When Apple first began its US legal battle with Samsung, perhaps much like this writer, most thought to themselves, fret not, this is a case of damages and not one that will impact any of the firm's front runners. We were indeed correct, but also horribly wrong at the same time.
Riding high on the buzz from its previous victory, Apple has requested that the US courts add the GALAXY S III, Note and Note 10.1 to a separate, ongoing complaint over the GALAXY Nexus and 16 other devices, covering seven patents, key amongst which are the fabled "Slide-to-Unlock" and "Universal Search", with other patents covering areas such as "Data Detectors" and "Word completion".
Over on this side of the pond, patents like Slide-to-Unlock have already been well and truly invalidated, in a case Apple launched against HTC, with clear proof of a prior implementation and, failing that, we suspect absurd simplicity may have been a consideration for the courts. In the US, however, these patents still pack a lot of punch; often US court will not take into account prior implementations/art from areas outside of the States.
The BBC has since interviewed the Jury Foreman from the recent US case, where it became apparent that there was a fundamental misunderstanding of software, a patent, binary and hardware compatibility, with the Foreman quoting "Not that there's anything [wrong] with older prior art - but the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error."
This quote from the Foreman indicates that the jury dismissed Samsung prior-art demonstrations such as DiamondTouch, for reasons such as the system using a projector instead of a display or that the touch software wouldn't recompile onto an iPhone. If the US software patent system truly supports such reasoning, this writer has but one word to say - "Ludicrous."
What's perhaps interesting to note is that, these latest patents do relate to Android. We know that the two head honchos at Google and Apple have been in discussions following some intimidation from the former firm, though clearly nothing has emerged from the talks at this stage. We wonder if Google will seriously consider backing-up its client as Apple starts to attack products that really matter to Samsung and, the future of Android.
Meanwhile Samsung has presented itself with a counter-threat, that the firm will attempt to sue Apple should the iPhone 5 include LTE technology, to which the firm holds several patents.
