Apple and Samsung call time on seven-year fight

The mobile phone market is one of the fastest moving industries in the world, as the largest players battle to grab as much of the market as possible. At the top of the tree is Apple and Samsung, who between them represent over 49% of all handsets sold globally. Both businesses look to have the upper hand over the other, and with the stakes running high there are often accusations of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Design has been the centre of a seven-year dispute with both parties filing separate claims around interface and interaction. The end now seems to have finally arrived, with a US jury ordering Samsung to pay Apple US $539m (£403m) in damages for copying features of the original iPhone. This settlement came from a claim made by Apple in 2011, which argued the copied hand set represented lost business worth in the region of US $2bn.

This was only the first claim from Apple, with a US jury awarding the California-based tech company US $1.05bn in damages for other copied features, the most significant of which being the interface icons which appear in a grid format.

Many of the previous results have been appealed, continuing the back and forth with no settlements ever changing hands. In 2016, a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court handed a victory to Samsung. But the justices did not rule on the patents themselves, leaving that decision to a lower court. That trial finally arrived in May delivering a final defeat to Samsung, ending all further avenues to legal appeal.

For now at least, both companies can take a break from legal proceedings, but don’t be surprised if we see more disputes cropping up in the future.