In recent years we have all seen a fight between the tech giants Apple and Samsung cropping up again and again and this legal battle about design patent of iPhone is again in the news.
However, we have good news this time around as the fight has ended after a continuous battle for last 7 years as suggested by documents that have been filed with Northern District Court California. The document didn’t include any settlement terms.
Previously, Samsung had been ordered to reimburse $539 million to Apple after the damages retrial that happened in May. Samsung, however, wasn’t willing to pay as high as that and, as it appears now, both the companies have managed to settle terms with each other.
“Plaintiff Apple Inc. and the Defendants Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC, and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. inform the Court about their agreement on dropping and settling the pending claims as well as counterclaims in the matter.”
“It’s hereby Stipulated & Agreed, between parties and subject to approval of Court, that in pursuit of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 41(a) and 41(c), all the pending claims and the counterclaims are dismissed hereby with prejudice, and all parties must bear the fees of their own attorneys.”
The dispute had been continuing since 2011 after Apple decided to sue Samsung. Apple accused that the makers of the Galaxy phone had violated the design patents of Apple across 5 different devices that had been sold between 2010 and 2011.
Subsequently, in 2012, Samsung was declared guilty but the discussion in last six years was on how much should be handed over by Samsung in penalty. Apple was expecting to be paid for full value that every sold device earned, however, the argument from Samsung was that this payment must only be for the part of copied iPhone design.
Though both weren’t able to come to an agreement, the latest one could only be possible after the court took sides with Apple back in May and asked Samsung to pay $539 million to Apple.