Apple’s War on Samsung Has Google in Crossfire
SAN
FRANCISCO — Officially, it’s Apple versus Samsung Electronics in
another tech patent face-off in a San Jose courtroom this week. But
there is another company with a lot at stake in the case — Google.
In
a lawsuit, Apple is seeking about $2 billion in damages from Samsung
for selling phones and tablets that Apple says violate five of its
mobile software patents. Samsung, meanwhile, says Apple violated two of
its patents.
Some
features in Samsung devices that Apple objects to are part of Google’s
Android operating system, by far the most popular mobile operating
system worldwide, running on more than a billion devices made by many
manufacturers. That means that if Apple wins, Google could have to make
changes to critical Android features, and Samsung and other Android
phone makers might have to modify the software on their phones.
“Google’s
been lurking in the background of all these cases because of the
Android system,” said Mark P. McKenna, a professor who teaches
intellectual property law at Notre Dame. “Several people have described
the initial battle between Samsung and Apple as really one between Apple
and Google.”
Facing Off Over Features
Apple and Samsung are returning to court to assert their
claims over features that have become mainstays on mobile devices.
Contested by Apple
This feature gives you options when a certain type of
information is being shown, like allowing you to call a phone number
that is in a text message.
This feature lets you search from one interface for
information stored on your device, like your contacts list or recent
messages, or for online information.
This feature lets you use an app like Calendar while it is
syncing other information, such as meeting invites that you updated from
a desktop computer.
This feature lets you touch and move an image along a
predefined path or a predetermined spot on your screen to unlock the
device.
Contested by Samsung
This feature lets you view and organize collections of images and videos that you have taken with the device's camera.
This feature compresses video so it can be transmitted seamlessly across low bandwidths in instances like video calls.
Representatives for Apple, Samsung and Google declined to comment.
The
current case, which begins on Monday with jury selection, is the second
major court battle over patents between Apple and Samsung, which rode
the success of Android to become the biggest handset maker in the world.
Samsung lost the first case in 2012, and it was ordered to pay $930 million in damages.
That
amount is pocket change for Apple, one of the richest companies in the
world. And it hardly interfered with Samsung’s ability to sell phones:
The company, which is based in South Korea, shipped 314 million handsets
last year, according to the research firm IDC.
So
this second fight has to be about more than money, said James Bessen, a
law lecturer at Boston University. He said that if Apple just wanted
money, it would have already agreed to settle.
Still,
going after Google by attacking Samsung is difficult, Mr. Bessen said.
Both Google and Samsung could alter features to avoid infringing on
patents. And by the time the trial and appeals are finished, newer
devices will have supplanted the products in question.
“To kill Android with a half-dozen patents,” Mr. Bessen said, “just seems like a long shot.”
Long
shot or not, combating Google’s Android system was a cherished goal of
Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chief executive, who died in 2011. He
called Android a knockoff of the iPhone and told his biographer, Walter
Isaacson, that he was willing to go to “thermonuclear war” just to kill
Android.
He
also told Mr. Isaacson that Apple’s past patent lawsuit against HTC,
another Android handset maker, was about Google all along.
“I’m
going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product,” Mr. Jobs was
quoted as saying in Mr. Isaacson’s book “Steve Jobs.”
In
the case set to open this week, Apple’s legal complaint aims at some of
the features that Google, not Samsung, put in Android, like the ability
to tap on a phone number inside a text message to dial the number. And
although Google is not a defendant in this case, some of its executives
are expected to testify as witnesses.
Apple has a long history of choosing battles against what it views as copycats. In 1988, the company sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard,
claiming that software programs sold by the two companies, including
Windows, infringed on Apple’s copyrights on how information was
presented on the Macintosh operating system. After a four-year legal
struggle, Apple lost on nearly all its claims.
Apple
filed its latest complaint against Samsung over two years ago in the
Federal District Court in San Jose, accusing Samsung of infringing on
software patents involving both the iPhone and iPad, including the
“slide-to-unlock” feature for logging in, and universal search, the
ability to look up items across the device and on the Internet at the
same time.
For
those patents, Apple wants $40 per infringing Samsung device sold in
the United States. Apple lists several Samsung products that it says
violated its patents, including the popular Galaxy S III, which at one
point surpassed the iPhone in sales, and the Galaxy Note II.
“Instead
of pursuing independent product development, Samsung slavishly copied
Apple’s innovative technology,” Apple said in its complaint.
Samsung
says Apple has infringed on patents covering how a photo album is
organized, as well as a method for transmitting video over a wireless
network. It bought these patents from Hitachi and a group of American
inventors.
The
case will be tried by a jury of four and is expected to last a month.
Apple’s lawyers plan to argue that by copying the features of Apple’s
devices and then selling millions of phones, Samsung harmed Apple,
because people who bought Samsung phones presumably would have otherwise
bought iPhones. Apple will probably try to illustrate that Samsung is a
copy machine, not an innovator, by pointing out that the two patents
Samsung says were infringed on are not based on Samsung’s own ideas
because they were acquired from other inventors.
Samsung’s
lawyers will try to argue that Apple’s patents are invalid by
demonstrating that similar software features were being developed by
Google and others before the iPhone was released. They will also
probably argue that Apple’s complaint poses a threat to competition
because the patents Apple says were infringed on broadly cover Android,
meaning other phone manufacturers could be dragged in to the dispute.
Expected
witnesses include Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for
worldwide marketing; Todd Pendleton, chief marketing officer of
Samsung’s American division; and Hiroshi Lockheimer, a vice president
for engineering in Google’s Android division.
Apple
has some advantages entering the trial. It won the last fight with
Samsung, which might carry weight with jurors trying to decide if
Samsung again infringed on patents. And the judge, Lucy H. Koh, who also
oversaw the last trial, has already decided that Samsung infringed on
one of Apple’s patents covering a method for automatically correcting
incomplete or misspelled words while a person is typing. So Samsung is
already down one.
That
does not necessarily make this an easy fight. To streamline the trial,
Judge Koh limited the number of patents each company could assert were
infringed on. Apple must argue that just a few patented features are
worth a great deal of money, when there are thousands of other patented
inventions that make a smartphone tick.
“When
you have a case where a party comes in with a handful of patents and
says, these are the really important ones, these are the patents that
are worth several dollars apiece per phone — from a simple economic
standpoint, that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Brian J. Love, a law
professor at Santa Clara University who teaches patent law.
In January, the companies’ top executives met
with a mediator to discuss a possible settlement, but to no avail.
Settling would be difficult for either company, in any case, given their
clashing business strategies.
Apple’s
approach is to develop software that runs exclusively on its hardware,
and the company generally does not license its patents because it hopes
that may prevent others from reproducing its products.
Samsung
has found success in making all kinds of products, like washing
machines and refrigerators, or smartphones and television sets. It is
unlikely it would tear features out of its best-selling smartphones
without putting up a fight.
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