Analysis of Apple vs. Samsung Intellectual Property Infringement Case

This essay examines the intellectual property (IP) infringement case between Apple and Samsung, focusing on the legal and strategic operations of both firms. The analysis includes a detailed discussion of the various claims made by Apple, including trade dress, trademark, and design patent infringements. The essay explores the evolution of the case, including the initial rulings, appeals, and the final settlement. It also assesses the impact of the case on the subsequent strategies of both companies and the broader industry structure. The essay highlights how Samsung was accused of copying Apple's innovative technology, user interfaces, and packaging designs, and how the legal battle ultimately shaped the landscape of the smartphone market, emphasizing the significance of IP protection in the tech industry.

Running head: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Intellectual Property
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

1INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Intellectual property or the IP is generally refers to a broad category which consists of set
of intangibles which are described in a proper way. This intangibles along with being owned are
also protected legally by the company from any kind of usage outside the organization or
stopping the implementation without consent. Intellectual property might be consisting of secrets
related to trade, copyrights, patent and trademarks or simply the ideas. The concept related to
intellectual property is related to the existence of certain products and should be associated with
affording the same protective rights which are applied to the physical property (Bajwa, 2014).
Most of the economies which are developed is consisting of legal measures which are put in
place so as to protect both forms of property. This essay would be discussing about the
infringement of the Intellectual property of any kind of IP-protected innovation of one firm by
another firm. In this essay we would be discussing about infringement of the IP of Apple by
Samsung.
Apple had been associated with charging Samsung and this is one of the remarkable
infringement of the IP due to numerous reasons not only because of being one of the Apples
critical component suppliers. Samsung being a Korean giant manufactures is associated with
receving their resources from the DRAM and besides the SSDs used by the MacBook Pros to
which ranges from the A4 toA5 processors are seen to be used in the iPhone, iPod Touch and
other Apple devices (Yıldız, 2014). However this type of relationship has not been associated
with softening the tone of Apple and the organization had been associated with making an
complaint which stated that the organization Samsung instead of perusing any kind of
independent product development procedure had been associated with choosing the path of
slavishly copying the innovative technology of Apple along with the unique user interfaces and

2INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
the elegant and unique packaging design of Apple. All this were considered to be a violation of
the Intellectual property rights by Samsung.
The takeaway was very much simple for Apple and the reason behind this was that the
organization was at all afraid of sue anyone whenever it is related to their intellectual property
(O'Rourke, 2011). Apple had also been associated with demanding the stop of infringement of
the IP from Samsung along with providing them with an option of paying a royalty however
Samsung had been associated with refusing this proposal
The complaint lodged by Apple consisted of few interesting nuggets and this included the
selling of almost more than 60 million iPods touches in the year of 2011 in March which was the
first time ever break out of particular device and besides this almost 108 million iPhones along
with 19 million iPads were also sold in the same year (Kim & Song, 2013). Besides this Apple
had also been associated with spending an amount of more than $2 billion upon advertisement of
the products in the fiscal year of 2007 to 2010.
Apple had been associated with making several claims and all the claims have been listed
below structurally.
First Claim: Infringement of the Trade dress under 15 U.S.C. § 1125:
Trade dress is associated with filling the gaps that generally exists between the three that
is the patent, copyright and the trademark (Walla, & Schweiger, 2017). Trademark and the trade
dress is entirely associated with dealing with the protection of the customers so as to make sure
that they are not misled in the marketplace which means the main idea are being clearly indicated
the source of the product or service. Some of the Apples trade dress which has been infringed by
Samsung have been listed below:

3INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Claims related to hardware and software trade dress:
 Rectangular shape of the product which consisted of rounded four corners in an uniform
way
 The products front surface in which the screen surface is dominated by borders of black
color (Coughlin, 2016)
 In case of the iPad the substantial borders of black color on every side were seen to be
roughly equal in width
 The perimeter of the top surface which was surrounded by a metallic frame.
 A grid display of colorful square icons consisting of rounded corners
 The row at the bottom consisting of square icons which are set off from the other icons
along with those which do not change when the other pages of the user interface are
viewed.
Claims related to Packaging trade dress:
 Box of rectangular shape consisting of a minimal metallic silver lettering along with a
large front-view picture of the product in a prominent way on the top surface of the box.
 Box consisting of two pieces in which the bottom piece is completely nested in the top
piece
 Usage of a tray which is associated with cradling of the product so as to make the product
immediately visible whenever the box is opened.
Amongst all this claims few of them were little obsolete when the claims were taken
individually. Against some of the claims, Samsung responded with the best bet which is arguing
about the fact that the products and packing are not confusing similar and in case if this does not

4INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
work out then the best option form Samsung is to prove the fact that the consumers are not being
confused at all (Carani, 2012).
Second Claim: Infringement of federal Trade Dress under 15 U.S.C. § 1114:
The second trade claim which was made was seen to be much simpler along with being
direct and the major reason behind this is that it has been associated with dealing with the three
specific trade dress elements of iPhone and Apple has been associated with registering itself with
the US patent as well as the Trademark office (Kim, Park & Kim, 2015). Which means that
Apple had already been capable of convincing the USPTO regarding these elements related to
the distinctiveness and the Protection.
Third Claim: infringement of Federal trademark under: 15 U.S.C. § 1114
This is the claim which can be considered to be the strongest claim as Apple has a trademark
upon several iOS system icons and besides this the TouchWiz is associated with including six
icons which almost looks similar (Fogliasso & Williams, 2014).
Fourth Claim: Infringement of the common law
This is the particular claim which catches up all the other claims and is the place where all the
federal trademark pieces that are claimed are picked up and for the purpose of strengthening the
claims related to the iTunes icon whose registration is still pending.
Other claims: Design patent infringement:
There exists a very simple relationship between the trade dress and the design patents. In
case if the trade dress is regarding the products design to the customer then the design patent is
seen to be all about the design of the product itself. The design patent is seen to be expiring just

5INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
like the other patents whereas the trade dress is seen to be lasting as long as the item exists in the
market (Gil, 2016). The infringement of the rules related to design patent is seen to be very much
simple which means if the designs are seen to be considerably similar enough for tricking an
ordinary person in making them them that the products are then it can be considered to be an
infringement. Amongst the claims made by apple this is the actual bulk of the lawsuit which is
associated with making this claim much more different from other lawsuits of Apple against the
Android phone manufacturers (Dissanayake & Amarasuriya, 2015). Along with the assertion
there also exists some same patents which are against the Android but still is being used in other
lawsuits and Apple had been associated with picking out several new ones.
Apple had also been associated with making claims related to infringement of the patent
6,493,002 which is also titled as the “Method and Apparatus for Displaying and Accessing
Control and Status Information in a Computer System” (Jun & Sung Park, 2013). This is entirely
a new concept for Apple or Android litigation parties. This patent is associated with covering the
system which pops up a window showing different interactive control widgets.
Along with this apple also claimed an infringement of the Patent #7,812,828, by
Samsung. This is the unreliable technical patent which mainly refers to the inputs in the
touchscreen and is titles as the Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surface which is associated with
covering the taking of the touch impressions and converting them into ellipses. Apple also have
been associated with asserting this against the organization Motorola (Vergara, 2012). In a
similar fashion apple also claimed that the Patent #7844,915 have been violated and this paper is
titled as Application Programming Interfaces for Scrolling Operations and is associated with
covering the decisions related to the time when the user would be using one finger for the

6INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
purpose of scrolling or viewing versus the usage of two or more fingers for the scaling at the
same view.
Damages to Apple:
The case was lodged by Samsung and there was few things which Apple wanted from
Samsung and the first thing was that it wanted Samsung to compensate for the infringements
done in the past along with which Samsung should also stop infringing in the future as well
(Chen & Ann, 2016). Specifically it can be stated that Apple wanted the court to prohibit
Samsung permanently along with its different divisions and suppliers from any kind of infringing
of the Intellectual properties which are claimed by Apple along with the triple damages for any
kind of patent infringement or any kind of wrongful profits which might have been gained by
Samsung by making use of the Intellectual property of Apple. This is pretty standard stuff
however this is all very much dependent upon the claims made and it is expected that by the time
when the jury or the judge makes a decision on the damages, the claims would have been argues
into something which would be very different.
Apple and Samsung have lastly been associated with ending up of the long-running
patent battle which started in the year of 2011 and this initially resulted in the ruling of almost $1
billion in favor of apple (Chang, Kim & Joo, 2013). However this did not ended over here and
due to a series of appeals and this initially pushed the dispute moved to the Supreme Court and
back because of the continuous rehashing of the patents which were infringed.
The case was mainly revolving around numerous designs as well as the utility patents
which are needed for the basic functioning of the smartphones such as the tap for zoom or the
home screen app grid. However as the fight got hashed out by usage of the specific patents, the

7INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
battle ultimately turned out weather the organization Samsung had copied the organization Apple
in its early days of smartphones so as to gain an edge and after analysis the jury finally decided
that in many ways Samsung had copied Apple. The seven year old trial upon the smartphone
patent between Apple and Samsung came to an end and the organization Apple was awarded
with a final verdict of around $539 million as a compensation for the damages by Samsung.
The Android specific patent were made by apple which almost seemed to be a foundation
upon which the case against the TouchWiz can be built which is not the indirect swipe at
Android itself which has been expected from these lawsuits. Depending upon the replies and the
countersuits promised by Samsung it can be considered that Apple might be willing to settle
down the patent claims however this would be pushing the trademark as well as the trade dress
claims and in case in case if Apple loses those it would be opening up a new season on the iOS
aesthetic.

8INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
References:
Bajwa, S. (2014). Apple v Samsung: Is It Time to Change Our Patent Trial System. Pac.
McGeorge Global Bus. & Dev. LJ, 27, 77.
Carani, C. V. (2012). Apple v. Samsung-Design Patents Take Center Stage. Landslide, 5, 25.
Chang, Y., Kim, J., & Joo, J. (2013). An exploratory study on the evolution of design thinking:
Comparison of Apple and Samsung. Design Management Journal, 8(1), 22-34.
Chen, C. M., & Ann, B. Y. (2016). Efficiencies vs. importance-performance analysis for the
leading smartphone brands of Apple, Samsung and HTC. Total Quality Management &
Business Excellence, 27(3-4), 227-249.
Coughlin, T. (2016). Apple, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co.: Economics of Design Patent
Trolling. Cardozo Arts & Ent. LJ, 35, 209.
Dissanayake, D. M. R., & Amarasuriya, T. (2015). Role of brand identity in developing global
brands: A literature based review on case comparison between Apple iPhone vs Samsung
smartphone brands.
Fogliasso, C. E., & Williams, A. (2014). Analysis Of The Business, Societal And Governmental
Relationships Of Apple Inc. Leadership & Organizational Management
Journal, 2014(1).
Gil, E. M. (2016). Samsung v. Apple: Taking a bite out of the design patent article of
manufacture controversy. U. Miami Bus. L. Rev., 25, 67.
Jun, S., & Sung Park, S. (2013). Examining technological innovation of Apple using patent
analysis. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 113(6), 890-907.

9INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Kim, H., & Song, J. (2013). Social network analysis of patent infringement
lawsuits. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 80(5), 944-955.
Kim, S. Y., Park, S. T., & Kim, Y. K. (2015). Samsung-Apple patent war case analysis: focus on
the strategy to deal with patent litigation. Journal of digital convergence, 13(3), 117-125.
O'Rourke, M. (2011). Apple and Samsung wage patent war. Risk Management, 58(10), 6.
Vergara, R. A. G. (2012). Samsung electronics and apple, inc.: A study in contrast in vertical
integration in the 21st century. Am Int J Contemp Res, 2(9).
Walla, P., & Schweiger, M. (2017). Samsung versus Apple: smartphones and their conscious and
non-conscious affective impact. In Information Systems and Neuroscience (pp. 73-82).
Springer, Cham.
Yıldız, Y. (2014). Tüketici Davranışları Üzerinde Sosyal Medya Etkileri: Apple ve Samsung
Örneği. Kastamonu Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi, 4(2), 5-15.