Apple and Samsung are at it again in a new patent trial that opened yesterday, 1 April 2014, debating the role of a company not even part of the case, namely Google. Apple’s legal team vowed to prove that Samsung flagrantly copied iPhone features and Samsung should pay more than $2bn in damages.
Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny said Samsung has stolen a number of key iOS features and design elements and used them when making its Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Apple said evidence shows that the South Korean electronics giant sold more than 37 million infringing smartphones and tablets in the United States.
Samsung lawyer John Quinn in response said the patents that Apple claims were infringed are part of the Android software package developed by Google engineers. Samsung attorney Peter Quinn told jurors in his opening statement on Tuesday that Apple is a great company but doesn’t own everything and its claims are unfounded.
California-based Apple has demanded royalties of about $40 per device to license the patented technology to Samsung, according to McElhinny. The overall amount being sought by Apple in damages from Samsung will top $2bn, the lawyer explained.
“This case is not about Google,” McElhinny told jurors.”It is Samsung, not Google, that chose to put these features into its phones.”
But Samsung’s lawyer John Quinn told the jurors in the San Jose, California court that the case was indeed about Google, and Apple’s struggle against the maker of the Android operating system which is now winning in the global marketplace.
Quinn questioned the motives of Apple in pursuing the court case, contending that four of the five patents at issue in the trial are not being used in Apple mobile devices, raising suspicions that Apple could be indeed after the Android OS maker. He promised jurors that Google engineers would be called to testify to how they independently designed Android software and did not copy Apple.
