Judge Lucy Koh urges ‘global peace’ between Apple & Samsung

Judge Lucy Koh who ruled over the $1bn award of patent damages to Apple against Samsung in August has made a plea for both companies to consider ‘global peace' yesterday at an appeal hearing.

The companies argued for three hours over the scope and consequences of the earlier ruling. In a brief respite Lucy Koh said “When is this case going to resolve?”

This caused laughter from the public gallery in the court room, including from many journalists who attended the event.

When the laughter died she added “I’m not joking . I’ve said this all along. I think it’s time for global peace . . . If there is any way this court can facilitate some sort of resolution, I’d like to do that. I think it would be good for consumers and good for the industry.”

Charles Verhoeven of Quinn Emanuel, legal counsel for Samsung said the company were willing to talk adding that the ‘ball was in their court'.

Harold McElhinny, the Apple representative said that the $1billion ruling against Samsung was a ‘slap on the wrist' but the court needed to ‘establish a line' for future behaviours.

Tim Bradshaw at FT.com added “For Samsung, Mr Verhoeven employed the rhetoric of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to say that the iPhone maker had created an “intentional engagement of thermonuclear war throughout the world, and with a results-oriented attempt to compete through the courts rather than the marketplace”.

He alleged that Apple had used a preliminary injunction against select Samsung devices to tell retailers they could not sell any of its smartphones and had “used the courts to engage in a campaign to colour our name”.

Tim Cook, the Apple CEO spoke to Bloomberg Business Week and said that legal disputes were ‘awkward' since Apple are also a customer of Samsung, who create many of the parts for their products.

He said “I hate litigation. I absolutely hate it. What we would like, in a perfect world, is for everyone to invent their own stuff. We love competition.”

Kitguru says: We can't see this ending anytime soon, but we hope both companies can put this behind them and move ahead.

Become a Patron!