“Samsung Electronics Co. called the first of as many as seven Google Inc. witnesses to begin making its case in a $2 billion patent trial that Apple Inc.’s true target in the lawsuit is the Android operating system,” Joel Rosenblatt reports for Bloomberg.
“Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s vice president of Android engineering, testified yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California, about the development of the Android operating system used in Samsung phones. Apple contends, and Samsung denies, that several Android features in Galaxy devices infringe the iPhone maker’s patents,” Rosenblatt reports. “As the world’s top two smartphone makers spar at their second U.S. jury trial, Samsung is trying to show that Apple’s claims are a cloaked attack on Google in an attempt to blunt smartphone competition from Android.”
“Lockheimer’s opening testimony was aimed at buttressing Samsung’s argument that Google, which isn’t a defendant in the case, was more than capable of creating an operating system without copying Apple’s patents,” Rosenblatt reports. “The executive said he joined Google in 2006 and that the company was already at work on Android, which was an independent company Google acquired in 2005. In that period, as phones were becoming smartphones, Google’s aim was to provide an open-source operating system for free.”
“Asked by Samsung lawyer John Quinn if Lockheimer’s team ever copied anything from the iPhone, the witness replied, ‘Not that I’m aware,'” Rosenblatt reports. “‘We like to have our own identity,’ he said. ‘It was important that it was our ideas.'”
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MacDailyNews Take: Here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:
Apple’s products came first, then Samsung’s:
