Samsung says Apple stole some of its technology for the Apple iPhone

Them thar's fightin' words! After a brief from Apple's camp revealed on Tuesday that the Cuppertino based firm wants $2.525 billion from Samsung to cover what the Korean based manufacturer "unjustly enriched" itself with by using Apple patents, Apple might have insulted Samsung by claiming that Sammy's patents are worth about a half-cent each, at most. Samsung's filing, partially released today by the Wall Street Journal, is a history of the mobile phone industry. Samsung tells Apple that it wouldn't have sold one Apple iPhone had it not stolen Samsung's technology.

Some interesting passages include Samsung's claim that Apple sold its first smartphone 20 years after Samsung first developed the technology that made the mobile phone possible. Samsung claims that some of the impetus for the Apple iPhone's design came from a story about Sony products that was in the public domain. In the story, the Sony designer discussed its products that fit in the hand, lacked buttons, were "square with a screen" and had rounded-out corners.

An interesting paragraph from the filing touches on Apple's penchant for commercializing other firms' technology. Samsung also pointed out that in 2006, well before the Apple iPhone was introduced, the Korean manufacturer had internal documents showing rectangular phones with rounded corners, front faces that were flat and graphic interfaces using grid layouts for icons. Samsung adds that in the Summer of 2006, again before the introduction of the Apple iPhone, Samsung started to design its next-gen handsets. Samsung engineers started to work around the concept of a round rectangular body with a large screen taking up much of the space, and one physical button. The point being made by Samsung is that it had already had this design in place before the iPhone was introduced. Samsung says it did not change its design after the introduction of the Apple iPhone.

In the filing, Samsung says that Apple relied "heavily" on Samsung technology to enter the mobile phone business and it still does today. Apple buys some parts for its smartphone from Samsung and the filing lists both the flash and main memory as well as the applications processor. And while there is nothing wrong with that, Samsung claims that some of its patented technology is being used by Apple without paying for it. After Apple released products that use the two Samsung patents at issue in the trial, Samsung says it offered Apple a cross-licensing deal similar to what most other major players in the industry agreed to. Unlike the others who had signed the deal with Samsung, Apple's position was that the Samsung patents were un-enforcable, which brings us to this patent battle in front of Judge Lucy Koh that will start at the end of this month.source: WSJ