Korea Times (via Fortune) is reporting that Apple and Samsung are in talks designed to settle all future patent disputes out of court. FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller believes that a settlement will be reached “very soon.”
Mueller believes that a one-time payment from Samsung to Apple for all past infringements will allow both companies to move on, establishing a cease-fire agreement which would commit both parties to staying out of court for a set timeframe.
Apple last week agreed to settle its patent claims against Google, and to “work together” on some kind of patent reform.
Settling with Samsung is something I suggested in a recent opinion piece. While Apple received close to a billion dollars from its first court battle with Samsung (later adjusted to $930M), the more recent award of just $119M may have influenced the company’s cost-benefit analysis of future litigation.
In addition to the doubtless massive legal costs involved, Apple also has to consider the distraction of prepping senior execs for trial and the embarrassment factor of emails and other materials that become public in the course of such cases.
