“We’ve heard rumblings for some time that Steve Jobs initiated talks with Samsung back in 2010 in an attempt to head off a patent infringement suit against the Korean device manufacturer, but the extent of those talks are just now coming to light,” Matt Macari reports for The Verge.
“In a recent filing in California federal court, Apple details the negotiations it pursued with Samsung between July and September of 2010 — several months prior to the initiation of patent litigation in April 2011,” Macari reports. “In an attempt to bolster allegations that Samsung was fully aware of its patents and was ‘willfully infringing,’ Apple outlined its 2010 negotiations with Samsung in the filing. ”
Macari reports, “The extent of the negotiations between the two companies seems to suggest that Jobs’ famous claim that he was willing to go ‘thermonuclear war’ on Android isn’t entirely consistent with Apple’s behavior at the time.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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Apple offers licensing deals in some Android patent infringement disputes, sources say – March 6, 2012
Steve Jobs: ‘I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product; I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this’ – October 20, 2011
speculation.
Verge is unprofessional and incompetent here, because information about Jobs trying to settle things with Samsung before going to court was not just “rumbling” — Jobs himself said he tried to talk thing out. So no real news here.
Also, Jobs’ position was not inconsistent about this issue. Apple tried to make Samsung stop infringing the patents, this is what he wanted. Another fail from Verge on this, also because with “thermonuclear” Jobs was not talking about Samsung, but about Android.
Uhhh, does Mr. Macari not understand Negotiation Tactics 101?
“The extent of the negotiations between the two companies seems to suggest that Jobs’ famous claim that he was willing to go ‘thermonuclear war’ on Android isn’t entirely consistent with Apple’s behavior at the time.”
Hogwash. Jobs was *willing* to go thermonuclear war on Android. It doesn’t automatically imply that’s *all* he wanted Apple to do, else they’d have just with that approach from the get-go.
Jobs was outlining the extent to which Apple took this issue seriously, warning Samsung of how far they were truly willing to go to defend their intellectual property. I don’t see any contradiction here at all.
agreed.
the thermonuclear threat was said about Android (GOOG), which had a very large element of betrayal and shameless copying.
Working things out with Samsung was working with a major, key supplier. GOOG is also a major key supplier (search, maps). Samsungs use of Android is 1 step removed from the source.