Samsung and Apple have made headlines for years thanks to their previously constant court endeavors to gain ground and points against each other until last month when the two giants decided to settle for confrontation in Apple’s home nation of the United States exclusively, dropping all non-U.S. based court situations. That was great news, and today’s ruling is more calm added to the growing eye of the storm that is the Apple v Samsung series of cases. Judge Lucy Koh, the poor judge that has presided over most if not all of Apple and Samsung’s United States-based court disagreements, made a call today on the injunction for the ban of sale on a few models of Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones. The injunction was denied by Koh, and her reasoning is some of the greatest I personally have heard regarding the cases involving the Cupertino and Seoul companies.
The court case related to the requested injunction was won a while back, earlier this year, and stated that Samsung infringed upon three of Apple’s patents, of various descriptions and outlandishness no doubt. The injunction was denied and, to quote Judge Koh for her reasoning, “Apple has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm to its reputation or goodwill as an innovator without an injunction”. For anyone that has followed along with any of the happenings between Samsung and Apple, and thought that Apple’s reputation was tarnished by the constant suing, or that they simply passed the torch to Samsung, as Samsung has passed the torch to other smaller manufacturers, as both companies have swelled then shrunk in sales as another manufacturer stole the spotlight and drove the market in a different direction. Customers’ tastes change over time, and Apple may simply have not been improving or changing at the customers’ desired rate, while Samsung was. Now that Samsung has seen some drop in market share over the last quarter in sales, perhaps people will choose a new manufacturer, or type of manufacturer, and that’s how the cycle of popularity must go and continue.
It’s great to see the legal issues between Samsung and Apple get put to rest (especially since Apple will reportedly not be seeking an appeal on today’s ruling and rejection) so that peace may fall in greater amounts across the smartphone market and battleground. Let us know if you’re happy that more of the Apple v Samsung cases are getting settled as time goes by. Do you think that another company could possibly draw Apple attention off of the South Korean giant’s past fame, or will Apple v Samsung go down like the famous disputes between companies like Apple and Microsoft have?