No truce in Apple-Samsung patent war

Two days of court-directed peace talks between the chiefs of iPhone-maker Apple and smartphone giant Samsung ended with no sign of a truce in the legal battle headed for court in Silicon Valley. Apple boss Tim Cook and Samsung chief Choi Gee-Sung met in San Francisco for nine hours on Monday and again for seven hours on Tuesday after a judge asked the bosses to personally try to resolve the case and avoid trial. Terse paperwork in the San Francisco federal courthouse on Wednesday confirmed that Cook and Choi met in sessions mediated by Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero but showed no sign of accord. A report in the Korea Times cited a Samsung official as saying that no settlement deal was struck. District court Judge Lucy Koh is presiding over two closely watched patent lawsuits pitting the companies against one another and wanted them to resolve their differences before trials, the first of which is slated to begin in July. Apple and Samsung, a leading maker of smartphones and tablets using Google-backed Android mobile software, are fighting patent battles in more than half a dozen countries. Each company accuses the other of infringing on patented technology in smartphones or tablets. Samsung is a leading maker of Android devices, but it also supplies California-based maker of iPads, iPhones, and iPods parts for its coveted gadgets.