It was inevitable that the ongoing legal battles between Apple and Samsung will turn petty at some point, and it is evident in the new lawsuit Samsung is filing against Apple.
Samsung has filed a lawsuit against Apple because of the former’s claims that Apple has violated patents that Samsung allegedly has over emoticons – yes, emoticons. Samsung is leveraging four different lawsuits against Apple that are related to the WCDMA standard that is used for 3G. One of these is over the emoticon display.
The lawsuits were filed in Germany, which is also one of the countries where Apple has filed a lawsuit against Samsung over patent infringements regarding the design of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. These new lawsuits will be considered separate from the ones that were filed way back in April.
Based on the new lawsuit, Samsung plans to put Apple to task for the way users enter emoticons using the screen of the iPhone. This claim is, for all intents and purposes, quite shallow and is obviously one of Samsung’s attempts to harass Apple in turn in the courts. Apple will most likely not take this sitting down so expect the company to file further patent claims in other countries or even file new claims to add to the ones they have now against Samsung.
One’s things for sure though, it looks like both companies are now running out of things to throw at each other from a legal standpoint. The well from which they can draw out various patent infringement claims are drying up so they are looking for the flimsiest reasons to put each other to court.
Leave a Reply