Another ridiculous court case in Germany, between bickering corporate "children" Samsung and Apple, has been settled for now, although it most definitely will not be their last.
This time, it was a Samsung claim that definitely needed to be litigated, if you believe stuffing money into the pockets of corporate lawyers is way better than investing in your products, in innovation, in lowering prices or even donating to charity.
The claim was that Apple stole the idea of pressing a button on a device to have the device describe what is on its own screen.
Samsung attempted to prove that Apple’s iPhone feature, VoiceOver, was added to the phone without paying the proper licensing fee to the owner of the patent on this describing-button feature, Samsung.
Rather than simply asking Apple to pay the licensing fee, Samsung wanted the German court to forbid Apple from selling their phones with the VoiceOver feature in Germany.
The German court didn’t throw the case out, but merely suspended it, until another lawsuit that Samsung is involved in gets settled.
According to the blog of patent consultant Florian Muller, Samsung might have gotten something rather than a "time out" if they had more reasonable expectations.
"If Samsung had only requested monetary compensation in this action, it would have made a much better choice than by trying to achieve, through the pursuit of an injunction, the deactivation or (more realistically) degradation of the voiceover functionality Apple provides to its German customers,” the blog says.
A financial solution would have also been preferable for the blind people who rely on VoiceOver to use their iPhones and iPads, because it wouldn’t have interfered with service, as Samsung appears to want.
Which is not good, according to AllThingsD.com writer John Paczkowski, in his blog post on the suit.
“Samsung has now identified itself as a company willing to accept the loss of accessibility for the vision-impaired as collateral damage in its battle with Apple,” Paczkowski wrote. “It has made a big public move to make it more difficult for the blind to use computers. That’s just foolish.”
The pettiness is somewhat understandable, following years of similar suits filed by Apple over features like rounded corners.
Steve Jobs wanted to destroy Samsung for copying the iPhone’s design. Just because his successor Tim Cook has been less passionate, that doesn’t mean Samsung is feeling any less retaliatory.
