A report on Information Week said tech giants Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co are preparing for their next patent dispute in a San Diego court hearing beginning March 31 this year. The two, which had been feverishly gunning for the biggest market share particularly in the smartphone market, reportedly outlined a list of devices and patents they believe the other has taken advantage of, disregarding patent laws. As per the instructions of US District Court Judge Lucy Koh, Apple and Samsung were said to have whittled down their original, more broader lists.
According to Samsung, Apple had violated four of its patents. Citing Foss patents, one of the patents Samsung is pertaining to is the technology of nonscheduled transmission over an improved uplink data channel, of which in turn will signal control information of uplink packet data service, remote video transmission systems and recording and reproducing digital image/speech. Information Week said in its report that the first and the third one were essential standards that Samsung has the obligation to license it. However, the report was not clear on how the South Korean-company will be able to convince the court that Apple owes then despite the latter obviously infringing on the said patents.
Apple, on the other hand, is claiming that Samsung is infringing its patents on data tapping, Siri-style unified search, asynchronous data synchronization, and auto-complete functions. Earlier on, the US Patent and Trademark Office has already agreed to check the validity of Apple's claim on the auto-complete patent, Information Week said.
The news site said that both parties have agreed to meet before the end of March in its last-ditch attempt to come up with an agreement. However, it said that the likelihood that an amicable agreement could be established between the two is slim when based on both companies' history of earlier patent infringement cases. In 2012, Apple and Samsung failed to reach an agreement over their 2012 patent infringement disputes prior to the trial.
