In the latest Samsung vs Apple court battle, it looks as though Apple is going to be calling witnesses to trial that have more to do with the Google side of things than they do the Samsung side of things. In what’s sure to be another fascinating display of who has the best legal team, Apple will be taking Samsung on once again in court in order to assert just what IP of theirs Samsung has infringed upon and of course, to seek either compensation or retribution through more sanctions and such.
In leaked court documents, Apple is looking to bring to the witness stand – among others – none other than Andy Rubin, the man behind Android in the first place. Founder of Android Inc before it was bought by Google and the previous head of Android till March of last year, it’s no doubt Apple will want to know what happened to Android after the iPhone was launched. Among the list of those Apple wishes to question is Kenzo Fong Hing, Google’s current head marketer for Android and Ann Hsieh a user experience researcher at Google. These choices might seem completely separate from Samsung, which is because they are. What Andy Rubin and Ann Hsieh exactly have to do with Samsung’s design choices regarding their hardware, their early versions of TouchWiz and even their packaging is beyond us. Of course, this is Apple’s way of finding out whether or not Android itself is to blame for Samsung’s alleged infringement.
It’s long been thought that Apple has been going after manufacturers like Samsung instead of going after Google directly and bringing key figures out of Google itself to the witness stand might be the closest Apple’s legal team gets at pointing the finger at Mountain View. It’ll certainly be interesting to see what comes of any testimony from Google employees that worked at Google on Android. One thing’s for sure though, despite Tim Cook’s “distaste” for litigation, his legal team seem to have done their homework.
