Samsung and Apple were scheduled to meet for a mediation meeting to try and reach an agreement in the ongoing patent disagreement before going back to court. According to new reports, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung Mobile co-CEO JK Shin did hold such a meeting, but failed to reach any kind of settlement on the disagreement.
Since an agreement hasn’t been reached, it seems the two parties are destined for the courtroom in order for a formal agreement to be enforced for the patent disagreement. The second trial is currently scheduled for March 31st 2014 in Californian court.
Apple and Samsung cannot agree
Apple and Samsung were ordered to try and reach an out of court settlement in order to prevent the case having to go to retrial. This agreement was supposed to be reached by February 19th, but failure to do so will now most likely see Apple and Samsung meet back in court, where Samsung could be set to pay damages of up to $930 million to Apple.
A spokesperson for Samsung said that they couldn’t confirm whether the two CEO’s met, or if they did, what the results were. The settlement would see Apple and Samsung agree over patent disagreements whereby each party suggest that the other has infringed with their respective devices. Originally, Samsung were found to have infringed on Apple’s patents and ordered to pay damages but Samsung appealed.
Whilst intellectual property is extremely important to innovating companies, there needs to be a point where these big companies are simply not just playing cat and mouse games, and instead respect each other’s IP for the sake of the consumer. Taking each other to court and suing one another is surely just a waste of the companies time, money, and resources.
But what do you guys think? With only a few days left before the agreement deadline, can the two companies settle?