Apple, Samsung Resolve Smartphone Design Fight After 7 Years
Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. reached a settlement in their U.S. patent battle, ending a seven-year fight over smartphone designs that spanned the globe.
The string of lawsuits started in 2011 after Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder who died that year, threatened to go "thermonuclear" on rivals that used the Android operating system and accused Samsung of "slavishly" copying the iPhone design. The companies didn't disclose the terms of the accord and didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The ensuing litigation cost each company hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and tested their reputations as innovators. Wednesday's settlement resolved the last outstanding dispute.
"The sumo wrestlers have tired of the wrestling match," said Paul Berghoff, a patent lawyer with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff in Chicago who followed the cases over the years. "They both were tired and happy to stop paying the outside lawyers. We may never know who blinked first, who made the call."
Also at Axios.
Previously: Apple Wants to Ban Samsung Products - Again!
Four years later, Rounded Corners are Fair Game
Apple Wants Samsung to Cough Up $180M More in Patent Dispute
Supreme Court Says Samsung Doesn't Owe Apple $400 Million in Damages for Copying iPhone Look
Apple v. Samsung Proceeds to Fourth Jury Trial
Apple And Samsung Face Off In Court Over Design Patents Once Again
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday June 28 2018, @03:43PM (5 children)
Considering the huge sums of money spent in litigation, I can't help but wonder what things would be like if some fraction of it were spent, instead, in providing the USPTO with additional funding sufficient to reject overreaching, invalid, or non-novel patents. Ditto for a proper search for pre-existing stuff.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 28 2018, @04:51PM
I suspect that making your own versions of screens and digitizers and memory and all the other things that Samsung manufactures these days was going to be just too costly, and since Steve has been dead long enough now, they can get back to business instead of protecting rounded corners. The pissing contest never did make any sense.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday June 28 2018, @04:52PM (2 children)
Still, I'm not sure I want private companies directly funding the USPTO. What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that?!!?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 28 2018, @08:29PM
Wait wait wait, so you finally found a piece of government you think should NOT be privatized??
Someone call the Pope, we've got a bonified miracle over here!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 28 2018, @08:36PM
Yeah, definitely not, but how about at an extra 5% payout to the USPTO for losing? Not sure that would make things any worse than they are now and it might make them self funded.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday June 28 2018, @05:26PM
To our credit, we are wont to think of war as a huge waste, and stupid. And it is. But this at least is far from total war. We did not have Steve Jobs and Lee Kun-hee recruiting soldiers and buying lethal weapons to employ private armies against each other. Or even worse, handing their respective nations an excuse for a casus belli, and helping stoke war fever.
Instead, we got a careful documentation of arguments and decisions, and set some precedents. Perhaps they are obvious and really did not need to be debated in court, but it takes a lot to convince the average hard headed, unimaginative layman of anything. Even these tech titans needed to explore these issues.