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Apple, Samsung Settle After Fighting Seven Years in Court (bloomberg.com)
Apple and Samsung reached a settlement in their U.S. patent battle, putting an end to a seven-year fight over smartphone designs. From a report: The string of lawsuits started in 2011 when Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying the design of the iPhone in the creation of its own line of smartphones. Terms of the accord weren't immediately disclosed. The settlement follows a damages retrial in which Apple won a $539 million jury award in May.
Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying the design of the iPhone in the creation of its own line of smartphones
Samsung was making smartphones back in 2001, when Apple was trying to figure out how to copy Creative's MP3 player. Apple may have complained about Samsung copying the iPhone for a later line of smartphones, but Samsung was one of the early pioneers in the smartphone space, well before Apple even thought about getting into the space.
So Samsung has been making mobile phones for a while. What the hell does that have to do with anything? I remember the original Samsung smartphones. They were so similar to the 1-3G iPhones I inadvertently walked off with a Samsung phone a couple of times when I mistook one for my iPhone 3G. Here's a graphic that kind of says it all: http://allthingsd.com/files/20... I saw one of the first Android prototypes too. It was a half screen and half keyboard affair that was clearly meant to be a Blackberry killer. Nobody took Apple seriously as a phone manufacturer, they all figured Apple would bring out some kind of glorified iPod with a keypad. When the iPhone hit the market everybody went back to the drawing board and the next thing you know they're all, by some cosmic coincidence, selling phones that look like more or less exactly like the iPhone. But of course none of them copied what Apple was doing ... perish the thought.