Samsung adds iPhone 5 to patent battle v Apple
No, not that battle, this battle
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As expected, Samsung has added the iPhone 5 to its patent infringement case against Apple, coincidentally just after a California judge lifted the ban on importing the Korean electronics giant's Galaxy Tab 10.1 fondleslabs.
"The iPhone 5 has the same accused functionality as the previously accused versions of the iPhone," Samsung's legal team stated in their filing with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, "so the proof of infringement of the patents-in-suit by the iPhone 5 is the same as for other Apple devices already accused of infringement in this litigation."
The iPhone 5 was announced on September 12; Samsung informed Apple that it planned to add the new handset to its lawsuit on September 18, "and has already provided Apple with its proposed amended infringement contentions," the filing notes.
Samsung has accused Apple of infringing two UTMS standards patents (7,756,087 and 7,551,596) and six feature patents (7,672,470, 7,577,757, 7,232,058, 6,292,179, 6,226,449, and 5,579,239) in a counterclaim filed on April 18 of this year in Apple's patent-infringement lawsuit that was filed against Samsung this February 8.
Note that this case is separate from the one that was settled – as much as any court case can be "settled" before the inevitable post-decision jousting – on August 24, when a jury handed Apple a resounding $1.05bn victory against Samsung, saying that in most of the devices and patents in question, Samsung "knew or should have known" that its actions would infringe upon Apple's patents.
Whether Samsung will have better luck in this claim/counterclaim dust-up won't be known for some time. The case is still in discovery, which is now scheduled to close its "expert" phase in August of next year. The trial itself is not scheduled to begin until 2014.
As of Tuesday, Apple and Samsung's legal beagles had filed 267 motions in the case – which is number 5:12-cv-00630, should you care to keep tabs on it. Expect that motion count to continue to grow through 2014, and then be added to as the appeals process inevitably begins. ®
