The big legal battle between Samsung and Apple is being fought off in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. Apple recently presented its arguments, trying to prove that Samsung had copied a lot of its UI elements. In response, Samsung has now stated that it didn’t infringe any Apple patents, rather Apple infringed some of Samsung’s patents.
The chief argument that Samsung is putting forth to defend the design of its devices is that the design of its devices was inspired from art and products which existed far before Apple’s iPhone and iPad. To reaffirm this, Samsung’s witness Clifton Forlines stated that technologies such as touchscreens, zoom functionality on a screen and other similar functions were being used in the mobile market long before Apple launched iPhone or iPad.
Samsung’s arguments didn’t stop there. Rather, after having defended its own design, Samsung produced another witness who testified that it was Apple who had actually infringed on some of Samsung’s patents. The witness was an engineering expert and a professor at Harvard, Woodward Yang.
Yang stated in the court that Apple has copied many Samsung patents. For instance, iPhone features which let the user bookmark and send photos and multitask with music, are all copied from Samsung, said Yang.
Samsung also produced other witnesses which confirmed that tablet computer have been produced since more than a decade and so, Apple was not the first one to bring up the concept. Also, the witnesses tried to show how many tablet features are generic and that Apple has no right to keep a patent monopoly on them.
This legal battle between Apple and Samsung is probably one of the most expensive ones. Apple is suing Samsung and seeking a whopping $2.5 billion in damages whereas Samsung wants its cut out of 22.7 million allegedly copyright-infringing Apple devices.
Courtesy: eWeek
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