iPhone 5 targeted in Samsung's new legal attack on Apple
iPhone 5 violates Samsung patents, alleges the Korean company. Samsung hopes to block sale of the iPhone 5 in the US.
A passerby photographs the Apple store logo with his Samsung Galaxy phone in central Sydney earlier this year. Apple and Samsung are again set to tangle in court – this time over the recently-released iPhone 5.
Reuters
Back in late August, a jury in California ruled that Samsung had infringed on a range of Apple patents, and ordered the Korean tech giant to fork over a hefty $1 billion in damages. Although lawyers for Samsung have vowed to appeal – and according to some expert onlookers, Samsung may have a decent shot at getting the verdict overturned – the case was widely viewed as a "major win" for Apple.
Then in September, Samsung struck back, vowing to add the iPhone 5 to its lawsuit if the handset used LTE technology (Samsung says it patented aspects of the LTE connectivity tech used by Apple).
Well, the iPhone 5 does have LTE technology, and so yesterday, Samsung went through with its threat, tacking the iPhone 5 onto a suit previously filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
"Because the iPhone 5 has the same accused functionality as the previously accused versions of the iPhone, Samsung seeks, with its proposed amendment, to add the iPhone 5 as an accused device that infringes Samsung’s two UMTS standards patents and six feature patents at issue," reps for Samsung wrote in the suit, according to All Things D.
Those "accused" devices include the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch, and the two most recent iterations of the iPad tablet.
Neither Samsung nor Apple have commented on the lawsuit.
In related news, California federal judge Lucy Koh has ruled that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not violate Apple patents, as Apple had previous alleged. Koh subsequently lifted the sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
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