Apple and Samsung Finally End Patent Debate
posted Sunday Jul 1, 2018 by Scott Ertz
This story has been a long time in the works. In 2011, Apple sued Samsung, claiming that Samsung had violated a number of Apple's patents. While some revolved around interaction and OS design, which was mostly Google's doing, the most memorable aspect of the suit was definitely the design patent. It is one of the most mocked suits in technology history because Apple claimed that Samsung had violated a patent involving rounded corners on a rectangle.
While everyone in the industry thought that this would be a fast loss for Apple, it has been just the opposite. In fact, in 2012, a judge ruled that Apple was owed over $1 billion. Yes, with a B. The case has been disputed and won and lost so many times, that we are now 7 years later, and no one is quite sure who owes what to whom.
That changed this week because Apple and Samsung have filed a motion with the court stating that they have come to terms and the case is being closed. The judge in the case dismissed the case with prejudice, which means that no future cases can be filed on the same terms. That means that the case is officially over. Hooray! Because of the size and scope of this case, we obviously know nothing about the terms of the agreement. All we can say for sure is that neither company will need to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees to continue this battle that seemed to have no technological or legal point.
In reality, this case had nothing to do with a legal victory. Apple was trying to do damage to the company that they rightly saw as their biggest competitor in the Android marketplace. They had hoped to prevent Samsung from producing products that looked like Apple's products, forcing a wider visual divide between Apple's believed premium design and what Samsung, and other companies, could produce. In the end, Samsung became Apple's only real competitor in the smartphone space and their need to differentiate their products from Apple's actually led to some amazing handset innovations. If not for the design patent, we might not have ended up with the Edge screens, which might even lead to Microsoft's foldable Surface tablet.
The end of this lawsuit should not signal the end of a legal battle, but instead the end of Apple's fight to control a marketplace that they have accidentally inspired their competitors to take a bigger percentage share of.
