Nokia against Apple
Apple against Android
Apple against HTC
Apple against Samsung

Apple Patent fights against completion

The history of patents goes back to the 18th century, when inventions and intellectual property were already protected by governments. Patent law became really important with industrialization. Every invention in the field of telecommunications was accompanied by patents. Patents such as Alexander Graham Bell’s regarding the telephone were particularly important. Bell built an entire industry on this protection.

However, with the development of telecommunications networks and especially mobile networks, things became more complex. There was no longer one person or one company that invented GSM, for example. There were many individual inventions from different companies that were all combined into one system. Standardization organizations such as ETSI were aware of the patent problem and therefore set a policy that every member had to follow. If a technology or process found its way into a standard, the associated patent had to be openly communicated. In addition, the patent holder committed to licensing the corresponding patent under fair conditions.

All companies that developed a mobile communications standard therefore tried to generate as many patents as possible. They built a so-called “patent pool” or a “patent portfolio”. Such companies were the usual leaders of the telecommunications industry: Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Nortel, Lucent, etc. When these companies built terminal devices, they created so-called cross license agreements with the other companies. They therefore did not pay any patent fees, but rather it was agreed that the patent claims would virtually cancel each other out. So far there has been little patent litigation in the mobile communications sector. This changed with the appearance of Apple with its iPhone.

Nokia against Apple

Apple entered the mobile phone business very late. Apple’s strengths were focused on design and usability. They actually didn’t want to build a „telephone“ at all, but rather a „completely new device“ that could „also make phone calls“. Because Apple had not participated in standardization, it had no patents in the field of transmission. Nevertheless, Apple benefited from GSM, UMTS and WLAN technology immediately after entering the mobile communications market.

Nokia was in contact with Apple regarding licenses, but Apple refused to pay licenses. When Nokia realized that Apple was gaining more and more market share while its own market share in the smartphone sector was falling, it decided to sue Apple. It was about patents relating to GSM, UMTS and WLAN. Nokia said they had invested $43 billion in developing the standards and now wanted corresponding costs from Apple. Apple responded with countersuits against Nokia. Nevertheless, Nokia won the patent dispute in 2011. Apple had to pay several hundred million dollars in fees and from then on a license for every iPhone. However, the dispute was not yet resolved. So far there have only been a few patents involved. Other patents followed. Nokia even sued Apple when it had given up its device business. It wasn’t until 2017 that a final agreement was reached between Apple and Nokia.

Apple against Android

Apple or Steve Jobs believed they had ownership of a new type of communication device, which was the iPhone and later the iPad. They saw it as a revolution that had only come about through the innovative power of the Apple company and therefore needed to be protected. For Apple, it wasn’t about cellular technology. It was about design, user interface and operating system. The operating system was iOS and unlike the other operating systems available, it was owned by Apple (not open).

Steve Jobs was particularly proud of this operating system, which he originally brought to Apple from NEXT. It was his baby. His hatred for Android was even greater. From his point of view, Android was a bad copy and an imitation of iOS. What is interesting, however, is that the founder of Android, Andy Rubin, originally worked at Apple on operating systems for PDAs. So one origin of Android actually lies with Apple itself.

The problem with Android was that it was hard to be sued. Although Google was the publisher of Android, it was still open software with no license fees. Apple could not sue Android or Google directly, but had to sue Android users.

Apple against HTC

Google primarily worked with HTC on a joint smartphone. The Nexus One came onto the market at the beginning of 2010. This was built by HTC and contained the latest version of Android, which was based on Multi Touch technology. HTC became the first company to be sued by Apple. Steve Jobs is quoted in his biography as saying:

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Apple against Samsung

On June 4, 2010, the Samsung Galaxy S was released. This phone literally caused an outcry at Apple. Not so much because it used Android like the HTC phone, but more because it looked and operated like a 1-1 copy of the iPhone3G. Apple initially hesitated to sue and tried to negotiate a licensing agreement with Samsung. After all, Samsung was an important, perhaps even the most important, electronics supplier to Apple. Samsung reacted angrily when Apple claimed that the Galaxy S was a copy and didn’t want to pay for licenses. They produced even more products that copied Apple, including a Galaxy Tab that was a copy of the iPad.

Finally, in April 2011, Apple sued Samsung in a California court. Samsung defended itself and in turn sued Apple for violating some of Samsung’s patents.

Apple sued Samsung primarily because of the design (black glass, rectangular screen, round corners), the icons and the user interface (touch to zoom in, zoom in with two fingers, and “rubber band effect” when reaching the end of a list). The trial took place before a jury in San Jose. Samsung tried to show that the design was not new and that the user navigation patents were not “valid” patents either. However, the judge did not allow any discussion about the validity of patents. Apple was able to prove that Samsung engineers knowingly and on behalf of their management copied certain elements and did not develop them themselves.

In August 2012, the court convicted Samsung. They saw it as proven that Samsung had knowingly copied. They fined Samsung over a billion dollars. This was a lot, but less than Apple had asked for ($2.4 billion). Samsung appealed. In fact, there were errors in the process and soon the fine was reduced. In addition to the fines, Apple also tried to stop the sale of Samsung products. However, this didn’t really work. Apple also opened trials in South Korea, Japan, Europe and Australia. Here, too, they tried to dispute the stop to the sale of Samsung products. This only succeeded to a limited extent. What was helpful here was that Samsung had short product cycles and managed to cleverly circumvent Samsung patents again and again. 

In the USA, the case finally ended up before the Supreme Court. Here it was decided that the case had to be reheard completely. Apple also won in the new case. However, the amount of damage that Samsung had to pay was reduced to $539 million.

Finally, Samsung accepted this ruling in 2018 and reached an out-of-court agreement with Apple about how to proceed.

Meanwhile, many of Apple’s key patents were re-examined and subsequently declared invalid. These included the “Slide to unlock” patent and the famous “Pinch to zoom” process. So Apple lost some of its reputation as a revolutionary innovator. Apple’s innovation here was once again the bringing together of innovations that already existed to create a new product. Before the iPhone, this had already been the case with the Macintosh and the iPod.

After Samsung and Apple reached an agreement in 2018, the flood of patent lawsuits subsided and practically came to a standstill.