“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and Google Inc. CEO Larry Page are holding discussions regarding patent disputes involving the two leading technology companies, said a person with knowledge of the talks,” Brian Womack and Adam Satariano report for Bloomberg. “Cook and Page spoke by phone last week and are expected to talk more soon, said the person, who asked not to be named because the conversations aren’t public.”
Read more in the full article here.
Alexei Oreskovic and Poornima Gupta report for Reuters, “Discussions involving lower-level officials of the two companies are also ongoing… The two companies are keeping the lines of communication open at a high level against the backdrop of Apple’s decisive legal victory in a patent infringement case against Samsung, which uses Google’s Android software.”
“One possible scenario under consideration could be a truce involving disputes over basic features and functions in Google’s Android mobile software, one source said,” Oreskovic and Gupta report. “But it’s unclear whether Page and Cook are discussing a broad settlement of the various disputes between the two companies – most of which involve the burgeoning mobile computing area – or are focused on a more limited set of issues.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Based on the two quotes below, it’s tough to imagine Cook not sticking to his guns and instead settling for licensing significant defining features:
I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want. – Steve Jobs to Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt, at a Palo Alto, California cafe, March 26, 2010
I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it. We just want people to invent their own stuff. And so if we could get to some kind of arrangement where we could be assured that’s the case and a fair settlement on the stuff that’s occurred, I would highly prefer to settle versus battle. But it — the key thing is that it’s very important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, April 24, 2012
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
