The world's two largest smartphone makers, Apple and Samsung, have finally completed an epic seven-year patent trial regarding the design of the smartphone, the finger slide unlock feature of 'Slide to Unlock', and other Apple patents that Samsung infringed. Among the infringed patents is the notorious patent describing rounded corners. In 2012, the court decided that Samsung copied both interface elements and design.
This expensive case for both companies will surely go down in the history of patent law, since it checked the possibility of proving such concepts as “design theft” in court and punishing a competitor for such actions,
writes The Wall Street Journal (after peyvol). This case will definitely affect US patent law, the author of the
Patently Apple legal blog
agrees .
Companies refuse to comment on the terms of the agreement, but confirm that as of June 27, 2018, they no longer have any claims to each other. According
to Reuters, whatever the final amount of the agreement under the agreement, it is unlikely to be so significant as to have a noticeable impact on the financial performance of either of the two companies.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the terms of the agreement, but said that Apple “seriously cares about design” and that “this case has always been more than just a money question.” A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment.
A series of lawsuits Apple was born back in 2011 after a fiery statement by co-founder Steve Jobs, who threatened with “thermonuclear war” against competitors on the Android operating system. In particular, he threatened Google, which allegedly copied the iPhone, and others, that he would spend the last breaths of his life and every last cent of the money from Apple’s 40 billion Apple bank account to destroy Android, “because it is a stolen product”. Steve Jobs said that competitors are "scared to death because they are aware of their guilt." He added that apart from the search, all other Google products - Android and Google Docs - are “crap”. Below is a specific quote from Steve Jobs on Walter Isaacson's biographical book “Steve Jobs”:
“So Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC (and, therefore, against Android), accusing it of violating twenty of its patents. Among them were patents, including a variety of multi-touch gestures: “step and pull” to open, double-tap for zoom, compression and stretching, and sensors that determine exactly how the device is held. I have never seen him so angry that he was at home in Palo Alto that week when a lawsuit was filed:
Our lawsuit says: "Google, you stole the iPhone from us, they cleaned us out to the fullest." Theft in especially large sizes. I will fight to the last breath, if necessary, and I will spend all forty billion on Apple's bank account to restore justice. I will destroy Android because it is a stolen product. I am ready to start a thermonuclear war. They are scared to death, because they know that they are guilty. In addition to searching, all the other Google products are Android, Google Docs are crap.
A few days after this tirade, Jobs was called by Schmidt, who left Apple's board of directors the previous summer. He offered to drink coffee, and they met in a cafe in one of the shopping centers in Palo Alto. "The first half of the meeting, we discussed personal affairs, and the second - his idea that Google stole user interface design from Apple," recalled Schmidt. When they turned to this topic, Jobs mostly spoke. Google has robbed him, he said in hard terms. “We caught you red-handed,” he told Schmidt. - I do not need the world. I do not need money. If you offer me five billion, I will not take them. I have a lot of money. I want you to stop using these ideas in Android, that's all I want. ” They never came to anything. ”
So began the judicial standoff, which eventually resulted in the two-fold Apple vs. Samsung. The case was delayed for a long time due to the determination of the amount of compensation. A US court quickly ruled that the patents were indeed infringed, and then the parties decided for a long time what exactly the amount of lost Apple profits and dishonest Samsung profits were. The Korean corporation seems to have been able to prove that the violation of the design of individual parts of the product does not mean that you need to give a profit from the sale of all of these products in full. Still, a smartphone is a very complex technical product that cannot be reduced to individual elements of graphic design or user interface.
But then the case was returned to the lower court, which listened to Apple’s argument that in this particular case Samsung’s profit was related to design elements that violated Apple’s patents. That is, the smartphone does not have these convenient "chips" - and all the clever technical stuffing is not needed by anyone. The court agreed with this.
According to lawyers, there is no winner in this matter. Although Apple won in the eyes of the public, especially with the original sentence in 2012 to pay her $ 1 billion, but Samsung actually got off with a little blood and avoided a judicial ban on the import of smartphones in the United States.
This particular patent battle has come to an end, but Apple continues a multibillion-dollar legal battle, demanding payment of patent royalties from Qualcomm. In particular, Apple challenges four Qualcomm patents to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Samsung really paid Apple some compensation - in May, a court ruled Samsung to pay Apple $ 539 million in favor of patent infringement, whereas the defendant had already paid $ 399 million, that is, it remained to pay $ 140 million - but Google didn’t pay a single dollar as Steve Jobs longed for.
The “thermonuclear war” against Android is probably over.