A few weeks ago, Samsung sent a note to U.S. Courts stating that they believed that the iPhone 5 infringed upon multiple patents and that they expected to take Apple to the court over it after carefully analyzing the device. We discussed this in detail in an earlier post. Today, as expected, Samsung has filed a lawsuit against Apple.
The news comes from Reuters – a reputable international news agency – in the form of a very brief report in which they cite a statement from Samsung saying that they have filed a new lawsuit against Apple, Inc. in an unspecified U.S. court on basis of multiple patent infringements in technologies used in the iPhone 5. The company said that they “have little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights.”
At the moment, we do not have official details on the specific patents allegedly infringed by iPhone 5, but we do know that Samsung mentioned eight technical patents in defense in previous cases against Apple that are very likely to be involved in some way in this case.
Among others, these patents are related to technologies like multimedia syncing, data display apparatus, remote video transmission, and apparatus for recording + reproducing digital images and speech. Two of these patents were declared as standard essentials meaning Samsung couldn’t use them to sue Apple. The rest, as we know, didn’t do anything for Samsung in previous cases.
In the last U.S.-based Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit, for example, many of Samsung’s products were found to be infringing on Apple’s patents; the Korean electronics giant was ordered to pay a huge $1 billion fine for “slavishly copying” the iPhone and iPad’s hardware and software design.
Such high-scale lawsuits take their time to resolve, so don’t expect any big news related to it for several weeks and months. However, when the proceedings do begin, a lot of juicy details are likely to leak out. Last time, we received information on Apple’s design process for iPad and iPhone, iOS device prototypes and plans for upcoming devices from Samsung.
We’ll be keeping an eye on this case and will certainly update our readers about the latest news, so stay tuned to Redmond Pie!
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