 Apple Inc. has accused its rival Samsung Electronics Co. of “slavishly†copying many aspects of its mobile devices and is seeking $2.525 billion in damages for what it calls “irreparable harm†to its business. The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant has repeatedly said it is “no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad.†(KIMIHIRO HOSHINO, AFP/Getty Images / December 31, 1969) |
Are Samsung's smartphones and tablets too similar to Apple's iPhone and iPad?
That's the $2.5-billion question a federal jury will have to decide when the two technology heavyweights face off in a San Jose courtroom starting Monday.
Apple Inc.and Samsung Electronics Co. have been lobbing patent infringement claims against each other for months as the archrivals compete in the fast-growing mobile device industry. They are the world's two largest smartphone makers.
"This is a cage match for rights to one of the most lucrative markets in the world," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial. "They're fighting on everything: They're fighting on innovation, they're fighting on price, they're fighting in the courts."
Apple has accused its rival of "slavishly" copying many aspects of its mobile devices and is seeking $2.525 billion in damages for what it calls "irreparable harm" to its business. The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant has repeatedly said it is "no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad."
"Samsung is on trial because it made a deliberate decision to copy Apple's iPhone and iPad," the company said in a trial briefing filed this week. "Try as it might, Samsung cannot deflect attention from its own copying by the patents it has asserted against Apple."
Samsung maintains that it did not steal ideas from Apple, and instead accuses the company of infringing its technology patents.
"Indeed Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly 20 years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung's patented technology," the company said in its own trial brief.
"Even as Apple has carried out a coordinated campaign of dragging Samsung's name through the mud in this lawsuit and in the media, it has used Samsung's patented technology while flatly refusing to pay for its use."
The South Korean company also says Apple has brought its case "to stifle legitimate competition and limit consumer choice to maintain its historically exorbitant profits."
The two sides, which besides being bitter competitors are also business partners, have met numerous times in court-ordered meetings to try to reach a settlement and avoid a trial. Those talks have been unsuccessful, although the companies still could reach an agreement in the final hours before the trial, analysts said.
U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh, a Harvard Law School graduate and a relatively recent addition to the federal bench, is presiding over the trial. It is expected to last a month, with proceedings scheduled for Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays on most weeks.
In pretrial rulings, Koh has already blocked U.S. sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer and the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, although the latter ruling was halted shortly after it was issued.
Samsung is being represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which last year defended El Segundo toy giant Mattel Inc. in a retrial of its copyright infringement case against Van Nuys-based MGA Entertainment Inc. The law firms Morrison Foerster and WilmerHale are representing Apple.
The companies have submitted an avalanche of legal filings ahead of the trial and said they intend to call numerous company officials, marketing experts and designers as witnesses. Apple said in its trial brief that Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, and Chris Stringer, a senior director of industrial design at the company, would be among those testifying.
Jurors are expected to be shown photos of the companies' devices and prototypes.
Apple claims that the simple, distinctive look of its smartphone began showing up in Samsung's products shortly after the iPhone's 2007 release. Samsung says that even before the iPhone's announcement, its designers had already envisioned a basic design that would feature "a simple, rounded rectangular body dominated by a display screen with a single physical button on the face."
The case, filed a year and a half ago, is one of many around the world that are amounting to a bruising patent war, as technology giants sue one another to protect their lucrative devices and brands. Firms including Microsoft, Google, HTC and Motorola have all gotten involved.
Although a verdict in the Apple-Samsung trial is expected to be reached by the end of summer, a decision in the U.S. will be just part of a slew of similar cases around the world, said Florian Mueller, an intellectual-property expert who runs Foss Patents, a blog about patent disputes. Mueller said that in a little over a year, Apple and Samsung have brought more than 50 lawsuits against each other in 10 countries on four continents.
"This case is one of above-average importance, but it does not have the potential to really force the parties to settle the overall dispute," he said. "Things are going to continue for some time."
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