the Samsung handset these are used to identify applications like e-mail, messaging, contacts and others.
The court battle is ongoing between Apple and Samsung with Samsung being sued for patent infringement for $2.5 billion at the District Court in San Jose, California. Kare testified to the court on August 7.
Kare was questioned by Apple attorney Rachel Krevans, where she looked at eleven different models of Samsung bearing the names Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G and Galaxy S 4G. She said that the icon designs of Samsung were giving "substantially the same ... visual impression" as that of iPhone and later she added that they looked "confusingly similar" to iPhone.
Her testimony echoes what other witnesses for Apple said during the trial. These arguments support Apple which holds that Samsung used these designs to confuse consumers by making it hard to distinguish between the handhelds.
Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple testified earlier in the week, saying Samsung "ripped off a number of our design elements" and the design copying has created confusions for customers.
During cross-examination by Charles Verhoeven, Samsung's lawyer, Kare was asked if consumers could not see the logos of Samsung or Apple when they turn the phone on, for which she replied it was outside her area of expertise and she was not a consumer expert.
Russell Winer, marketing expert, author and educator was called in by Apple to testify the distinctive "trade dress" of Apple.
"I think Apple's trade dresses are among the most distinctive in the world," said Winer to the jury.
Samsung's acceptance of iPhone as "setting the standard for screen centric design" comment was in itself a proof that Samsung used iPhone as a "target product" for development of its smartphones.
The attorney for Samsung countered saying there is no evidence to support Apple suffered loss in its market share or led to loss in sales due to Samsung products just because consumers got confused with Apple's products.
Samsung enjoyed 32.6 percent global market share compared to Apple's 16.9 percent. But Apple was No. 1 in worldwide tablet business with 68.2 percent while Samsung was at 9.6 percent share. The figures were from IDC for the second quarter of this year.
