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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: 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.