Apple and Samsung look to settle patent wars

Top executives at Apple and Samsung have met recently about a potential patent settlement, a media report said Thursday. “Apple CEO Tim Cook does not seem to share his predecessor’s passion about laying all foes to waste. Cook appears to view litigation as a necessary evil, not a vehicle of cosmic revenge,” Xinhua reported quoting the Bloomberg Businessweek. Last April, Apple sued Samsung in a US court, alleging that the Korean maker’s smartphones and Galaxy line of tablet computers violated Apple’s patent and trademark. Samsung later countersued Apple, pitting the two companies against each other in courts around the world. Besides Samsung, Apple has also been filing suits against other manufacturers like HTC and Motorola Mobility, which are actually proxies for Android, the operating system Google gives away to device makers. In the official biography of Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder told author Walter Isaacson, “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” he said, according to the biography. As Bloomberg points out in their cover story titled “Steve Jobs‘ last war”, the tech giant could save themselves considerable legal fees and distraction in the short run. The process may resolve similar litigation in the desktop computer field. In 1997, Microsoft announced an investment of $150 million in Apple, saying the two companies had reached settlement to a long-standing dispute over whether Microsoft’s Windows operating system infringes on Apple’s patents. In the long run, the competition between Apple and Google is nowhere near resolution, said the Bloomberg report. While fighting for dominance in mobile devices, the two tech giants, along with Microsoft are all gearing up for a future battle over the market for smart TV.