Samsung Will Pay Apple $548 Million To Satisfy Long-Running Patent Dispute
When Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, it was almost impossible to anticipate what it'd truly become. At the time of its launch, the hype surrounding it was incredibly high, and fortunately for Apple, that hype was only the beginning. Its first phone became in an instant hit, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Later that same year, Google and select companies established the Open Handset Alliance, one that revolved around developing and promoting the Android OS. The first Android smartphone became HTC's Dream, released in September 2008.
Before long, we learned what Apple's thoughts were on Android. In early 2010, the gloves effectively came off, when then company CEO Steve Jobs famously saying that he was about to go "thermonuclear" on Android, willing to exhaust his company's "$40 billion" to succeed. Times have certainly changed since then.
HTC's Dream might not have been good-looking, but it had huge ambitions
HTC wasn't only the first smartphone maker to release an Android handset, it became the first to be targeted by Apple, as the company believed that the phones and Android itself were too much of a copy of its own products. Fast-forward one year, and Samsung became the target of an Apple lawsuit as well, based mostly on the fact that its phones looked too similar to the iPhone.
Since Apple filed the original lawsuit, the two companies have endlessly been in battle, with each waving their own set of patents at the other. Originally, Apple believed that it was owed $2 billion, but the courts ended up slimming the value down to $1 billion. Now that the dust has finally settled, we now that know that Samsung owes Apple about half of that amount: $548 million.
The courts last month rejected Samsung's plea for a hearing to surmise whether or not Apple should have the right to today claim profits on patents that the US Patent and Trademark Office has since declared invalid. An example is a patent relating to pinch to zoom, while other has to do with "edge-to-edge" glass.
Apple's first Samsung target, the Google Nexus S
As it stands today, Samsung will pay the amount owed if Apple gets an invoice over to it by December 14th. That doesn't mean that this is all over, though, as Samsung believes some of this payment is undeserved, and reserves the rights to claim reimbursement if any of the judgment is reversed.
Apple, not surprisingly, is confident that will not be happening.
