The Apple iPhone 5 is going to be added to lawsuits already open that have been filed against Apple by Samsung Electronics Co. The new iPhone should be in stores this Friday and it is already a hit as 2 million orders have already been placed for the phone. Apple and Samsung are battling each other in 10 countries regarding patents.
“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,” Samsung said in a U.S. court filing. “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.”
In a statement released on Thursday by Samsung, the company said the following: “Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition. Under these circumstances, we have little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights.”
In a response to the statement and the updated lawsuits, Apple Korea said that it is the victim of copying, not the copier. “At Apple, we value originality and innovation … We make these products to delight our customers, not for our competitors to flagrantly copy.”
In August, Apple recorded a victory legally over Samsung when a jury from the United States said that Samsung copied features of the iPhone. Apple was awarded damages in excess of $1.05 billion in the case. That same jury determined that Apple never infringed on Samsung’s patents. The defeat for Samsung was also a defeat for Google, whose Android software runs on the Samsung smartphones that are at the heart of the lawsuits.
Then, last week, a judge at the International Trade Commission said that Apple did not violate patents belonging to Samsung during a preliminary ruling. Samsung beat Apple when it comes to manufacturing smartphones. In the second quarter of 2012 Samsung shipped 50 million phones. In the same quarter, Apple shipped 26 million iPhones.