“Officially, it’s Apple versus Samsung Electronics in another tech patent face-off in a San Jose courtroom this week,” Brian X. Chen reports for The New York Times. “But there is another company with a lot at stake in the case — Google.”
“In a lawsuit, Apple is seeking about $2 billion in damages from Samsung for selling phones and tablets that Apple says violate five of its mobile software patents,” Chen reports. “Some features in Samsung devices that Apple objects to are part of Google’s Android operating system… if Apple wins, Google could have to make changes to critical Android features, and Samsung and other Android phone makers might have to modify the software on their phones.”
“‘Google’s been lurking in the background of all these cases because of the Android system,’ said Mark P. McKenna, a professor who teaches intellectual property law at Notre Dame. ‘Several people have described the initial battle between Samsung and Apple as really one between Apple and Google,'” Chen reports. “this second fight has to be about more than money, said James Bessen, a law lecturer at Boston University. He said that if Apple just wanted money, it would have already agreed to settle.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
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, March 26, 2010
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Apple’s products came first, then Samsung’s:
Here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:
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