For some time we’ve heard rumors that Steve Jobs initiated talks with Samsung back in 2010 in an attempt to avoid filing a patent infringement suit against the Korean electronics maker. A recent filing in California federal court shows us what the extent of those talks were.
In an attempt to bolster allegations that Samsung was fully aware of its patents and was “willfully infringing,” Apple outlined its 2010 negotiations with Samsung in the filing. Unsurprisingly, Apple confirms that the first patent talks with Samsung did indeed take place back in July 2010. However, Apple then goes on to identify three more attempts that summer to convince Samsung that it infringed, including separate meetings between the two companies in Korea and Cupertino where Apple further presented its infringement allegations with comparison photographs and patent claim charts.
“On or about August 4, 2010, Apple representatives met with Samsung in Korea and showed a presentation titled ‘Samsung’s Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones.’ This presentation emphasized Samsung’s copying of the iPhone and identified two of the patents-in-suit (the ‘002 and ‘381 patents), giving Samsung actual notice of at least these patents, and many more.
“On or about August 26, 2010, Apple sent Samsung an electronic archive file containing claim charts further illustrating Samsung’s infringement of Apple patents. A presentation document that accompanied these claim charts identified the ‘002 and ‘381 patents as two patents that Samsung products infringed, and it substantiated these allegations with text from the patents and photographs of Samsung devices illustrating infringing functionality. Apple later presented these slides to Samsung at a meeting in Cupertino, California on or about September 9, 2010.”
The negotiations obviously did not come to fruition, but the extent of the negotiations between the two companies does suggest that while Jobs was willing to got “thermonuclear war” on Android, Apple’s behavior at the time leads observers to think differently.