Samsung and Apple Prepare for Patent War Number 2

Samsung and Apple are two of the world’s largest and most powerful tech companies. Back in 2012, they waged one of the fiercest and most expensive patent wars in world history. That war ended with Samsung paying over $1 billion to Apple due to the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S3 kind of looked like an iPhone. Summer of 2014 will see another patent war between the two giants. Apple recently launched a patent infringement suit against Samsung claiming that Samsung’s software and hardware violated some random patents held by Apple. Apple claims to have over 50 patents waiting in its arsenal to fling at Samsung, but they’ve chosen to start with just 5. These 5 patents were chosen due to their high likelihood of success. The lawsuit, if successful, will award Apple over $2 billion. The new trial involves the following devices: -iPhone 5 -Galaxy S3 -Galaxy Note 2 Samsung’s opening arguments were pretty straightforward: Samsung claimed that Apple was suing the wrong company, and that they should be suing Android – not Samsung. To prove that point, Samsung’s lawyer, John Quinn, held up a Nexus smartphone and said: “…not a single software feature in this Nexus phone…was conceived by Samsung, was developed by Samsung, or was coded by Samsung.” In other words, Apple had pointed the finger at the wrong guy. Samsung is rumored to be attempting to call Google in for backup, although the trial is still in its early stages. All of the patents except one are default Android features, so Samsung likely has a legitimate point here. Quinn is apparently filled with witty remarks. He scoffed at Apple’s damages claim and said that if Apple was paid for every single one of its patents, an average smartphone would cost $28,000 due to the fact that consumers would have to pay for 3,500 patents. We’ll see how this patent war plays out, but like most patent wars waged in the tech world, this one will probably be bad for innovation and will give Android fans yet another reason to despise Apple.