The battle of Apple vs. Samsung goes far, far beyond the mobile space. One of the key battlegrounds is court, where Apple and Samsung hash it out quite often, usually over patents, and usually with Apple winning out. One particular case, regarding patents over Apple’s slide to unlock, autocorrect, and quick links features, was a win for Apple back in 2014. Samsung was ordered to pay out $119.6 million in damages, offset only slightly by a $158,400 award to Samsung over Apple’s use of some facets of their digital photo technology. The full judge roster for the US Court of Appeals in Washington presided over the decision, and ended up voting 8 to 3 that the previous ruling should never have been overturned back in February.
About $99 million of the award concerned quick links, a feature that automatically extrapolates URLs, phone numbers, and other content into actionable links that allow the user to instantly initiate the relevant action. That feature, along with autocorrect and slide to unlock, were patented by Apple, and used by Samsung without authorization in their own mobile devices, courts later found. The fights between the two companies over mobile technology have been going on for quite the number of years, and have concerned a huge number of different facets of each of their mobile software and hardware businesses, even down to a trade dress lawsuit alleging that the original Galaxy S copied the looks of the iPhone lineup of its time.
This case is not the first or the last time the two will clash in court, of course; Samsung plans to take a $548.2 million loss to Apple into the halls of the US Supreme Court, with at least some part of the case set to be heard on October 11th. The loss originally came Samsung’s way in December, and concerned some UI design elements of TouchWiz and the front face of one of Samsung’s phones, which was ruled to look far too similar to an Apple iPhone. Other cases are in line for appeals, meaning that there is seemingly no end in sight for the long court battle between the two mobile giants.