For those of us who are on the outside looking in, it appears that the war of the patents between Apple and Samsung isn’t likely to come to any kind of mutually beneficial end any time soon. Both companies are exercising their right to accuse the other of infringing on patents which they individually own, claims that have resulted in certain Samsung devices being banned from sale in the United States. Samsung had earlier appealed the decision but found themselves on the wrong end of the result as the hearing judge decided not to overturn the decision in favor of a trial.
The official trial for this case is set to begin next week, and in normal circumstances it would be big news to know that two of the world’s largest technology companies and the two biggest players in the mobile tech game are about to go head to head in a court of law. But considering this has been ongoing for a considerable length of time, it just seems like an everyday occurrence now. In the run up to the case next week we can obviously expect both sides to be finalizing their cases, but it is the trial documents from Samsung’s legal team that provide an insight into what the Korean company hopes to achieve as the outcome.
The document itself is obviously extremely in-depth and presents the arguments of the company and outlines what they are hoping to gain from going to trial. Although Samsung is the one who is currently on the wrong side of the fence, their legal document makes some rather startling claims including one that claims Apple wouldn’t have been able to sell a single iPhone without the help of their patented technology:
Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today‘s smartphones. Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung‘s patented technology.
Samsung is also claiming that they were in advanced stages of product development before Apple even entered the smartphone market with the original iPhone back in mid 2007. The document claims that the design features on the products in question were similar to those of the resulting iPhone but in no way did the Samsung change their design direction to copy the iPhone after it became public knowledge. The document is packed to the rafters with insightful and interesting information, including but not limited to, claims that Apple is using their patented technology that relates to communicating with other devices without actually paying for it.
Regardless of what happens during the official trial, it will be extremely interesting to see what the judge makes of both Apple’s and Samsung’s legal briefs.
(source WSJ)
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