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Apple and Samsung have finally ended their long patent battle whose central question was whether Samsung had copied the iPhone. At a court hearing today, Judge Lucy Koh said the two companies had informed her that they had reached an agreement. The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
The patent battle began in 2011 and initially resulted in a $ 1 billion decision in favor of Apple. But that did not stop there. A series of appeals pushed the dispute to the Supreme Court and back, while companies have continually revamped which patents were infringed and, more recently, exactly how much Samsung owes to Apple due to the infringement .
The case has turned around a number of design and utility patents for the basic functions of a smartphone, such as the tap to zoom and the grid of the phone. application of the home screen. But while the fight was sloppy using specific patents, the battle was ultimately about whether Samsung copied Apple in the early days of smartphones to gain an advantage. The jury decided that in many ways he had done it.
More recently, the verdict has been reduced to $ 539 million for Apple. Samsung filed on appeal earlier this month. But the two companies were able to reach an agreement before they could be judged again.
Apple declined to give the terms of the settlement and pointed to a statement made in May, when the case was tried for the last time:
We believe deeply in the value of design, and our teams work tirelessly to create innovative products that delight our customers. This case has always been more than just money. Apple has ignited the smartphone revolution with the iPhone and it's a fact that Samsung has blatantly copied our design. It is important that we continue to protect the hard work and innovation of so many people at Apple.
We are grateful to the jury for their service and happy that they agree that Samsung should pay to copy our products.
Samsung declined to comment.
It is unclear why, after all these years, this affair is finally coming to an end. As Apple points out, money was not the problem here – and really, the amounts discussed never represented anything substantial for both companies. It seemed that neither one nor the other company wanted to break with the years and end such a symbolically important battle. Perhaps, so many years (and some leadership changes) later, they did not care enough enough to see this until the end.
Apple and Samsung have had another big patent battle, which was first decided in 2014, but did not end until last year. In this case, Apple earned $ 120 million due to violations of its "slide-to-unlock" patent and several others. Both companies also had international patent battles, but agreed to drop the lawsuits in 2014.
With these two cases wrapped up, the seemingly interminable, sometimes dramatic and often extremely technical battle between these two giants of smartphones is finally officially over. At least until the next.
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