It may be difficult to imagine that eighteen years ago, someone thought about tablet personal computers. However, there is a video recorded in 1994 that shows that technology visionaries were churning up the idea way before Steve Jobs even thought of one.

The said video shows Knight Ridder, a newspaper company back then, showing a clip of what the future would be like, and it looks like they were very much spot on about their predictions of technological advancements in the future. While this is a great manifestation of how man is forward thinking and very much evolutionary in their ideas, it may not be the best defense for Apple for the current patent war on tablet computers.

In the past months, Apple has filed complaints and lawsuits against Samsung due to the alleged ripping off of the tablet design.  This shows that the Apple iPad is very much similar to the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

For any regular person, the tablets look similar and there is not much of a difference. It may not even look like an original concept for either of the two companies. However, in the legal sense of our complicated and mundane world, the two tablets are fighting it out to see which one is the original concept.

Back to the video – that 1994 clip may show that Apple did not have the ground-breaking idea that millions of people have been in awe about. The iPad may not be the innovative design that lots of people have been lining up in Apple stores for months. The video shows that the highly popular tablet may be as simple and straightforward as it can be and it is just a more refined design from what was seen in the 1994 video clip.

The 1994 Fiddler/Knight Ridder “tablet” is the “same basic visual impression” as the Apple’s iPad, according to Judge Lucy Koh. This decision has been a big blow to Apple as they have failed to topple their competition, Samsung, on this patent war.

Of course, even without any legal education, anyone could have figured out that the design of the iPad, or any Apple device for that matter, may not be much of an original design or concept. If anything, Apple’s devices are refined and classy but it is not a license to wage wars on patents against other manufacturers.

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