We knew the patent battle between Samsung and Apple in the United States wasn’t over, we just wished they’d take a reprieve. Since before the launch of the iPhone 5 Samsung has been threatening legal action against Cupertino-based company simply because of speculation that the new iPhone would support 4G LTE networks. Now it has all that and more.
It seems Samsung may be taking its time to go after Apple though, reports The Next Web. In a new filing submitted to the US District Court for the Northern District of California late Wednesday, the company said it would file a motion and amend its “infringement contentions” to include the iPhone 5 but only once it has had “reasonable opportunity to analyse the device.”
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The filing, which has been found and documented by FOSSpatents’ Florian Mueller, states:
Samsung anticipates that it will file, in the near future, a motion to amend its infringement contentions to add the iPhone 5 as an accused product. On September 12, 2012, Apple announced that it will release the iPhone 5 on September 21, 2012. Based on information currently available, Samsung expects that the iPhone 5 will infringe the asserted Samsung patents-in-suit in the same way as the other accused iPhone models. Samsung plans to file a motion to amend its infringement contentions to address the iPhone 5 as soon as it has had a reasonable opportunity to analyze the device. Because Samsung believes the accused functionality of the iPhone 5 will be similar to the accused functionality of other accused Apple products, Samsung does not believe that amendment of its infringement contentions should affect the case schedule.
This comes after Apple announced the smartphone would go on sale in nine countries around the world on September 21 and will affect a lawsuit that is due to go to trial in March 2014.
Since Samsung is asserting its filling “based on information currently available” it will amend its filling once the device has been given a full examination.
In the mean time, as Mueller notes, Apple has also added new products to the list of devices accused its case against Samsung to include the Galaxy S3, Note and Note 10.1. The company seems to have already served its detailed infringement contentions concerning the S3 and Note, but not for the Note 10.1 yet. Apple also stated that “the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system” will be part of one of the accused technologies. This contradicts Google’s statement on the jury verdict in the first Apple v. Samsung case, where Google claimed that “[m]ost of these [patent claims] don’t relate to the core Android operating system”.
Google has long defended its OS citing that mobile manufacturers have made their own changes to the OS and that the core operating system is unaffected.
Judge Koh will hold a hearing on Wednesday (September 26) to begin proceedings for her second Apple v. Samsung lawsuit.
