case study apple vs samsung

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Negotiation in Business: Apple and Samsung’s Dispute Resolution Case Study

What happened between apple and samsung makes for a great example of negotiation in business.

By PON Staff — on October 1st, 2024 / Business Negotiations

For two days in late May 2012, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Gee-Sung Choi met with a judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern California in an attempt to reach a settlement in a high-profile U.S. patent case, a sobering example of negotiation in business.

Back in April 2011, Apple had filed a lawsuit accusing Samsung of copying the “look and feel” of the iPhone when the Korean company created its Galaxy line of phones.

Samsung countersued Apple for not paying royalties for using its wireless transmission technology. Since then, the number of patents under dispute has skyrocketed, according to the Korea Times , as has the number of courts involved in various countries. The two companies have repeatedly accused each other of copying the appearance and functions of their smartphones and tablet devices.

The companies showed some willingness to compromise in an effort to avoid going to court: at the California court’s suggestion, they cut the number of disputed patents in half. But even as the CEOs sat down at the table for their mediation , which was urged by the court, Apple filed a motion asking the presiding judge to bar the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the grounds that the tablet was designed to “mirror” Apple’s second-generation iPad (see also, What are the Three Basic Types of Dispute Resolution? What to Know About Mediation, Arbitration, and Litigation ).

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Both sides had said they hoped to avoid a legal battle. Given that Samsung is one of Apple’s biggest suppliers, the companies had a strong incentive to move beyond their dispute and build on their ongoing partnership. Yet the two-day mediated talks between the CEOs in late May ended in an impasse, with both sides refusing to back down from their arguments. The suit later went to trial twice, with Apple ultimately winning more than $409 million.

Mediation Between Business Negotiators and Chances of Success

As this example of negotiation in business suggests, mediation as a dispute resolution technique between business negotiators is far less likely to succeed when the parties are grudging participants than when they are actively engaged in finding a solution. When negotiators feel they have spent significant time and energy in a case, they may feel they have invested too much to quit.

Moreover, the longer they spend fighting each other, the more contentious and uncooperative they are likely to become. The lesson? When a business dispute arises, you should always do your best to negotiate or mediate a solution before taking it to the courts.

What did you learn from this negotiation in business? Do you side with Apple or Samsung in this dispute resolution case study? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Originally published in 2013.

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Samsung vs. Apple: Inside The Brutal War For Smartphone Dominance

An excerpt from samsung rising by geoffrey cain.

I n 2005, Chang-Gyu Hwang —president of Samsung’s semiconductor and memory business—traveled with two fellow executives to Palo Alto, to the home of Steve Jobs.   

“I met him with the solution to Apple’s life-or-death problem hidden deep in my pocket,” Hwang wrote.            

In the course of their meeting, he pulled out the NAND flash memory, as it was called, and put it on the table. He called it “my trump card.”   

His pitch? Flash memory was a much more lightweight and efficient storage device than the traditional hard disk. And Samsung was one of few companies that could guarantee a rock-solid supply.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” Jobs said of Samsung’s flash memory, according to Hwang. He agreed to make Samsung the sole supplier of flash memory for the iPod. 

“It was the moment that marked the beginning of our dominance in the U.S. semiconductor market,” Hwang wrote. With that, Samsung had a launchpad from which to eventually get into smartphones, when they came out.

They would go from supplier to competitor.

Jobs was livid when Samsung released its smartphone in 2009. As he told biographer Walter Isaacson, he wanted to launch “thermonuclear war” on Android, the operating system used in Samsung phones. Samsung was the Apple iPhone chip supplier that dared to compete directly against Apple by making a similar-looking smartphone, and with the Android operating system, which Jobs abhorred. Jobs was prepared to sue. Tim Cook, as Apple’s supply chain expert, was wary of endangering the relationship with a supplier that Apple depended on.

When Samsung vice chairman Jay Lee—who was then the company’s chief customer officer—visited the Cupertino campus, Jobs and Cook expressed their concerns to him. Apple drafted a proposal to license some of its patents to Samsung for $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet, with a 20 percent discount for cross-licensing Samsung’s portfolio back to Apple. For 2010 that revenue would have come to $250 million. 

Left: Steve Jobs unveils the new iPhone 4 at an Apple conference in June 2010. Right: Chang-Gyu Hwang speaks at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March 2015.

In the end, Samsung’s lawyers reversed the offer. Since Apple was copying Samsung’s patents, they argued, Apple had to pay Samsung.                     

In April 2011, Apple filed multiple lawsuits, spanning dozens of countries, against Samsung for patent infringement. It demanded $2.5 billion in damages. Samsung quickly countersued for infringement of five patents relating to its wireless and data transmission technology.

The war was on.

Samsung executives felt Apple was trying to create a monopoly with generic patents like the iPad’s black rounded rectangle shape, a patent so silly that a court threw it out. “We are going to patent it all,” Jobs once said. He also blatantly mocked Samsung and other competitors, calling their larger phones “Hummers.” “No one’s going to buy that,” he said at a press conference in July 2010.

Samsung’s management team didn’t take Jobs’ attack lightly.

“I am talking to you on a phone right now that Apple just copied,” Brian Wallace, Samsung’s former vice president for strategic marketing, told me years later. “I’ve got a Note Edge. It’s a giant fuckin’ phone that Steve Jobs made fun of. Who was right? Samsung was right.”

Samsung’s greatest strength was its ability to manufacture superior hardware, faster than any of its competitors, through its vast, strict, top-down management system and its superior supply chain.

But the work of the marketers at Samsung was frustratingly subpar.

Samsung didn’t use people in its commercials—“just product and voiceover and talking about the product benefit,” said Samsung’s chief marketing officer, Todd Pendleton. Rather than pitch consumers on why Samsung was great, marketing stories were framed around the telecom carriers—“telling a story around their network and why their network is great.”

The South Korean headquarters, meanwhile, sent over goofy and culturally inappropriate commercials that incited rebellion among the Americans on staff. “They wanted us to use butterflies,” said former marketing vice president Clyde Roberson. He called the ads “Hello Kitty.”

“I am talking to you on a phone right now that Apple just copied,” said Brian Wallace, Samsung’s former vice president for strategic marketing. “It’s a giant phone that Steve Jobs made fun of. Who was right? Samsung was right.”

“We need more creativity!” Dale Sohn, the CEO of Samsung Telecommunications America, the Texas mobile phone office, exclaimed in a meeting in 2010, according to a senior manager who was present. Dale reported to mobile chief J.K. Shin. He had been tasked with turning things around in America, Samsung’s toughest market, given the iPhone’s huge popularity. “I want someone who’s got tattoos all over his arms and earrings!”

When Dale put out a call for a new chief marketing officer, a headhunter zeroed in on Pendleton. Pendleton had been an unconventional marketer at Nike, an impresario and master brand builder. He had been offbeat and irreverent in the ads he crafted and sharp and to the point in the way he communicated.

Todd, however, had never worked at a tech company before and didn’t know the industry. As a tech specialist, the company reached out to a former BlackBerry digital marketer named Brian Wallace.

Pendleton and Wallace quickly got to work. The two marketing executives brought aboard thirty-six marketers and treated the office as a black-box operation. “We had to be somewhat insular to be able to pull some of this stuff off,” said a team member. They were worried about meddling from South Korea’s bureaucracy. Dale provided air cover from headquarters, giving them an unusual degree of latitude and space to get their work done.

In 2011, at Samsung’s U.S. headquarters, Pendleton gathered about fifty people into a meeting. He approached the whiteboard and wrote: “Samsung = ?”

“Who are we?” he asked. “What do we stand for?” Then he went around the room and asked everyone to fill in their idea. “I got about 50 different answers,” he said. For Todd Pendleton, it was alarming. “If we can’t answer [that] as employees, consumers are not going to know who we are.”

On a chart of competitors in their space, with “style” for the vertical and “innovation” for the horizontal axis, they placed Apple and Sony in the upper-right quadrant, marking them as both stylish and innovative.

Samsung, on the other hand, still lacked brand power: It was raised only slightly on the style axis, while it was far to the left on the innovation axis. In other words, consumers saw Samsung as having little of either. “Less stylish, less innovative.” “More functional.” “Good quality and value.” With Apple and Sony commanding and fiercely protecting that stylish and innovative space, could Samsung find an opening?

In focus groups and surveys, the marketers noticed, there was a growing divide between two camps: those who used Apple’s iPhones and those who used smartphones from HTC, Samsung, and Nokia, which ran Google’s quickly growing open-source operating system, Android.

If Walls Could Talk: Samsung's headquarters in Mountain View, California.

“Android people consider themselves to be smarter than Apple people,” a marketer under Todd concluded from his data. In fact, the team had to split up focus groups that included both Apple and Android fans, as they’d get particularly raucous and unproductive. There was always at least one Apple fan in the room who scolded the Android fans, and vice versa, with Android users pointing out how much more flexible and customizable their operating system was. “There was this growing base of Android users who could become a tribe,” Brian Wallace said, crunching a new trend in the social-media chatter. “But they needed a leader.”                                          

Samsung wanted to be that leader.   

Pendleton showed his colleagues side-by-side hardware comparisons between the iPhone and the Galaxy phone in The Wall Street Journal, which showed Samsung leading in a number of areas. The problem was that Samsung, up to this point, was not attempting to tell a story. Apple was commanding the narrative: It had the cult of Steve Jobs, a massive following, and glowing media coverage, and it had unleashed a barrage of aggressive legal action arguing that Samsung was a copycat in terms of new products and innovation.

Could Samsung reverse the narrative? What if its Android phones were actually the smart person’s alternative to the iPhone, and Steve Jobs’s worshippers were the mindless followers?

The outcome of the lawsuits—showing that this or that square, icon, or color wasn’t copied—wasn’t the concern of Todd’s team. More urgent was the big-picture narrative; that is what built emotional appeal for the customer. The court case was only one aspect of the Samsung war; final victory, they knew, would go to the company that told the best story to the public.

Because Apple was an important Samsung customer, the executives at headquarters were pushing for a cautious approach. They wanted to take down each competitor, from HTC to Motorola to BlackBerry to Apple, one by one over the next five years.

Dale informed Todd and his team that five years was too long a time period to overtake Apple. He shortened the time frame to two years, on orders from Samsung headquarters. In fact, the team completed their work in eighteen months.

Samsung debuted its ‘Next Big Thing’ campaign promoting the Galaxy S II in 2011.

By attacking Apple head-on, Samsung’s marketers thought they could establish themselves as the challenger brand, turning the competition with Apple into a Coke-versus-Pepsi war for the smartphone world. But how do you attack Apple without looking petty, without giving it free advertising, without acting like the smaller dog in the pack who barks the loudest and then gets laughed at?

The team turned to a consultant named Joe Crump, senior vice president for strategy and planning at Razorfish, one of the world’s largest interactive agencies, to help them convey the depth of the brand problem in America to Samsung’s senior executives. Crump had an idea to get that across: He’d send camera crews around Times Square, each carrying two duffel bags. The first bag, people on the street would be told, contained the next unreleased iPhone. The other had a Samsung phone.

“What would you give us for each?”

Here was the response to the question when they thought the bag contained the new, unreleased iPhone: “I’d give you my brand new BMW. . . . I’d give you ten thousand dollars. . . . I’d give you my sister.” And the response for the Galaxy: “I don’t know. Five bucks?” One guy offered his half-eaten ice cream cone. 

“The Samsung [response] was just blistering,” Brian recalled. “We had to even take some of it out because it was just so harsh.”

A visiting delegation of South Korean executives huddled in a conference room to watch the video of these Times Square interactions. They were aghast. Suddenly Pendleton had their ear. The research—the field testing—had been done for internal consumption only. It was designed by Pendleton to get the South Korean executives to grasp the size of the problem.

Step two was to ensure that the economics of the coming marketing war on Apple made sense. Samsung had built a carrier-driven model, jumping through hoops to ensure that Sprint and AT&T received their own customized Galaxy phones to sell, using Samsung’s marketing money. If Todd pulled a maneuver too soon, swarms of customers might show up at AT&T stores—AT&T was the exclusive carrier for the iPhone at the time—only to have the advertising throughout the stores nudge them toward Apple.

The solution? To redirect Samsung’s marketing budget. At the time, Samsung was putting about 70 percent of its U.S. smartphone budget in so-called marketing development funds (MDFs), which were cash piles allocated to the carriers for advertising and rebates. About 30 percent of the budget went to Samsung’s own branding efforts. Pendleton’s team convinced Dale Sohn to reverse the figures: to put 70 percent behind Samsung’s own efforts and devote 30 percent to the carriers.

What would you give for the new, unreleased iPhone? “I’d give you my brand new BMW. . . . I’d give you ten thousand dollars. . . . I’d give you my sister.” And the response for the Galaxy? “I don’t know. Five bucks?”

Once Samsung had the marketing budget to reach out directly to customers, Pendleton could initiate step three: hiring an ad agency. He annoyed Samsung headquarters by going around their established Madison Avenue and Seoul agencies and instead putting in a call to relative newcomer 72andSunny, a boutique advertising firm with offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Amsterdam that had a special zing for cultural marketing.

Todd’s team chose 72andSunny specifically for its edginess. On a conference call with 72andSunny, he laid out Samsung’s goal, as handed down by Dale Sohn.

“I expect us to be number one in a couple years.”

The creative executives at 72andSunny got to work and churned out their first approach for Pendleton, who was present at the shoots and the editing, eager to maintain his creative hand. In one early version of a commercial, two characters waiting in line outside an Apple store had a conversation about the features and quality of their Apple and Samsung phones, followed by a cut to another scene of two characters talking about their phones.

It was slow, boring, and dull. Samsung’s bid to take on Apple, Todd’s team feared, would be finished before it had even started.

“We don’t have a campaign here, guys,” Pendleton said.

With the holiday shopping season closing in, the only solution was to chop up and redo the film then and there. During a frantic all-nighter, someone in the room suggested that they turn the commercial into a single scene, rather than two separate, awkward, forced moments of chatter between disparate characters.

The new commercial was completed the next afternoon.

It started, as before, with a line of apparent Apple lemmings waiting all night around a street corner for the release of the next big iThing—presumably an iPhone, though Apple was never mentioned by name.

“Guys, I’m so amped I can stay here for three weeks,” says an apparent Apple idolater.

No longer was the smartphone war a battle between Apple and a tangle of obscure Android me-too phones. Now it was a two-horse race. Everyone else had fallen by the wayside.

One guy notices a woman on a sidewalk tapping away at some weird gadget that— what? —doesn’t look like an iPhone.

“Whoa, what does she got there?”

Then another pedestrian hails a taxi on the sidewalk, holding the mystery device.

“Hey, bro, can we see your phone?” The mob of Apple fans snatch the device and pore over its hardware and features. “It’s a Samsung Galaxy,” the pedestrian tells them. “Check out the screen on this thing—it’s huge.”        

What is this thing?

“It’s a Samsung,” they repeat to each other. “Samsung?”

“It’s a Galaxy S II. This phone is amazing,” says the Samsung guy, showing off his smartphone before getting into a taxi, bidding farewell to the crowd of Apple zombies. 

The message? You don’t need to wait in line. You don’t need to follow the hype.

“The Next Big Thing Is Already Here,” the commercial finishes.

“God damn!” Todd exclaimed after looking at it. “We’ve got a campaign!”

Pendleton’s staff sent the commercial to South Korea for approval. Five days later, they’d still heard nothing back. At six o’clock on day five, Dale Sohn stood up, put on his jacket, and got ready to go home, before leaving a word of advice on the silence from Seoul.                          

“It means they’ve given you enough rope to hang yourself,” Sohn said.                  

It was up to Todd’s team to make the leap and take the risk. And if it failed, they’d have to answer for it.

They proceeded to leak the film to the popular tech and culture website Mashable, which unveiled it on November 22, 2011, before Samsung posted it “officially” on its Facebook page later that day. Pendleton was abandoning the marketing world’s older, more vanilla strategy of going through print and TV news outlets, opting for the Web first, appealing to millennials. Then, on Thanksgiving weekend, the commercial debuted in minute-long spots during the NFL games.    

Geoffrey Cain's <i>Samsung Rising</i> hits shelves on March 17, 2020.

The campaign was a phenomenal success, beyond anything the team had anticipated; Samsung had hit precisely the sweet spot, with viewers responding that they were tired of swallowing what they thought was Apple’s unjustified pretentiousness. The commercial transformed Samsung Telecommunications America into one of the fastest-growing brands on Facebook, with more than 26 million fans in sixteen months.

“We are the fastest-growing brand globally on Twitter, with almost two million followers,” Pendleton later recounted at a press conference. 

“Get ready to take out your designer pitchforks, Macheads. Your hipness is under attack as we speak,” joked CBS’s Chenda Ngak.

During the third quarter of 2011, Samsung surged past Apple to the number one spot among phone manufacturers, based on shipments. No longer was the smartphone war a battle between Apple and a tangle of obscure Android me-too phones. Now it was a two-horse race. Everyone else had fallen by the wayside.

Trucks carrying fresh apples started arriving at the Texas headquarters of Samsung. Bushel baskets were placed in the elevator banks and break rooms, so that wherever Samsung employees took a coffee break, they were reminded of their mission—to take a bite out of Apple.

Excerpted from Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech © 2020 by Geoffrey Cain. Published by Currency, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Geoffrey Cain is a foreign correspondent and author who has covered Asia and technology for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The New Republic, and other publications. A resident of South Korea for five years and a Fulbright scholar, he studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the George Washington University. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Apple v. Samsung heads to Supreme Court: What you need to know

FAQ: Remember that tiff about how Galaxy phones look like iPhones? The highest court in the land hears arguments Tuesday.

The biggest patent case to hit the modern tech world is back again.

Apple and Samsung will appear before the US Supreme Court on Tuesday to argue why their opponent was wrong when it came to a patent case from 2012. This is the first time a design patent case has been examined by the Supreme Court since the 1800s.

A decision by the court could have a ripple effect across the technology industry and ultimately affect the gadgets you buy. What's at question is how much money one company has to pay for copying the designs of another. Samsung says an Apple victory would stifle innovation. Apple argues that a Samsung win would weaken the protections afforded to new creations.

Notably, none of the devices in question has been on the market for years.

Samsung's infringing devices (pictures)

"One of the interesting things about this whole odyssey is it's a great demonstration of how slowly the law moves relative to technology," said Mark A. Lemley , a Stanford Law School professor and one of the people who signed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Samsung. "Here, we're on the first-generation trial, but...we're generations behind what the companies are selling."

You're forgiven if you don't remember what this was all about beyond phones and patents. Don't worry, CNET has you covered. And we've done the homework about SCOTUS so you don't have to scramble to remember your high school civics class.

Samsung said in a comment that it looks "forward to the Supreme Court's guidance on a very important matter that has the potential to stifle innovation and consumer choice. Samsung is honored to lead the charge in helping pave the way for future innovators and foster an environment where the fear of unreasonable law suits don't impinge upon their creativity."

Apple didn't have a comment ahead of Tuesday's hearing.

What was this about again?

Yeah, this all seems like it happened a long time ago. The original Apple v. Samsung trial in 2012 captivated Silicon Valley and the tech industry because it exposed the inner workings of two notoriously secretive companies. It was just one of many cases around the world as the rivals sparred both in the marketplace and in the courtroom.

At issue were design patents for a black, rectangular, round-cornered front face; a similar rectangular round-cornered front face plus the surrounding rim, known as the bezel; and a colorful grid of 16 icons. Those three patents are what's being considered in the Supreme Court case.

For more on Apple v. Samsung

• CNET's full Apple v. Samsung coverage
• Supreme Court steps into Apple v. Samsung fray
• Samsung to Supreme Court: Apple got too much money for its design patents
• Apple tells Supreme Court that Samsung case is 'legally unexceptional'

What devices were accused of infringing Apple's patents?

The products in question included the Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy SII AT&T, Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform.

What was the decision in the original case?

In August of 2012, a nine-person jury sided with Apple on a majority of its patent infringement claims against Samsung. At that time, the jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, much less than the $2.75 billion sought by the Cupertino, California, electronics giant. Samsung, which asked for $421 million in its countersuit, didn't get anything.

How much did Samsung end up paying Apple?

District Court Judge Lucy Koh, in striking $450.5 million off the original judgment against Samsung, ordered a new trial to begin in November 2013 to recalculate some of the damages in the case. South Korea-based Samsung ultimately paid Apple $548 million in damages in December 2015.

The amount was based on the total profits Samsung made from its infringing devices. That's what Samsung -- and other tech companies like Dell and Facebook -- want the Supreme Court to change. In this case, Samsung sold 10.7 million infringing devices, generating $3.5 billion in revenue.

Only $399 million of the $548 million paid to Apple -- considered the "additional remedy" amount under Section 289 of the Patent Act of 1952 (35 U.S.C. 289) -- is being examined in the Supreme Court case. The additional $149 million in damages Samsung paid Apple is not at stake.

So what's the issue with money?

This is what the entire Supreme Court case is about. Samsung wanted the court to give guidance on what's covered by design patents (which protect the way an item looks) and also on what damages can be collected. But the Supreme Court is looking only at the second issue: "Where a patented design is applied only to a component of a product, should an award of infringer's profits be limited to profits attributable to that component?"

Samsung believes design patents are given too much value when it comes to legal damages. The company contends that Apple should get profits only from the parts of a smartphone that infringe Apple's patents -- the front face and a grid of icons on a user interface -- not the profits from the entire phone.

Apple, meanwhile, quotes Congress in saying that "it is the design that sells the article" and, because profits attributable to design are often "not apportionable," it wants the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling. It did admit, in recent court filings, that sometimes a patent holder shouldn't collect profits on an entire product, but instead only on an infringing portion. But it said Samsung didn't provide enough evidence of that during this case.

Weren't there some other cases between Apple and Samsung?

Yes. The 2012 case wasn't the only time Apple accused Samsung of patent infringement. The two companies also battled in April 2014 over newer devices, specifically the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 4S. In that case, a jury told Samsung to pay Apple $119.6 million for infringing some of its patents, while Apple owed Samsung $158,400 for infringing one of the Korean company's patents.

Another damages retrial -- which would have been the fourth showdown between the companies -- was slated to start in late March in San Jose, California. But Koh put the trial on hold until the Supreme Court reviews the case.

The companies also were battling in overseas courts but agreed in August 2014 to settle all litigation outside the US.

Who sides with Samsung?

Dozens of legal experts, nonprofit organizations and technology companies filed amicus , or friend of the court, briefs in support of Samsung in January when it was trying to get the Supreme Court to hear its case.

Tech companies that support Samsung include Dell, eBay, Facebook, Google and HP. Other groups supporting Samsung included 50 professors of intellectual-property law, from places like Stanford and Georgetown universities, and digital-rights nonprofits like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Who sides with Apple?

More than 100 design industry professionals , including well-known fashion names like Calvin Klein and Alexander Wang, signed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Apple. The designers and educators said the iPhone's distinctive look drove people to buy it, so a similar-looking Samsung phone could hurt Apple's sales.

How is the government involved in this?

The US Department of Justice's Office of the Solicitor General (the group tasked with supervising and conducting government litigation in the Supreme Court) in June filed an amicus brief "supporting neither party." The attorney for the US will be Brian Fletcher, assistant to the solicitor general

Top evidence in Apple v. Samsung according to juror (pictures)

But it largely sided with Samsung in believing the lower court interpreted the law incorrectly. Still, it kept open the possibility that Samsung didn't present enough evidence to show it shouldn't have to pay remedies on the entire profits from its infringing devices.

The Justice Department believes patent holders should get full profits from the sale of an "article of manufacture," (as detailed in the patent law) but it doesn't believe the definition of an article is clear. Instead of an article being the entire phone, an article may actually be only the physical shell of the phone.

The agency said the ruling of the US Court of Appeals should be vacated and the case should be sent back to a lower court for further proceedings.

When is the Supreme Court hearing?

It starts at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday and lasts for an hour.

Who will be representing the companies at the Supreme Court?

Kathleen Sullivan, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel , will be speaking for Samsung. Her firm represented Samsung in the earlier trials. She's argued nine cases before the US Supreme Court.

Seth Waxman, a partner at law firm WilmerHale , will be speaking for Apple. He's a former solicitor general of the US and works for the same firm as Bill Lee, one of the lead attorneys in the previous trials. Waxman has delivered 75 oral arguments in the Supreme Court.

Wait, there are only eight justices now. Could there be a tie?

Yes. Because there are eight justices, there's no tiebreaker. The Supreme Court was split 4-4 in June in a case challenging Obama's 2014 immigration policies . If there's a tie, the lower court's ruling is affirmed.

But over the last three SCOTUS terms, seven patent cases were decided unanimously. And patent cases typically don't split along liberal versus conservative lines.

What happens if Apple wins?

More court time. There's still litigation going on between Apple and Samsung for other patents, and a second damages retrial from the 2012 case was slated to start in mid-March. Along with the $548 million Samsung agreed to pay, Apple argued its rival owed an additional $180 million in supplemental damages and interest. Koh put that trial on hold until after the Supreme Court reaches its decision.

What happens if Samsung wins?

Yep: more trials. If the Supreme Court limits the money that can be collected on infringing patents, a lower court will have to decide how much Apple is owed.

Other current design patent cases and those going through appeal would face the new Supreme Court interpretation, which means damages would be much lower than in the past.

When will there be a decision?

The Supreme Court recesses for the year on June 30, which means a decision should come before then. It's likely a ruling will come in the first quarter of 2017.

Inside the Apple v. Samsung courtroom (sketches)

First published October 9 at 5:00 a.m. PT. Updated through October 11 at 5:50 a.m. PT Added details, including the profits Apple wants to collect, and clarified the description of design patents.

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Apple vs. Samsung: the complete lawsuit timeline

By Joseph Parish

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Apple and Samsung have been fighting it out in the courts for months — the fight started in the US, when Apple claimed Samsung "slavishly" copied the iPhone, but since then it's spread out around the world, with both sides jockeying for position. Considering the stakes involved, this wrangling is bound to go on for some time — we'll keep track of all the latest right here.

Jun 27, 2018

Jacob Kastrenakes

Apple and Samsung settle seven-year-long patent fight over copying the iPhone

Apple and Samsung have finally put an end to their long-running patent battle whose central question was whether Samsung copied the iPhone. In a court filing today, Judge Lucy Koh said the two companies had informed her that they had reached a settlement. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The patent battle started in 2011 and initially resulted in a $1 billion ruling in Apple’s favor. But it didn’t end there. A series of appeals pushed the dispute to the Supreme Court and back, as the companies continually rehashed which patents were infringed and, more recently, exactly how much Samsung owes Apple because of the infringement.

Oct 23, 2017

James Vincent

Samsung drags Apple back to court for a retrial over $400 million patent damages

The patent battle between Apple and Samsung over who owns the concept of smartphones with round corners (among other things) is back for another trial. The lawsuit was originally settled in 2012 , with a court ordering Samsung to pay Apple more than $1 billion in damages. This figure was whittled down over the years by Samsung’s lawyers (it currently stands at $400 million) but a recent successful appeal from the South Korean electronics giant means the figure will now be reassessed at trial once again .

The judgement was made yesterday by Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, with the ruling spotted and shared on patent blog Foss Patents . Apple and Samsung now have until October 25th to propose a date for the retrial, although Mueller suggests there is a 30 percent chance that the two companies will settle out-of-court instead. Although there’s still a lot of money on the table, both sides have proved their willingness to go to the mats on this issue (an important signal to send out to future would-be litigators). They also have bigger fish to fry — namely an upcoming legal battle with Qualcomm , in which Apple and Samsung will be fighting on the same side.

Dec 6, 2016

Samsung gets another chance to reduce Apple’s $400 million patent win

The Supreme Court has overturned Apple's $400 million award in its long-running patent lawsuit against Samsung. Apple won the case in 2012, convincing a federal court that a number of Samsung devices had infringed upon iPhone design patents — including one for a rectangular device with rounded corners and bezels, and another for a home screen comprised of a grid of colorful apps. The Supreme Court’s decision today does not reverse Apple’s win, but does mean that the case will be returned to the Federal Circuit so that the damages can be reassessed.

The Supreme Court’s judgement is complicated, but hinges on the method by which damages are calculated for cases involving the infringement of design patents. The $400 million won by Apple was based on a percentage of the entire profit Samsung made from its infringing smartphones. But, the South Korean company argued that this figure shouldn’t be based on the entire profit, but only part of the profit, as only part of the phone’s design was copied from Apple. The Supreme Court agreed that damages could be calculated this way — but it declined to say whether they should be in this particular case.

Aug 20, 2015

Samsung will take its legal fight with Apple to the Supreme Court

It's been three years since Samsung lost its multimillion-dollar patent battle against Apple, but the South Korean company is still trying to forestall the judgement. After the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Samsung's plea to reconsider a ruling upholding the case's damages, the Galaxy phone maker has decided to turn to the US Supreme Court for help. On Wednesday, Samsung filed court papers asking the nation's highest court to weigh in on the protracted legal battle.

May 18, 2015

Adi Robertson

Court will reduce Apple's $930 million win in Samsung patent case

Apple and Samsung's patent infringement battle isn't over, and in the latest ruling, neither side has gotten exactly what it wanted. In a filing posted today , the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reaffirmed that Samsung had copied specific design patents in Apple's iPhone. But the court decided that Samsung wasn't infringing on Apple's overall trade dress — the look and feel of its phones. This means that while the damages Apple was granted for patent infringement will stand, the company's overall $930 million award will be downsized.

The court's analysis hinged on the idea that trade dress had to be based on aesthetic decisions meant to make something visually distinctive, and that rules protecting it have to be balanced with "a fundamental right to compete through imitation of a competitor’s product." While Apple argued that the iPhone's rounded rectangle shape and rows of square apps were designed to give it a particular look that fit Apple's brand, the court cited Apple's previous claims that the shape was also easier to use. The same went for its app icons, which were attractive but also meant to make the iPhone more intuitive.

Mar 5, 2014

Apple allegedly published confidential documents it fought Samsung for leaking

The latest twist in a legal dispute between Apple and Samsung is a strange one: after a court fined Samsung for revealing confidential information about Apple, Samsung now says that Apple accidentally revealed that very same information about itself — and in an even more public fashion. The dispute centered on a licensing agreement between Apple and Nokia that  Samsung's lawyers accidentally leaked to the company's employees . While a court found that this did happen, Samsung wants to see  its fine reduced on the grounds that Apple apparently leaked those very same documents too.

Samsung says that Apple published the licensing agreement in a public docket back in October and left it there for about four months. During that time, Apple is said to have published other confidential agreements too, including some dealing with Google and Samsung itself. Apple apparently discovered that it had done this and removed the documents after an investigation last month. "Apple's repeated disclosure of [confidential business information] warrants some investigation," Samsung writes in a motion.

Feb 22, 2014

Chris Ziegler

Another court battle looms for Apple and Samsung as patent talks fail

First rumored in the Korean press last month, Apple and Samsung have now said in a filing with the US district court that they've been unable to amicably resolve a new round of patent disputes after having agreed in January to try mediation before going to court. That doesn't come as much of a surprise: the two companies have found very little common ground in a series of intellectual property disputes that led to a billion-dollar judgment against Samsung in 2012 . The latest talks are said to have gone all the way to the top, roping in both Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung Mobile boss JK Shin.

The mediation effort covered a newer set of devices that Apple claims infringes on its intellectual property, which — as The Wall Street Journal notes — could eventually lead to even higher damages than before as Samsung's smartphone and tablet sales have exploded in recent years. Now that they've walked away from the negotiating table with absolutiely nothing to show for it, the consumer electronics giants are now slated to head to court in March for what could be the biggest legal battle of the year for the tech industry.

Feb 14, 2014

Apple and Samsung heading back to court after mediation talks fail, say reports

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung's mobile chief and co-CEO JK Shin reportedly met last week to try and thrash out a settlement to their long-running intellectual property dispute. The meeting, while unconfirmed by either party, is being reported by multiple Korean news outlets and adheres to the companies' promise to try and come to an amicable agreement before resuming their legal antagonism next month.

Sources indicate that the mediation effort was unproductive, which comes as no surprise given the history of animosity between Apple and Samsung and the fact that similar talks were fruitless back in 2012 .

Feb 7, 2014

Valentina Palladino

Department of Justice ends investigation into Samsung's potential patent abuse

The US Justice Department announced today that it will close its investigation into Samsung's use of patents to attack rivals like Apple. This decision comes after Samsung filed a patent infringement complaint against Apple at the US International Trade Commission and won an order in June 2013 to ban the sale of some iPhone and iPad models in the US. The ban was vetoed by President Obama last August, and now the Justice Department is stating that it sees no reason for the investigation to continue.

The Department of Justice has been investigating Samsung's use — and potential misuse — of "standards-essential patents" (SEPs) for years now. Companies have to license these kinds of patents to rivals under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, but the Department of Justice became concerned when Samsung appeared to be using the threat of import bans to raise licensing rates. Doing so would undermine the principles of FRAND, and potentially compromise competition in the open market in the process.

Jan 30, 2014

Samsung avoids court sanctions for leaking secret Apple licensing agreement

Samsung and Apple's drawn-out legal battle has been so contentious that the two companies spent the last few months in court fighting over the events of the trial itself. In November,  Judge Paul Grewal found that Samsung's legal team had likely violated a court order by distributing a legal report that contained confidential information from Apple and Nokia licensing agreements. On Wednesday, Grewal affirmed his earlier decision and ordered Samsung to pay Apple and Nokia's court costs for the case, but he stopped short of imposing sanctions that would hit Samsung with more than merely monetary losses.

Samsung attorney John Quinn said the team had simply failed to redact some details from a report prepared by legal expert David Teece before sending it to Samsung executives and employees. Grewal noted that even if the error was inadvertent, Quinn had learned afterwards that it contained confidential information and failed to either stop its spread or tell Apple and Nokia about the leak. He took Quinn to task for managing a team without enough oversight to catch and fix problems, and for waiting over two weeks after Nokia had filed suit against Samsung to tell Apple about the leak, "as though hoping that would make the problem go away."

Jan 22, 2014

Apple gets Samsung patent thrown out in latest lawsuit, wins keyboard infringement claim

Judge Lucy Koh has struck two blows against Samsung in its ongoing lawsuit with Apple. In a ruling on Tuesday, Koh ruled that Samsung was infringing on one patent, and she invalidated one of the patents it was preparing to bring against Apple in court. Specifically, the keyboard found on the Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, and several other older devices officially violates an Apple autocorrect patent, which covers Android's system of displaying both what the user is typing and what the system thinks they meant to type.

Samsung argued that Apple's patent could only refer to a hardware keyboard, not the "soft" one used on both iOS and Android. But this claim didn't hold water, and Koh found the infringement so clear that she granted Apple summary judgment, which means Samsung will need to prove the patent is invalid in order to win. If Apple comes out victorious, this isn't just a problem for Samsung: Google will have to work around the judgment in order to make sure Android as a whole isn't left open to lawsuits.

Jan 9, 2014

Adrianne Jeffries

Apple and Samsung agree to try mediation before their upcoming patent battle

Apple and Samsung have agreed to attend a mediation session by February 19 to resolve their seemingly never-ending disputes over smartphone patents, according to a court filing first reported by Reuters .

The two companies are set to go to trial in March if they can't settle their issues out of court. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon are slated to attend the session with their in-house legal counsel.

Nov 9, 2013

Judge orders Samsung to explain why it shouldn't be fined for leaking secret Apple docs

A judge has determined that Samsung probably violated a court-ordered agreement to keep Apple documents secret, the latest snit in the epic patent battle between the companies that started in the summer of 2012.

Oct 23, 2013

Bryan Bishop

Apple and Samsung battle over leaked licensing agreement

There was plenty of outrage, but little in the way of resolution, as attorneys for Apple and Samsung traded blows over allegations that Samsung's legal team intentionally shared confidential information from Apple's patent licensing agreements. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal heard the arguments in San Jose, California today, with Apple's legal team looking for sanctions against Samsung and its outside counsel, the law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP.

As part of the discovery process in the  epic legal struggles between the two companies , Apple had handed over patent licensing agreements with Nokia, Ericsson, Sharp, and Philips. Those documents, marked "Attorney Eyes' Only," were considered confidential, but it's standard practice in these kind of circumstances for companies to provide documents under the court-ordered mandate that they not be shared with anyone outside the legal team in question.

Jun 27, 2013

Apple can't add Galaxy S4 to latest Samsung patent lawsuit, says judge

A San Jose court has denied Apple's attempt to add the Galaxy S4 to its patent case against Samsung. In a statement yesterday, Judge Paul S. Grewal said that adding a new product to the case would fly in the face of Judge Lucy Koh's previous instruction to minimize the scope of the lawsuit. "Each time these parties appear in the courtroom, they consume considerable amounts of the court's time and energy," he wrote, "which takes time away from other parties who also require and are entitled to the court's attention."

Apple's second US lawsuit against Samsung — following a dramatic win in the first trial last year — currently covers the Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III, and Galaxy Nexus among several other phones and tablets. In mid-May, Apple proposed to add the recently released Galaxy S4 and drop its claim against another Samsung product, leaving the total number changed. It argued that the S4 presented a clearer threat to Apple's intellectual property, and that substituting it for another device wouldn't be unduly onerous.

Apr 3, 2013

Matt Macari

Apple's bounce-back patent receives 'final' rejection from US patent office

Apple received some bad news last Friday regarding its infamous bounce-back patent, US 7,469,381 . That's one of the technical utility patents Samsung was found to infringe at trial, and it's been the subject of a formal reexamination process at the US Patent and Trademark Office since last July. In October each and every claim of the '381 patent was initially rejected . On Friday, however, the USPTO issued what's called a "final" action in the reexamination — again rejecting nearly all of the patent claims, including the one asserted against Samsung at trial. "Final" has a fatal ring to it, but it's far less conclusive than that. While the issuance of a final rejection signals the end of this particular phase of the proceedings, we're still a long way from knowing which patent claims will ultimately survive the process.

This final office action is the next step, and there are still a few procedural options available to Apple, as it pointed out in a recent court filing . First, Apple will file a response to the final action in an attempt to get the USPTO to change course. If that doesn't work (and it often doesn't), then an appeal up the chain to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board will occur. If that doesn't result in a substantive reversal of the rejections, then there's always the option of appealing to the courts — namely, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Basically, we're at the bottom of the fourth inning.

Jan 31, 2013

Apple loses bid to revive Galaxy Nexus sales ban

Last year a judge granted an injunction on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus as part of a new round of legal battles between Apple and Samsung — a sales ban that was then reversed by an appeals court last October. Apple had asked the court to reconsider, but Reuters is now reporting it has has been denied. In an order today , the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit noted that it was rejecting Apple's request for an en banc review — a reconsideration of the sales ban by all nine judges of the Appeals Court. It's important to note that such a review is rare, so the move doesn't come as a complete surprise.

The dispute in question is based around Apple's '604 patent, which both the company and the district court believe is infringed by unified search as implemented on the Galaxy Nexus. To justify the injunction, Apple would have to demonstrate that consumer demand for the Nexus was directly tied to the infringing feature — a tough standard to meet given the variety of features available on modern smartphones. That said, Cupertino does have one more option available: it could appeal to the Supreme Court itself. While it's not likely Apple's request would be accepted, one thing's for certain — the company has proven to be nothing if not tenacious.

Dec 28, 2012

Apple pulls Samsung Galaxy S III Mini from patent battle

Samsung scored a win today, as Apple agreed in a court filing to pull its infringement claims against the Galaxy S III Mini. The device had been accused along with an assortment of other devices in the second legal battle the two companies are engaged in with Judge Lucy Koh. Apple had included the Galaxy S III Mini because it was available for sale through Amazon.com, but Samsung argued that the device had not been officially released in the United States , and therefore shouldn't be covered. Predicated upon Samsung's word that the company was not selling the phone directly in the US, Apple agreed to drop it from the list of accused devices. It's important to note that this kind of jostling is common at this stage of the game, with both companies ironing out which devices will be included in the pending trial. That said, the Mini isn't clear just yet — Apple may still be able to include the device if Samsung reverses its stance and decides to sell the phone domestically.

Dec 18, 2012

Samsung's juror misconduct argument will not result in a new trial with Apple

Samsung had hoped allegations of juror misconduct would win it a do-over in the Apple v. Samsung case, but tonight Judge Lucy Koh put those aspirations to rest by denying its request. Samsung had accused jury foreman Velvin Hogan of intentionally hiding information about a lawsuit he was involved in with Seagate. Samsung recently became a primary shareholder of the company, providing Hogan a reason to be biased. As such, the company had asked for an evidentiary hearing — in which all of the jury members would be brought back to the courtroom to be questioned about what impact Hogan had on deliberations — as well as a new trial.

In tonight's court filing , Judge Koh wrote that the discovery problem was the fault of Samsung's legal team. Hogan admitted he worked for Seagate during the jury selection process, she wrote, providing Samsung with ample opportunity to discover the litigation if the company's team had "acted with reasonable diligence."

Apple denied permanent sales ban on infringing Samsung products

In a court filing this evening, Judge Lucy Koh has denied Apple's request for a permanent sales ban on 26 Samsung products found to have infringed its patents in a jury verdict this past August . Writing that "this Court has already performed significant irreparable harm analysis in this case," Koh concluded that Apple didn't establish the case for a permanent injunction on Samsung's products. Apple needed to prove that the infringing features were what were directly driving "consumer demand for the accused product" in order to obtain the ban, but that bar was too high.

Neither statements about broad categories, nor evidence of copying, nor the conjoint survey provides sufficiently strong evidence of causation. Without a causal nexus, this Court cannot conclude that the irreparable harm supports entry of an injunction."The ruling isn't a surprise, and means that the case will continue on its current trajectory — especially considering Koh also denied Samsung's request for a new trial based on the jury foreman's alleged misconduct . Apple had also requested additional damages of over a half-billion dollars on top of the $1.049 billion Samsung had already lost, but Koh said that that "enhancement request" would be addressed in another order. 

Nov 24, 2012

Apple asks judge to add Galaxy Note II and other Samsung devices to latest suit

Shortly after Samsung accused Apple of infringing patents with the iPad mini and other new products, Apple has fired back, asking to add the Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III with Android 4.1, and four other products to the latest lawsuit. While Apple has already added some of the devices, like the S III, to its suit, they've since received software updates, leading to another round of requested inclusions. The Galaxy S III mini, Samsung Rugby Pro, Galaxy Tab 8.9 Wi-Fi, and Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 round out the list.

Other patent infringement cases have already been decided in favor of either Apple or Samsung, with the former winning a US trial decisively earlier this year. However, this case could drag into 2014, with hearings expected early next year. So far, the case covers the iPhone 5, Galaxy Note 10.1, and all versions of the Galaxy Nexus running 4.1 Jelly Bean; US Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal will have to decide whether to allow additional products from the two companies.

Nov 22, 2012

Samsung accuses iPad mini of patent infringement in latest legal salvo

Samsung successfully added the iPhone 5 to its newest patent battle with Apple, and today the company accused several more of Cupertino's products of infringement — including the iPad mini. In a court filing today , the company asked to include Apple's 7.9-inch tablet along with the latest versions of the iPod Touch and iPad; all of the devices are accused of infringing the same patents already in play in the case.

Apple won a jury verdict in a courtroom fight between the two companies earlier this year, but this second lawsuit will likely go to trial sometime next year. Apple has accused the Galaxy Nexus, the Galaxy S III, and an assortment of other products thus far, while Samsung has returned with its own accusations in kind. While these latest devices won't be officially included until the request is approved by US Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal, there is little reason to think they won't make it in, raising the stakes for Apple — and ramping up the pressure to settle just that much more.

Apple and HTC will have to give their settlement agreement to Samsung

Earlier this month Samsung asked that the court force Apple to turn over its settlement agreement with HTC , and today US Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal granted that requested . According to Samsung, the document could play a vital role in determining whether it will need to take any of its products off the market in the wake of the $1.049 billion verdict Apple won back in August . If Apple licensed some of its unique user experience patents, Samsung argues, then Cupertino is clearly fine with competitors using that IP as long as it receives money in return — and since Apple will be receiving a payout in connection with the verdict, the extra step of an injunction isn't justified.

Apple's attorneys had previously agreed to share a version of the agreement that redacted the financial terms of the settlement; in a hearing today Samsung argued that the fees HTC is paying Apple indicate how much consumer demand there is for those features covered by the patents. While Judge Grewal did write that he was "more than a little skeptical" of Samsung's argument, he nevertheless ordered Apple to turn over the document. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear the details of the agreement will surface anytime soon, as it is being handed over subject to an "Attorneys-Eyes-Only" designation — basically, nobody but Samsung's legal team will get a look.

Nov 16, 2012

Samsung hopes to use Apple and HTC settlement to stop sales ban

Earlier this week HTC and Apple put an end to their patent disagreements , and now Samsung is hoping to use that fact to prevent its own devices from being taken off the market. In a court filing today , Samsung asked the court to force Apple to turn over a copy of its settlement agreement to see which patents are covered in the deal. Specifically, Samsung wants to know if Apple licensed any of the patents that it was found to have infringed — including the bounce-back and pinch-to-zoom patents . If so, the company argues, Apple's request that infringing Samsung products be removed from the market falls apart, because Apple was happy to "forego exclusivity in exchange for money" — and in this instance, Apple is already receiving money in the form of a hefty $1.049 billion verdict .

During the Apple vs. Samsung trial earlier this year, Apple's Director of Patent Licensing and Strategy, Boris Teksler, stated that while Apple does license its standards-essential and computing patents , "we strongly desire not to license" the patents the cover its user experience. In Apple's mind, Teksler, said, no company would even need to license that particular set of intellectual property unless it wanted to build a clone of one of Apple's devices.

Apple and Samsung allowed to include iPhone 5 and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean in latest legal battle

Over the last few months both Apple and Samsung have been asking to include additional products in their latest courtroom confrontation, and today both parties got what they wanted. In an order filed today , US Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal granted Samsung's request to include the iPhone 5 as one of its accused products; the company contends that Apple's latest flagship phone infringes on several of its standards-essential patents and several feature-specific patents. In kind, Apple will be able to name several products it's been anxious to accuse — including the Galaxy Note 10.1, all versions of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean that were distributed on the Galaxy Nexus , and the Galaxy S III .

Each of the companies had previously requested the products be included, but needed Grewal to agree before they could officially become part of the case. There's always the chance that additional products could still find their way in, but it appears that the playing field has finally taken shape. While Apple won a $1.049 billion verdict back in August , this second case has actually been going on since February of this year, with Cupertino originally accusing a handful of tablets, Galaxy S II variants, and the Galaxy Nexus of infringement. Of course, it's not certain that this case will end up going to trial — Apple and HTC settled their differences just days ago, after all — but for the moment it doesn't look like either company has any intention of backing down.