apple v. samsung

How Google's stealth support is buoying Samsung in Apple fight

Google may have kept a low profile amid the legal clashing between Samsung Electronics and Apple, but the company hasn't abandoned its Android partners.

Rather, Google has been quietly lending support, coordinating with Samsung over legal strategies, providing advice, doing extra legwork, and searching for prior evidence, CNET has learned from people familiar with the situation. Last month, Google asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to intervene on HTC's behalf in its case against Nokia. In addition, many of the companies that rely on Google's Android operating system to power their handsets, coincidentally or not, have … Read more

More secrets likely to emerge in Apple-Samsung case

An avalanche of new details about Apple's and Samsung's businesses, including the breadth and duration of their business agreements with other companies, are likely to be made public in the coming days.

As part of a mixed ruling tonight, that still manages to keep several key aspects of both companies' business dealings a secret, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh also denied many requests to maintain secrecy about product profit margins and detailed manufacturing costs.

Also included on that list are both the royalty terms and licensing agreements between Apple and Samsung.

"Although the Court has … Read more

iPad, iPhone, Galaxy sales data revealed in court filings

Apple and Samsung's rivals are sure to pore over the latest data that have been flushed out into the open thanks to the patent litigation going on between the two electronics powerhouses.

Want to know how many units of of the Galaxy Prevail mobile phone Samsung has sold? About 2.25 million since the second quarter of 2011.

Sales of the different iPhone models are not broken out in the same way and are offered only in aggregate but it's still interesting to see that up to the second quarter of this year, Apple had sold a total … Read more

Samsung studies show people confused Galaxy Tab with iPad

According to Samsung's own internal studies, many consumers mistook the Galaxy Tab tablet computer for the iPad.

"Over half of consumers who recognize the Samsung sponsored TabTVC [believed to mean TV commercial] thought it was for Apple," according to a survey that Samsung sponsored and that was completed in January 2011. "Only 16 percent thought it was for Samsung.... Only 11 percent of consumers are aware and can link the Galaxy Tab back to Samsung while 65 percent of consumers are aware and can link the iPad back to Apple."

The people who conducted the … Read more

Apple cites Samsung doc as proof it wanted to copy iPhone

Apple is pointing to an internal Samsung document highlighting the weaknesses of the Galaxy S1 compared with the iPhone as further evidence that Samsung has copied its work.

The document, a "relative evaluation report" on the Galaxy S1 and iPhone published in March 2010 and unearthed by Apple, highlights where Samsung's flagship phone fell short of the iPhone. The report looked at several different features, from the call screen to the browsing experience and even the difference in the calculator.

Apple will draw on this document as proof that Samsung actively compared its products against the iPhone, … Read more

Samsung gives Apple the 'boot' in defense

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- One way Samsung hopes to show a jury that its products differ from Apple's is something as simple as turning them on.

The devices, that is.

In the fifth day of trial here today, Samsung spent some time booting up three different devices -- two phones and one tablet -- to make the case that consumers know what they're getting before they even start using a gadget.

That's an important consideration given claims by Apple, brought out in its opening statements and in its complaint at large, which says Samsung's devices are … Read more

Mac designer: Samsung phone fooled me

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- One of Apple's early designers apparently picked up a Samsung device believing it had been made by Apple.

That anecdote, shared in court this morning, came from Susan Kare, who is perhaps best known for designing the original set of icons for Apple's first Macintosh. Those designs include the "happy Mac" icon users saw when booting up the machine, as well as the bomb icon when something went wrong.

Apple tapped Kare specifically to compare Apple's patented iOS user interface with Samsung's devices. Kare said she examined phones from both … Read more

Payback: Samsung says Apple destroyed evidence

Apple didn't preserve e-mail evidence any better than us so they deserve to be penalized in the same way we were, Samsung lawyers told a federal court today.

In Apple v. Samsung (see CNET's full coverage here), the patent court case that's commanding the attention of the gadget world, Samsung wrote to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh and pointed out how few were the e-mails that key Apple managers, including co-founder Steve Jobs, turned over for discovery in the case. One interesting side issue is the differences between Apple's and Samsung's e-mail retention policy (… Read more

Malfunction, not iPad, played greater role in Galaxy returns

Confusion with Apple's iPad appears to have played less of a role in returns of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 than has previously been suggested.

Device malfunction was cited nearly three times more than a desire to exchange a Tab for an Apple iPad among the greatest reasons for returns, according to a study conducted by Samsung at Best Buy Stores in 2011.

The study was entered into evidence today in the high-stakes patent trial between Apple and Samsung. There had been suggestions that unhappy customers were returning Samsung's tablet because they originally thought they were buying … Read more