A lawsuit against a rival tech company is the gift that keeps on giving. At least that is what the ongoing battle between Samsung and Apple might have us believe. You probably have already guessed that there will be more drama between the two and the latest is over the Google Notification system.
When Google first introduced the notification system in the Android operating system, everyone agreed it was awesome and it has just kept improving since then. Apple certainly agreed when they copied the system in 2011 with an iOS5 software update that had many Android users crying foul. Many a complaint has been heard in Android forums. A recent thread on XDA Developers began with the title “Why can’t Samsung/Google sue Apple regarding the notification shade?” Samsung was listening and has finally taken action. Well, this is all according to BrightWire, a Korean news site iNews24 reported that “Samsung Electronics has brought a lawsuit against Apple in a court in South Korea over its notification center patent infringement.” I tried to find more details but none seem forthcoming and not even looking up the source on BrightWire yields anything new since they list their source but no link. So some speculation is called for.
A lawsuit before now wasn’t possible due to the long patent pending process. Google has only recently been officially granted one of the patents on their notification center under the title “Priority inbox notifications and synchronization for mobile-messaging application.” The granted patent language is pretty specific but appears to be enough for Samsung who decided to celebrate the official patent with yet another lawsuit against Apple. They might have a good chance to win despite not actually owning the patent in question. On the other hand, Apple could argue that their notification bar is different enough to not be an actual copy. Google, of course, has more patents pending like the one titled “Notification of Mobile Device Events” dated October 1, 2009. It gives greater detail on how the status bar can be used to display different notifications other than inbox related. The two patents combined could make it hard for Apple make their case against Samsung.
What could be next in the Samsung versus Apple patent war? I have my theories just like you do so stay tuned until next week’s episode.