In another round of the global intellectual war between Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung, Apple has filed a lawsuit in the US which claims the South Korean firm violates four of its patents. The battle between the two companies over features of both the smartphones and tablet PCs have led to suits in place as remote from one another as Germany and Australia.
The disputes over intellectual property of mobile operating systems and hardware features include claims for and against a group which includes Apple, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Motorola (NYSE: MMI), and Eastman Kodak. The courtroom activity could go on for years as the fate of devices is settled as much by judges as by consumers.
Apple and Samsung are by far the leaders in the smartphone industry, in terms of sales.
The patents in question include the feature called slide to unlock, in which a user opens access to a phone by swiping an image of a button, the reports say.
Another involves data tapping, in which the system can recognize, say, a phone number in an e-mail and enable the user to immediately call that number. Late last year, the U,S. International Trade Commission banned HTC Corp.’s phones that used the feature, and that HTC then developed a workaround for the function.
A third patent violation, Apple charges in the case, involves technology that helps complete partial words that a phone user inputs. And the fourth is tied to Apple’s voice-activated search function called Siri, reports say.
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