Apple and Samsung to renew patent battle in US court

Apple and Samsung will return to federal court in the heart

 of Silicon Valley tomorrow for a new round in their

 seemingly perpetual patent war.

The case concerns smartphone and tablet patents and is just

 the latest in a long-running feud between the two tech

 giants, who are battling for supremacy in a multi-billion-

dollar market.

“The parties tried hard to accuse each other’s latest and

 greatest products, but US patent litigation is slow, which is

 why this 2014 trial will be about 2012 and pre-2012

 products,” intellectual property analyst Florian Mueller said

 in a post at website fosspatents.com.

The rivals will face off once again before District Court Judge

 Lucy Koh in the California city of San Jose.

Koh presided over a trial last year that ended with a jury

 declaring Samsung owed Apple more that a billion dollars in

 damages for infringing patents with some older model

 Android-powered devices.

The damages award was later trimmed to $929 million and

 is being appealed.

If this new trial goes in Apple’s favor, it could result in an

 even bigger award since it involves better-selling Samsung

 devices built with Google-backed Android software.

This time California-based Apple is taking aim at Samsung’s

 flagship Galaxy line crafted to challenge the iPhone in the

 high-performance end of the market.

“Both in the United States and globally, Apple and Samsung

 have established themselves as fierce competitors in the

 smartphone market and fierce adversaries in the

 courtroom,” Koh said during rulings on injunctions,

 testimony and other matters ahead of trial.

Under pressure from Koh, the chiefs of Apple and Samsung

 engaged in mediation to see if the dispute could be settled 

out of court, but the talks failed.

However, the companies expressed willingness to keep

 talking, raising the slim possibility trial could be avoided.

Jury selection is to commence tomorrow. Koh is allowing

 each side 25 hours to present evidence to make its case to

 jurors.

Apple had filed the suit against the South Korean consumer

 electronics behemoth in February 2012 as “one action in a

 worldwide constellation of litigation between the two

 companies,” the judge said in a ruling.

Patents at issue in the case involve unlocking touch-screens

 with gestures; automatically correcting words being typed;

 retrieving data sought by users, and performing actions on

 found data such as making a call after coming up with a 

phone number.

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