The Dispute of Century
Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. was the first of many lawsuits between Apple and Samsung. Apple Inc. filed its patent infringement lawsuit in April 2011 and engaged legions of the country's highest-paid patent lawyers to demand $2.5 billion from its top smartphone competitor. Samsung Electronics Co. fired back with its own lawsuit seeking $399 million.
By August 2011, Apple and Samsung were carrying out their legal battles in 19 ongoing lawsuits in 12 courts in nine countries on four continents; by October, the fight expanded to 10 countries, and by July 2012, the two companies were embroiled in more than 50 lawsuits around the globe with billions of dollars in damages claimed between them. The ultimate cost of these patent wars to consumers, shareholders, and investors is yet unknown, but it is increasing both business costs and product pricing.
Some of the things that Apple claimed had been copied by Samsung are: the Galaxy line infringes the “Trade Dress” (which refers to design aspects that are non-essential to the function of a device) of the iPhone and iPad by using a rectangular design with rounded edges also the black borders around the Galaxy Tablet are very similar to those exhibited by the IPad; the use of small square app icons and the software used by Samsung were one of Apple's claims.
I think Apple has a point with respect to software used by Samsung, but despite that does not seem to be anything more. The shape of the phone and tablet are just consumer trends, we can take as an example the controllers of the game consoles. When a company created better ergonomic controller, the trend of the other companies was to create a better and in the process tended to imitate a little of his